Turkmen (Central Asia)

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Turkmen in traditional clothing - Turkmenistan
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The Turkmen ( Turkmen Turkmenler ) are a Turkic people in Central Asia . They form the titular nation of the independent Republic of Turkmenistan , where they now make up around 80 percent of the population. The Turkmens are still strongly divided into numerous tribes . In the steppe they are mostly nomadic and in the cities they are sedentary.

A distinction must be made between the Turkmens of Central Asia and the Turkomans in Iraq , Syria , Jordan and Turkey ; on these see Turkmen (Western Asia) .

Surname

Ethnic Turkmen children in Afghanistan

The Turkmens are also called Turkmen or in Russia as Truchmenen ( Russian Трухмены Truchmeny ). An old German and English name for the Turkmen is "Turkomanen" or Turkoman .

etymology

There are many theories as to the origin of the name:

  • The name Turkmen comes from the Iranian languages ( Persian ترکمن) and originally meant "similar to the Turks". This name was also used by the Arabs ( Arabic التركمان) used and referred to the Muslim Turks of Asia ( Seljuks ) from the 10th century . However, modern studies reject this popular Persian etymology.
  • Another common thesis is that the name Turkmen comes from Turkish and was used for the Muslim Turks. The name is said to have been formed from Türk 'Turk' and iman 'Faith' .
  • Another variant of the naming is that the name “Turkmen” was composed of the noun Türk “Turk” and the suffix men “-schaft” . Then today's Turkmens would have to be translated as: “the Turkish nation”.

History and scope of the name

The name appears for the first time in the form of trwkkmn in a Sogdian letter from the 8th century. If this word does not mean 'translator' ( trkwmn , see for further derivation of this word about the Aramaic Dragoman ) in this letter , it would be the first reference to this ethnonym. The Chinese historical work T'ung-tien (around 801) writes about the T'e-chü-meng in Sogdia , which can be another reference to the Turkmens. It was only later that Turkmen exclusively designated those Oghuz who had converted to Islam.

The name of the "Turkmen" ( Turkmen ) as such is one of the few traditional and currently used popular names of a Turkic people that were in use before the time of the Mongol Empire . However, this ethnonym has been a collective name for various Turkic peoples who live in Iran , Afghanistan , Iraq , Turkey , Syria , Jordan , the Middle East and Central Asia since the Middle Ages up to the present day .

The Turkmens mentioned in the medieval sources before the Mongol period, as well as those who are called Turkmen today in the countries of the Middle East, are linguistically related to the Turkmen of Turkmenistan and the neighboring areas, but not identical. These originally included the ancestors of today's Turks and Azerbaijanis, but for these the term Turkmen came out of use in the course of modern times, apart from small groups. Today's Turkmen of Turkmenistan probably go back to Oghusian tribes who stayed in their old homeland in the 11th century on the lower reaches of the Syr-Darya and on the Aral Sea and only Islamized after the conquest by the Mongols and subsequently took up their current homes.

Size and settlement areas

The Turkmens currently count almost 11 million people. Almost 5.2 million Turkmen live in the Republic of Turkmenistan named after them (2011 census), where they make up around 77% of the total population and thus the majority of the population. The Turkmens are minorities in north-east Iran (2.3 million, mainly in the provinces of Golestan , North- Khorasan and Razavi-Khorasan ), in north-west Afghanistan (589,000 in the provinces of Faryab and Baglan ), Uzbekistan (169,000), Pakistan (60,000), Russia (33,000) and Tajikistan (27,000) resident.

The Turkmens were made up of several tribal confederations : Den Tekke, Yomut, Salor, Ersari, Sari, Göklen, Caudor and many others

religion

Turkmens are predominantly Sunni Muslims , although there are also large Shiite communities.

