From: ko@cns.umist.ac.uk (Kutluk Ozguven)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bulgaria,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Re: Macedonia (definition of name)
Date: 6 Apr 92 16:42:28 GMT
Organization: UMIST, Manchester, England.

PXP111@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>Is Macedonia a Greek word? It is definitely not a slavic or (Yugo) slavic
>         one, for these waves came in the Balkans relatively recent.  Not
>         of course as late as the Turks from Central Asia,  but far after
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^?????
>         the collapse of the Western Roman Empire...  sometime in the mid
>         Byzantine Era.


You don't know about the history of the Balkans then. For my part,
I will say that, contrary to what you think, there had been many
waves of migration of Turks before that "late" Ottoman presence,
and these go well back to the age of Roman Empire.

First the Huns. There are ideas that they can be a non-Turkic
people, but looking back to the centuries old Hun empires in
Central and Northern Asia, there is little doubt that Attila
was Turkic. The Roman accounts on Huns also have a strong parallel with
the chinese ones. That is the time of Western Roman Empire. They did
stay in Balkans as well as Central Europe. Following that countless Turkic 
tribes have  settled there. Most notable being the Bolgars, who gave the name to
present Bulgaria, around sixth-seventh centuries. They were 
assimilated by the Slavs later on, but their East European cousins with the 
same Bolgar title preserved themselves until recent times. Then
we have to consider Kipchaks, Pecheneks, Kumans, and many 
other Turkic settlers who came as near as Byzantium. Before the Seldjuks 
appeared in Anatolian frontline, Gok-Oghuz Turks have already settled in
Balkans and converted to Christianity from shamanism. (see the
present Gagauz in Moladavia) When Alparslan met the Byzantine in Manzkiert,
all front line forces of the Emperor Romanos Diogenes were of these Balkan 
Turks, whose chief occupation was professional fighting. (Later there have been
"defections" from Seldjuk Turks to Byzantium during the IlKhan invasion of
Anatolia.)  And of course the  Tartars in 13th century on were another 
Turkish presence in  Balkans as further as Bulgaria.

These Turks have all used the Eurasian-Eastern European-Balkan
route of migration between 4th century and 14th century. (then
Ottoman Turks by Anatolia ) Pre-Ottoman Turkish migrations have
mostly been assimilated by their conversion to Christianity
from Shamanism. Some did not lose their Turkic dialects,
such as the Gagauz in Romanian/Moldavian border, and some 
other Oghuz speaking tribes which have been assimilated 
by the Greek state, somehow without much effort thanks 
to their Orthodox religion that they adopted a thousand years ago.
(The reason individual Turkic Christians were not worked on to
convert to Islam is, as you know, Ottomans were not interested in 
one-by-one conversion or missionary activities but mass conversions
of a whole population in a top-down way, e.g. Bosnians, who were
the member of a distinct church, or Albanians, or  Pomaks -
"the mountain Bulgarians" - or [the majority of] Cretans)


Yes I don't think Macedonia is a Turkish word either, but the *known*
history of Turks in Balkans go much beyond (a thousand years beyond) 
the Ottomans, although not in the same proportion, back to the Western R
oman empire and I would not  like this historic fact to 
be ignored by day to day political probaganda.  I just did not like 
your quick and irrelevant attack on Turks in the first paragraph of the 
article.

Regards

Kutluk
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