Reflections of the Contacts between Turks and Arabs to the Present

According to historians, relations between Turkish tribes and Arabs were limited to trade based on the Silk Road in the pre-Islamic period. Before Turks became Muslims, their first encounter with Muslim Arabs took place in the 7th century, during the reign of the Islamic Caliph Omar bin Khattab.

The Period of Caliph Omar (634-644):

During the time of Omar, Turkish-Arab relations started in Central Asia. The first relations between the Turks and the Muslim Arabs Hz. It started in the time of Omar (634-644). Hz. In the period of Omar, the Muslim Arabs came face to face with the Turks in Khorasan, Transoxiana and the Caucasus, after the Islamic armies won the battles of Qadisiya (636) and Nihavent (642) and destroyed the Sassanid State.

The Period of Caliph Osman (644-656):

There were intense struggles between the Caspian Khanate and the Arabs, which dominated a part of West Turkestan and the Black Sea. The first contacts in this region were Hz. Although it was provided during the time of Omar, Hz. During the Osman period, border conflicts gradually turned into fierce wars between Turks and Muslim Arabs. In 645, Arab forces captured Georgia. After that, the Khazar forces started a systematic and comprehensive attack against the Arabs. In the first attack of the Khazars, the Arab armies were ambushed and suffered great casualties. In 653 Hz. Although Osman did not allow, the Arab army went on a revenge campaign against the Khazars, but the Khazars defeated this army and caused the death of Abdurrahman Rabia. From this date, St. In the battles that took place until the death of Osman, neither side could gain an advantage over the other.

Umayyad Period:

After the Umayyads seized the caliphate in 661, the advance of the Arabs towards the Turkish provinces continued uninterrupted. The most violent struggles and wars between Turks and Arabs were experienced during the Umayyad period. In this period, Turkish tribes in Central Asia mostly lived in the borders of the Göktürk State. Ubeydullah bin Ziyad, the governor of Khorasan of the Umayyads, crossed the Ceyhun river for the first time in 674 and besieged Bukhara, one of the important Turkish cities of Transoxiana. Many Turks were put to the sword in Bukhara. Kabac Hatun, the Turkish Queen of Bukhara, made an agreement with Ubeydullah bin Ziyad in return for a heavy tax. As a result of this agreement, Ubeydullah bin Ziyad recruited two thousand Turkish youth to his army as soldiers. Muslim Arabs captured all Transoxiana and Western Turkestan during the time of Khorasan Governor Kutayba bin Muslim. Important Turkish cities such as Baykent, Bukhara, Samarkand and Kashgar were plundered by the Arabs.

Kutayba went down in history with the massacres he committed against the Turks. After the death of Qutayba, the Arabs could not hold on in Central Asia. During the period when the Gokturks were getting stronger, the Gokturk Khan Kultigin succeeded in taking back the Turkish provinces occupied by the Arabs.

Turgish Period:

After the end of the Gokturk Khanate in Central Asia, Turgish (Turkes) domination in West Turkestan, and Uighur domination around East Turkestan and Lake Baikal began to be experienced.

In this period, there were great struggles between the Türgiş Khanate and the Arab Islamic State. Suluk Kagan (Suluk Çor), who became the head of the Turgish in 717, took back some Turkish cities from the Arabs. However, the authority vacuum that emerged among the Turks after the death of Suluk Kagan facilitated the process of the seizure of West Turkestan by the Arabs. In this period, since 732, Arabs used force against many Turkish tribes living in the cities of West Turkestan and Turkish tribes who continued their nomadic life, and Turkish tribes were used against force to convert them to Islam. Many of the Turks living in this region who did not convert to Islam were put to the sword. However, in this period, it was not possible for the Turks to convert to Islam en masse.

However, the vast majority of Turks embraced Islam about 100 years later. The Persians (Persians) (now Iranians) who became Muslims before the Turks had a great influence on the Turkish nation's conversion to Islam. As a matter of fact, Turkish tribes interacting with Persian culture in this period started to use Persian words, the effects of which are also seen in today's Turkish. The fact that the Arabic alphabet used in this period was Persian, caused the Muslim Turks to look warmly to Persian. According to some sources, Turkish youth, who were taken prisoner from many Turkish tribes during the Umayyad period, were made soldiers for the Islamic armies.

