page_title: Syrian Turkmen
section_title: Ottoman era
hierarchical_section_title: Syrian Turkmen / History / Ottoman era
caption_attribution_description: English: Yavuz sultan Selim in Egypt.
context_page_description: Syrian Turkmen, are Syrian citizens of Turkish origin who mainly trace their roots to Anatolia. The majority of Syrian Turkmen are the descendants of migrants who arrived in Syria during Ottoman rule; however, there are also many Syrian Turkmen who are the descendants of earlier Turkish settlers that arrived during the Seljuk and Mamluk periods. Today, Turkish-speaking Syrian Turkmen make up the third largest ethnic group in the country, after the Arabs and Kurds respectively; some estimates indicate that if Arabized Turkmen are taken into account, then they form the second biggest group in the country. The majority of Syrian Turkmen are Sunni Muslims.
  Syrian Turkmen share common genealogical and linguistic ties with Turkish people in Turkey and Iraqi Turkmen, but do not identify themselves with the Turkmen of Turkmenistan and Central Asia. Most live near the Syrian-Turkish border that runs from the northwestern governorates of Idlib and Aleppo to the northeastern governorate of Raqqa. Others reside in the Turkmen Mountain near Latakia, the city of Homs and its vicinity until Hama, Damascus, and the southwestern governorates of Dera’a and Quneitra.
context_section_description: Mamluk rule of Syria ended once the Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered the region in 1516-17. Thereafter, the Ottoman administration encouraged Turkish nomads from Anatolia to settle in strategic areas of the region. By the sixteenth century the Ottomans continued to settle Turkmen in the rural areas around Homs and Hama to keep the Bedouin in check and serve as mütesellim.
  Turkish migration from Anatolia to Ottoman Syria was continuous for almost 400 years, until Ottoman rule ended in 1918. The Turkish settlement throughout the rural hinterlands of several Syrian cities was a state-organized population transfer which was used to counter the demographic weight and influence of other ethnic groups in the region. Furthermore, the Turkmen served as the local gendarmes to help assert Ottoman authority.
  By the late nineteenth century, many Turkish refugees who lost their lands to Russia in the European regions of the Ottoman Empire (particularly in the Balkans) settled in Ottoman Syria between 1878 and 1906 and were provided with new lands by the Ottoman state. According to Dawn Chatty, these Turkmen settlers (alongside Circassian and Chechen refugees) became loyal subjects to the sultan and were "driven to succeed in agriculture and ready to defend themselves against any Bedouin claims to the land on which they had built their villages".
caption: Syria came under Ottoman rule once Selim I conquered the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt in 1516-17.
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