How do you think the Turks should look like?
World Cup 2002 was the first time I had impression about the Turks. They looked fierce, rough, tough and competitive, like warriors. Do you still remember their goal keeper, Rustu Recber? He was one of the world best goalkeeper. Feared by many strikers for his natural shot stop skills, height and face’s war paint. I got his picture from another web site. I remember there was another midfielder who looked like Mohegan warrior.
Before going to Turkey, I warned my 6 year old son to always stay close to us and not to be kidnapped by beard man. I have to admit that I was affraid of Turks before I came to Turkey. I suspect this is due to some genetical reasons. Chinese, or my ancestor in China used to fear Turks and their ancestors for thousands of years. We built Great Wall to keep them away, you see.
Turks, were originally from the North and North West (XinJiang) of China. According to my history book, A Summary of Chinese History by Bo Yang, the name of Turks, or Tu Jue Ren, first appear at AD550 right before a short-lived Duo Dynasty and, one of the three golden ages of China, the Tang Dynasty. In both Dynasties, Tu Jue nation was strong enough to have the Chinese Kings to send princesses to marry Tu Jue Ke Han, the king of Tu Jue nation, in exchange for peace. Tu Jue was big and strong. They occupied the entire place where XingJiang and Mongolia are today.
Tu Jue’s ancestor is XiongNu, a bigger problem for the then Qin Dynasty (BC 220) and Han Dynasty (BC 206). Ah, yes, the Chinese Kings had to send their beautiful princesses and women to XiongNu’s kings for peace. In fact the Qin Dynasty was so fedup of the XiongNu that the Emperor started to connect all the walls built by individual nations (which were crushed by Qin nation and later united under Qin Dynasty). This connected walls are now the Great Wall of China. The first task of all Chinese Kings, when they became Kings, were to either reinforce the Wall or to send princesses to XiongNu or XiongNu’s decendents that include Tu Jue and Mongols.
It was in AD630 and AD657, in two major battles the Tang Chinese crushed the Tu Jue’s army. The remainders of Turks moved to Mesopotamia. It was in Mesopotamia that the Turks mixed around with the Arabs and finally converted to become Muslim. That was the beginning of the nightmere of the Western’s Christians.
Before Turks, the Arabs had never posted a real treat to Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Roman Empire. In mid-11th century, the Muslim Turks setup an empire called Saljuk in today Iran and later, Turkey. In a battle, the Turks captured the Roman Emperor (ha ha ha!) but released him in exchange for a big piece of eastern Anatolia land.
After some fights with the crusaders and later Mongolians invasion, the Turks had another empire call Ottoman Empire, one of the strongest empire in human history that once controlled three continents, i.e. Europe including Austria, Asia and North Africa. Turks setup the Ottoman Empire by smashing and eating up the more prosperous half of Roman Empire (like eating mashed potato). After few hundreds years losing all its land to the Turks, Constantinople, the capital of once invincible Roman Empire (eastern), was finally conquered by the Turks to complete the most humiliating episode of Europe whiteman’s history. The humiliation was so great that all whiteman historians started to disown this part of history by disowning Eastern Roman Empire. All English history books that I read do not write about Eastern Roman Empire, they rename this, once a more prosperous and more civilised, half of the Roman Empire as Byzantine. In some English history books, the Europe or US whiteman writers just refuse to call Byzantine as Eastern Roman Empire. It created confusion for a foreign learner like me who has no background on learning European history. Finally I figured out that Byzantine really IS the eastern and more powerful part of Roman Empire. They were no change of government, they were no bloodshed, etc. the whiteman historians just changed the Eastern Roman Empire’s name to Byzantine so as to protect their pride as the extended culture of this “mighty and invincible” (ha ha) Roman Empire.
Turks were good horseman, soldiers and warriors. They later defeated the Sea Lord Winston Churchill’s navy at Dardanelles Strait during World War I.
So I know the history, what do you think my imagination of Turks before meeting the real modern Turks face to face?…I had a great surprise.
They, the Turks, are generally warm, friendly, polite, tolerant, open minded and are extremely fond of children. Most of them seems cannot resist on touching Ryan’s, my six-year-old son, head. The Istanbul’s Turks, seems to me, always in a rush just like most cities people…less care of your business. But people outside Istanbul, except those of souvenir sellers, are genuinely friendly and curious of us, the tourists. There were wonderful experience talking to them. Since my Turkish is limited to “hello” & “thank you”, and most Turks do not speak English, we usually have to use our facial expression, hands and fingers to communicate. And it is surprisingly easy to understand each other.
(On souvenir sellers, like every place of the world, tourists must always be careful when dealing with souvenir sellers. There is no exception in Turkey. 
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Behind every photo above, there is a story. But for those stories, we will have to wait for my future posts. Next, I will show you the highlights of our tour to Turkey or Turkiye, the land of Turks.
December 26th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
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