Consequences of the Talas War:

This practice continued during the Abbasid period. The Turks, who served in the Islamic armies, had the opportunity to have a say in the Abbasid administration as a result of their military skills. During the reign of Harun, the palace guards and a small part of the palace administration were made up of Turks. During the Caliph Mutasim period, camps called "Samarra" were established with the Turks gathered from Turkistan in Baghdad, Syria and Anatolia and the Hassa army was formed.

In Talas in Central Asia, the Chinese Army and the Islamic Army, some of which consisted of Muslims of Turkish origin, came face to face. With the Turks living in the Talas region joining the ranks of the Islamic Army, the Islamic Army defeated the Chinese. Thus, Turks and Arabs became allied communities under the banner of Islam. As a result, the majority of Turkish tribes, who had not accepted Islam until that time, adopted Islam and the religion of Islam found the opportunity to spread easily to the communities living in Central Asia.

After the Battle of Talas in 751, the Itil Bulgars (Tatars) in the north of the Black Sea, the Karluks, who would establish the Karakhanid State, and the Çiğil tribes accepted Islam. Relations between the Arab tribes living in the lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire and the Turks, until the First World War, remained peaceful under the umbrella of Islam.

Turks and Arabs in the Ottoman Empire:

The weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the 1900s led to the disappearance of the Ottoman administration in the Arab lands under the domination of the Turks. In the same period, the Arab tribes, whose contacts with the French and the British increased, started to revolt against the Ottoman Empire as a result of the provocations of the British, with the influence of the nationalist movements. So much so that the Hashemite Arabs led by Sharif Hussein, who acted together with the British during the First World War, embarked on a struggle for independence against the Ottomans. At the end of the war, the lands where the Arab tribes lived under the Ottoman rule for a period were left to the governments that came under the British and French mandate. In parallel with the withdrawal of their forces from the Middle East by the French and the British, Arab states with 'drawn borders' emerged.

Hodja Ahmet Yesevi says; "Turkishness is destiny, religion is choice." It would be appropriate to add Ibn Khaldun's saying "geography is destiny" to this statement. Turks and Arabs are two separate nations that have largely shared the same geography in the course of history. As a result, the culture and language of the Arab nation, which pioneered the Islamic civilization, had an impact on the life of the Turks. Turkish culture has definitely had an impact on Arabs, but it is obvious that this is limited. However, with the French Revolution of 1789, the last two nations to spread nationalist movements were the Turks and the Arabs. Ottoman administrations, which advocated a unity under the umbrella of Islam rather than Turkishness, in order not to disintegrate the Ottoman Empire, preferred to suppress the understanding of nationalism of both Turks and Arabs with this point of view. Arab nationalism, which took the form of rebellion against the Ottomans (hence the Turks) with British influence, instead of a controlled nationhood, caused the death of countless Turks, just like the nationalist movements in the Balkans. In these years when Islamic unity or ummahism was shelved, Arab nationalism, which took the British behind them, played a leading role in removing the Turks who still saw themselves as "Ottomans" from the Middle East. Despite the Islamic brotherhood in the 1900s, the conflicts between Turks and Arabs have been one of the reasons why the majority of Turks do not 'distrust' Arabs even today.

Conclusion:

As a result, in modern times, although the fact that religion is a part of common culture and common history cannot be denied, nationalism has come to the fore. In this sense, it has emerged as a necessity to save Turkish culture and Turkish language from the effects of Arab culture. This process, which started under the leadership of Atatürk with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, continues to be kept alive in the form of history, culture, religion, tradition, customs and traditions, which are the priority and common values ​​of Turkishness, centered on Anatolian geography, with the awareness of Turkish nationalism that does not exclude Islam.

References:

(1) Michael Kmosko, “Araplar ve Hazarlar”, Türkiyat Mecmuası, 1935, C. III, s. 133

(2) Mehmet Çog, Emeviler Ve Abbasiler Dönemi Hazar-Arap İlişkileri, Türkoloji Araştırmaları, Bölüm 2/2, 2007, ss.151-152.

(3) Tarihimizle Yüzleşmek, Emre Kongar, Remzi Kitabevi, s.18

(4) Türklerin Tarihi I, İlber Ortaylı, Timaş Yayınevi