 A Yörük father with his daughter | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Anatolia,Balkans | |
 Turkey | >1,000,000[1] (1970) |
 North Macedonia | 4,000[2] |
 Bulgaria | 1,000[3] |
| Languages | |
| Turkish | |
| Religion | |
| Islam (Sunni,Alevi) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Turkish people and otherTurkic peoples | |
| Part ofa series of articles on |
| Turkish people |
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Traditional Areas of Turkish Settlement Turkish majorities:
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TheYörüks, alsoYuruks orYorouks (Turkish:Yörükler;Greek:Γιουρούκοι,Youroúkoi;Bulgarian:юруци;Macedonian:Јуруци,Juruci), are aTurkish ethnic subgroup ofOghuz descent,[4][5][6] some of whom arenomadic, primarily inhabiting the mountains ofAnatolia, and partly in theBalkan peninsula.[7] On the Balkans Yörüks are distributed over a wide area from the eastern parts of North Macedonia, parts of Bulgaria, north to Larissa in Thessaly and southern Thrace in Greece.[8][9] Their name derives from theOld Turkish verb "yörü", meaning "to walk", and they are also called Yörük or Yürük. The contractions o > u and ö > ü in the first syllable in Rumelian dialects are typical, and while they are calledYörük in Anatolia, theYürük form is used in Rumelia. These contractions are due to theKipchak Turkic influence on dialects ofTurkish.[10][11][12][13] The Yörüks were under the Yörük Sanjak, (Turkish:Yörük Sancağı) which was not a territorial unit like the othersanjaks, but a separate organisational unit of theOttoman Empire.[14][15]
According to some, those tribes residing in the east of theKızılırmak river are called Turkmen and those in the west Yörük. Both terms were used together in Ottoman sources forDulkadirli Turkmens living inMaraş and its surroundings.[16] The ethnohistorical termsTurcoman and Turkmen are used synonymously in literature to designate Yörük ancestry.[6]
In the medieval era, to distinguish their own loyalSunniTurkomans from the Shah-loyalShiiteKızılbaş Turkomans of eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan, Ottoman governors coined the blanket termYörük (orYürük), meaning "nomad" or "wanderer."[17][18][19] This served as a political demarcation between western (Ottoman Turkic) and eastern (Safavid-influenced) Turkoman groups.[20]
Despite being politically divided between the Ottoman Turks and the Safavid-influenced eastern realms, Eastern and Western Turkomans were ethnically and linguistically the same, differing only in minor dialectal or cultural aspects.
Historians and ethnologists often use the additional appellative 'YörükTurcoman' or 'Turkmens' to describe the Yörüks ofAnatolia. In Turkey's general parlance today, the terms "Türkmen" and "Yörük" indicate the gradual degrees of preserved attachment with the former semi-nomadic lifestyle of the populations concerned, with the "Turkmen" now leading a fully sedentary life, while keeping parts of their heritage through folklore and traditions, in arts like carpet-weaving, with the continued habit of keeping ayayla house for the summers, sometimes in relation to theAlevi community etc. and with Yörüks maintaining a stronger association with nomadism. These names ultimately hint at theirOghuzTurkish roots. The remaining "true" Yörüks of today's Anatolia traditionally use horses as a means of transportation, though these are steadily being replaced by trucks.
The Yörüks are divided in a large number of named endogamous patrilineal tribes (aşiret). Among recent tribes mentioned in the literature are Aksigirli, Ali Efendi, Bahsıs, Cakallar, Coşlu, Qekli, Gacar, Güzelbeyli, Horzum, Karaevli, Karahacılı, Karakoyunlu, Karakayalı, Karalar, Karakeçili, Manavlı, Melemenci, San Agalı, Sanhacılı, Sarıkeçili, Tekeli and Yeni Osmanlı. The tribes are splintered in clans or lineages, i.e.kabile,sülale oroba.[21]
TheSarıkeçili or "Yellow Goats" are the last Yörüks maintaining the nomadic way of life. They mainly live inMersin Province in the central-eastern parts of theTurkish Mediterranean coast and consist of about 200 families. Their winter camps are in the coasts ofSilifke,Gülnar andAnamur. In summer they live in the districts ofBeyşehir andSeydişehir inKonya Province. Their nomad tents can be seen throughout the Mediterranean coastal sides of Turkey. This is a very common practice among old Turkic tribes in central Asia even nowadays.[7][22] Athroat singing tradition, known as “Boğaz Havası” or “Boğaz Çalma”, has an important aspect in the culture of the Sarıkeçili Yörüks, it is performed by pressing the throat with a finger while singing with a sound.[22][6]
In the past centuries, many Sarıkeçili tribes also resided in these areas:İçil (today Mersin),Aydın,Konya,Afyonkarahisar,Akşehir,Saruhan, Doğanhisarı,Antalya,Lake Eğirdir,Isparta,Burdur,Dazkırı,Uluborlu. Most Sarıkeçili tribes living in these areas have already accepted the sedentary way of life. The Sarıkeçili around Antalya and Mersin are the last representatives of Yörük nomadism.[6][23]
Manavlı tribe orManavlı Yörüks is a Yörük tribe living inAntalya,Adana,Aydın,Manisa and theTaurus Mountains. The Manavlı tribe appears inOttoman records as "Manavlı, Manavlu, Manavlar Perakendesi." Their settlements are listed asİçil, Saruhan, and AlaiyeSanjaks. It is believed that the Manavlı Yörüks took their name from the fact that they lived in old times near the town ofManava, aByzantine settlement now lost and located near the modernManavgat.[24][25][26] There is also the Manavlı Goat of the Yörüks.