Also of Sufism and dervish orders play a major role in them ever since. In addition, there are very old beliefs, such as the ancestor cult or shamanic practices, as remnants of popular religiosity .

language

The Turkmen speak Turkmen , a Turkic language of the Oghuz branch . There are about 5.2 million speakers of Turkmen in Turkmenistan and about 3 million speakers distributed in Iran , Afghanistan and Russia .

history

Turkmen carpet in the typical pattern of the Tekke tribe

A direct connection between the modern Turkmen of Central Asia and the Turkmen of the Seljuk era and their successors cannot be proven. Its history can only be traced back to the 16th century because of the poor sources. During this time they appear as inhabitants of the peninsula Mangyshlak , the Ustyurt Plateau , the Balkhan Mountains and the Karakum and began under the pressure of Kalmyks to migrate south. After temporarily holding the Khan of Khiva Abu'l Ghazi Bahadur (1643–1663) in check, they were largely independent again. Even the Iranian ruler Nadir Shah (1736–1747) achieved only a short-term subjugation of the Turkmen. Incidentally, they were feared as robbers and slave hunters who repeatedly haunted Iran's northern border areas. After the decline of the power of the Khiva Khanate there was a constant state of war with it from the beginning of the 19th century and the incursions into Iran were answered with retaliatory measures by the Iranians. After victories against the troops of Iran and Chiwas in the period between 1855 and 1861, the Turkmens were able to maintain and secure their independence.

Between 1881 and 1885 the Turkmens were conquered by Russia. In 1881, around 14,500 Turkmens are said to have died in the Battle of Göktepe . The survivors withdrew to Persian and Afghan territory. With the conclusion of the Russian conquest of Turkestan, the area was not pacified. The Turkmens in particular offered resistance until the middle of the 20th century, and numerous uprisings could only be put down by the modern armament of the colonists.

After the defeat of Turkestan in 1918, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkestan was formed on the territory of the Turkmens , and the new Soviet leadership tried to break the Turkmen tribal traditions. The Beylers , the Turkmen upper class, were murdered as so-called kulaks (usurers) on the orders of Josef Stalin . In 1935 the Turkmen resistance was finally broken. But all attempts by the Soviet leadership to shape the Turkmen tribes into one nation failed: The Turkmen continued to feel that they belonged to tribes such as the Tekke, Ersary, Alili, etc. Instead of the state decreed " high Turkmen language ", the Turkmen continued to use dialects. The Turkmens also refused to learn Russian. According to their own information, only around 27.8 percent of Turkmen spoke this language by 1989.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union (1941) around 180,000 Turkmen collaborated with the Germans.

With the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union , Turkmenistan began to return to traditions and its own history in 1989. The Turkmen Soviet leadership dispelled the legend that the Turkmen voluntarily submitted to Russian rule.

On August 22, 1990, the Turkmen leadership declared itself sovereign and declared independence on October 27, 1991 . Turkmenistan has belonged to the Commonwealth of Independent States since the fall of the USSR .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Turkmens  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Heinz-Gerhard Zimpel: Lexicon of the World Population , p. 557.
  2. ↑ Article: Türkmen. In: Encyclopaedia of Islam . Volume 10. Brill, Leiden 2000, ISBN 90-04-11211-1 , p. 682.
  3. ^ Peter B. Golden : An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East. P. 212 f.
  4. ^ W. Barthold: Turkmen. in: Encyclopedia of Islam . Volume 4: S-Z. Leiden / Leipzig 1934.
  5. ↑ Gerhard villages, tungsten Hesche: Chorasantürkisch. Wiesbaden 1993, p. 4.
  6. ↑ Milan Adamovic: Die alten Oghusen, In: Materialia Turcica , Vol. 7/8 (1983), p. 45, ISSN  0344-449X
  7. ^ Jürgen Paul: Central Asia. 2012, p. 383.
  8. ↑ Hartmut Motz: Languages ​​and Peoples of the Earth - Linguistic-Ethnographic Lexicon. 1st edition, Volume 3, Projekt-Verlag Cornelius, Halle 2007, ISBN 978-3-86634-368-9 , p. 272.
  9. ↑ Turkmen. Retrieved September 9, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Art. Turkmen . In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam , Volume 10 (TU), Brill, Leiden 2000, pp. 682-685
  11. ↑ Gavin Hambly, The Decline of the Uzbek Khanates . In: Gavin Hambly (Ed.): Zentralasien (Fischer Weltgeschichte Volume 16), pp. 186–197, 193–195
  12. ↑ a b Erhard Stölting: A world power is breaking up. P. 187.
  13. ↑ a b Erhard Stölting: A world power breaks apart , p. 169.
  14. ↑ Erhard Stölting: A world power is breaking up. P. 189.