Yörük

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Yörük
Total population
n/a
Regions with significant populations
Turkey
Languages
Turkish
Religions
Islam, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
other Turkic peoples

Main areas inhabited by Yörük tribes in Anatolia

The Yörük (also Yürük) are a Turkic-speaking people primarily inhabiting the mountains of the southeast European Balkan peninsula and Anatolia. Their name is generally admitted to derive from the Turkish verb yürü- (yürümek in infinitive), which means "to walk", with the word Yörük designating "those who walk, walkers".

1 Background
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Background

The Yörük still appear as a distinct part of the population in Macedonian censuses and are generally considered one of the earliest Turkic inhabitants of Anatolia. While the Yörük are increasingly settled, many Yörük still maintain their nomadic lifestyle, breeding goats and sheep in the Pindus (Epirus, Greece and southern Albania), Shar (Republic of Macedonia), Pirin, Rhodope (Bulgaria) and Taurus (Turkey) mountain ranges. The so-called Kailar Turks (Kailar being the Turkish name for the city of Ptolemaida) who formerly inhabited parts of Thessaly and Macedonia (especially near the town of Kozani) were a group settled.

Their nomadic way of life and the fact that they spread through the Balkans led Arnold van Gennep to try and establish a connection between the Yörüks and the Sarakatsani or Karakachans of Greece. However, the Sarakatsani, from the first moment that they appear in written texts, are mentioned as an Orthodox Christian, Greek and Greek-speaking tribe, and there seems to be no actual linguistic, cultural, religious or other link to the Yörük, except for the fact that they were both transhumant, nomadic people who raised mainly sheep and could be found in the Balkan region during the Ottoman period .

A particular puzzle constitute the so-called Kailar Turks, who formerly inhabited parts of Thessaly and Macedonia (especially near the town of Kozani). These Turks, associated by some scholars with the Yuruks too, were a group semi-settled cattle breeders -who also quietly adopted Christianity in order to avoid expulsion after they Thessaly became part of Greece in 1881^{[citation needed]}. The Kailar Turks are known also by the alternate name of Konariotes.

A Yörük couple near Eğirdir, Turkey

The Yörüks of Anatolia are often called by the historians and ethnologues by the additional appelative 'Yörük Turcoman' or 'Turkmens'. 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 "Türkmen" (aside from the word's other meanings in the international context) 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 a yayla house for the summers, sometimes in relation to the Alevi community etc. and with Yörüks maintaining a yet stronger association with nomadism. These names ultimately hint to their Oghuz Turkish roots. Clans closely related to the Yörüks are scattered throughout the Anatolian peninsula, particularly around the chain of Taurus Mountains and further east around the shores of the Caspian sea. Of the Turcomans of Persia, the Yomuts come the closest to the definition of the Yörüks. An interesting offshoot of the Yörük mass are the Tahtadji of the mountainous regions of Western Anatolia who, as they name implies, have been occupied with forestry work and wood craftsmanship since centuries, although they share similar traditions (with markedly matriarchal tones in their society structure) with their other Yörük cousins. The Qashqai people of southern Iran (around Shiraz), and the Chepni of Turkey's Black Sea region are also worthy of mention due to their shared characteristics.