French historian andTurkologistJean-Paul Roux visited the Anatolian Yörüks in the late 1950s and found that the majority of them were practicingSunni Muslims.[27] The tribes he visited were led by elected officials calledmuhtars, or village headmen, rather than hereditary chiefs, although he did note that village elders maintained some social authority based on their age.[28] For the majority of the year, they lived in dark wool tents calledkara çadır.[29] During the summer, they went up to the mountains, and in the winter they came down to the coastal plains.[30] They kept a variety of animals, including goats, sheep, camels, and sometimes cattle.[31]
The focus of each tribe was the family unit. Young men would move directly from their family's tent to their own upon marriage. The Yörüks marriedendogamously; that is, they married strictly within their own tribe. Children were raised by the tribe as a whole, who told Roux "we are all parents."[32] Although the Yörüks had acquired a reputation for being deliberately resistant to formal education, Roux found that a full quarter of Yörük children he encountered were attending school, despite the difficulties of living a nomadic lifestyle in remote locations with limited access.[33]
In 1911, the Yörük were a distinct segment of the population ofMacedonia andThrace, where they settled as early as the 14th century.[34] An earlier offshoot of the Yörüks, the Kailar or Kayılar Turks, were among the first settlements in Europe.[citation needed]
In 1900 the Rumelian Turkish population in the Balkans was estimated at seven million. Shortly after the independence of thenew Bulgarian state, they formed a significant minority in the country.[36] Several waves of migration led to a decline of the Rumelian Turkish population, leaving about 1.5 million people by 1925. Many Rumelian Turks in Greece are not counted in census because they are registered as Christians to escape discrimination.[37][38] Due to religious, linguistic and social differences, most Rumelian Turks did not intermarry or mix with the native populations of the Balkans.[39]
As late as 1971, Rumelian Turks still formed a distinct ethnos of former nomads (known as Yorukluk). Originally, these Yörük nomads were taken from West Anatolia (Saruhan,Menemen) to colonize parts of Rumelia, such asThessaly andRhodope in the Greek-Bulgarian-Macedonian borderland, orPlovdiv andYambol in Bulgaria.[40][41][42]
In 1993, the Yörük population of Bulgaria is estimated at approx. 418 thousand people,[43] mainly divided into Surguch (7000 without children) and Yörük (320,000 without children).[44] They live mainly in theEuropean part of Turkey, inDulovo and theDeliorman area inBulgaria and in theKumanovo andBitola areas ofNorth Macedonia. Dialects includeGajal, Gerlovo Turk, Karamanli, Kyzylbash, Surguch, Tozluk Turk, Yuruk (Konyar, Yoruk), Prizren and Macedonian Gagauz. Current estimates of 2019 assume that in the entire Balkan region approx. 1.5 to 2.3 million people of Yörük Turkish descent live.[45]
TheKailar Turks formerly inhabited parts ofThessaly andMacedonia (especially near the town ofKozani and modernPtolemaida). Before 1360, large numbers of nomad shepherds, or Yörüks, from the district ofKonya, inAsia Minor, had settled in the country. Further immigration from this region took place from time to time up to the middle of the 18th century. After the establishment of the feudal system in 1397 many of the Seljuk noble families came over from Asia Minor; some of the beys or Muslim landowners in southern Macedonia before the Balkan Wars may have been their descendants.[34]
Clans closely related to the Yörüks are scattered throughout the Anatolian Peninsula and beyond it, particularly around the chain ofTaurus Mountains and further east around the shores of theCaspian Sea. Of the Turkmens ofIran, theYomuts come the closest to the definition of the Yörüks. An interesting offshoot of the Yörük mass are theTahtacı of the mountainous regions of Western Anatolia who, as their name implies, have been occupied with forestry work and wood craftsmanship for centuries. Despite this, they share similar traditions (with markedly matriarchal tones in their society structure) with their other Yörük cousins. TheQashqai people of southern Iran are also worthy of mention due to their shared characteristics.[clarification needed]
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During Ottomans, collective term used for Turkoman tribes was "Yörük." Ottoman bureaucrats, concerned with distinguishing their own Turkmens from the Shah-loyal Kızılbaş Turkmens, adopted the blanket term "Yörük" for their Turkomans.
'Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Bourchier, James David (1911). "Macedonia". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 216–222.
