How did the Tuerks converted to Islam?

Hulagu, if you think we have no culture, then go and find yourself a better one, because we are happy with ours, and it is the inheritance of our history. Only the ones who respect this inheritance deserve to own it. Go and find yourself a simpler one, as a Mongol wannabe...

Oguzoglu it is not about my wishes, or wannabe things.

We lack culture, we do not have a strong vocabulary. Half of Turkish words are coming from either Arabic or Farsi. We made history, but we didn' t write history, We learn our history from Latins, Greeks, Chinese, Iranians, and Arabs.

I am not mongol wannabe, I have the chance to listen to the Turkish History guy Kamuran Gurun. He and Dogan Avcioglu are the only big historians about our middle asian history. Both directly translates Barthold and Grousset anyway. Hahahahahahah. That guy has some mental problem in his mind. Anything attacks islam is non-Turkish for him. And Shiite Islam means Iran for him. Any kinda Turk who converts to Shiite Islam is Iranified for him. Qajars, Il Khanids, Timurids, Safavids, all are Iranian for him. Gurun had the strongest claim of Mogolians outside this family. He created a new nation there. Well if we look at from this point, noone in middle asia calls themselves Turks, but KAzaks, Kirghizs, Uighurs, Mongolians, etc...

But we lack culture, our culture is under the invasion of American, French and off course Arabic culture. Our shops have French names. Our schools give English teaching. Our worships are arabic.

Noone can change their country, I have no such aim. Lacking culture will not decrease my love to my people.

Well, we can better say that Islamic civilization and Turkic civilization assimilated in each other. Today, lots of things that you know as Islamic are from Turkic origin (crescent-star, many believs of Alevi/Bektashi etc., Islamic procedures like "mevlid"- remember sagu? and etc.), and lots of things you know as Turkish are  originally Islamic. But the thing is, it became a synthesis of civilizations, like Iranians becoming Shias, and Turks developing Islam. There happened no real assimilations, but cultural synthesis.

If you look at our history since ancient times, there were more than 20 important Turkic empires found, and most of their flags have different colors, symbols etc. Our empires were found and expanded in very different regions of the world, from Northern Europe to Korea, from Himalayas to India, from Egypt to northern Siberia. They were mostly influenced with the civilization of the region they expanded/immigrated.

But you miss the terms "culture" and "civilization". Turks have one of the strongest cultures in the world, the nomadic Turkic culture that is still alive since thousands of years. Our cultural elements are very adaptable to every conditions, and capable of cultural evolution, but still keeps its origins. Today, despite the cultural influences and distances btw all Turkic people, all of us share most of our ancient cultural elements, all over the world, no matter how it evoluted and changed shape.

But about civilization, we dont lack of civilization, we lack of a "constant" civilization. You would see some Gothic style Hunnic buildings in northern Europe, and Indian style houses during the time of Babur Shah. But all of them are unique among the other examples of those architectures. Because they still contain their Turkic cultural elements in them, like we can still see our nomadic tent style domes in lots of anatolian mosques. That is the unique property of Turkic civilization. Not being assimilated, but assimilating the local civilizations with its synthesis with Turkic civilization. And to me, it is the highest level of civilization evolution. This makes our civilization stronger and to last forever, in any conditions. If you look all over the world, Turks arent assimilated, but Turks assimilate. And their civilization is the one that is the most capable of being easily adapted and evoluted.

Yes, Muslim Turks mostly worship in Arabic, but only Sunnites. And worshipping in Arabic doesnt make them Arabic, like Seljuks' used Persian in official government works, but they were Turkish.

You say about half of our vocabulary is Arabic and Persian, but you are very wrong. Only the Istanbul Turkish during the Ottoman reign was like that, but the rest of Anatolian Turks have spoken a very closer language to Azeri Turkish purified from arabic/Persian words. The number of foreign words wasnt that high in Anatolian Turkish, but mainly high in religious terms, because as you know, we have learned Islam from Iranians, when we conquered and ruled them.

Today, the current Turkish is partly purified from the foreign words that governmental Turkish used during the Ottoman times, and according to the percentages in 1975-1976, the current percentage of Turkish origined words in our language is %71. It was about %52 during Ottoman times.

The interesting thing is, like I said in the last paragraphs, the Turkish culture spread all over Islamic world, even in terms of linguistics and vocabulary. Arabic and Persian sentence structures, grammatical rules have been changing since the Turkic invasions, and during the Ottoman and Safavid periods, the changing reached its highest levels. Persian vocabulary had a very large amount of turkic/Mongolian originated words under the Turkic Safavid rule. Islamic literature was under the dominiance of Turkic poets after 15th century, and even they used lots of Arabic, Persian words in their poems, other nonTurkish Islamic poets were influenced with their styles, and Turkish poems with Arabic-Persian vocabulary became very popular in the Islamic world, even btw Arabic poets. Ottomans have used lots of Arabic words, but they were always modified to a Turkish form (melleyyah- milliyet etc.) and in fact, Turks derived new words from old Arabic words according to Arabic grammer, so it can be argued that if these words should be considered as Turkish or Arabic. Today, Arabic vocabulary is mostly consisted of Arabic originated words, but almost all of those modern terms in Arabic are derived by Turkish from Arabic roots.

So it is very hard to differ Islamic civilizations from each other, because synthesis of morew than a thousand of years have heavily modified most of the Islamic civilizations, including Turks, Iranians and Arabs. This is no assimilation but synthesis.

yea i know arabs did not has any strong known civilization before islam. and when i say Arabs i mean Arabs not semitic, arabs are people who speak same language and understan each other.

so i guess you understand Mongolian language and understand each other since you both are Turkish.

and as far as i knew monglian changed after they became parts of other cultures like the chinese and the iranians.

anyway i meant you had been using those alphabets for like a 1000 years and your significant history is writtin by that language or not?

Only the ruler class used the arabic letters. Before we started using lating alphabet, literacy rate was just 1%.

Bh Big lie, Ask your grandfathers If they know arabic alphabet.

both of my  grandfather and grandmother know  arabic alphabet.

And  They were just standart farmers.

I think that  1% is complately lie. But well after changing alphabet, yes 1% complately right.

Peh.

And I think, changing the topic name as: "How did Turks embraced Islam" would be better.

Since we have embraced Islam. And conversion is a more rude word I think. Embrace would be better.

After changin alphabet we have 100%  illiterate.

Hahahahahahahahah

Literacy rate is at least 50% now, as far as I know 80%. Add the condition that in south east people can not go to schools.

Ok, history of Turkic writing.

- First alphabet is the Turkic Runic, Orkun. dates back from 6th century AD the earliest. No Turkic writing before this.

- Later followed by a number of others. Until Turkics adopted Islam and Arabic script. Before adopting Islam, most Turkics were barbarian nomads. There were some settled populations like the Uyghurs, but most were nomads. Nomads were usually better warriors than civilised poepples, but you can't be both nomadic and civilised- civilised doesn't mean 'nice', it means cultures who build and live in cities, not in tents.

- So when Transoxania joined the Islamic civilisation, Turkics in that region started to become civilised. Seljuks (the group related to Turks of Turkey) were barbarians who converted to Islam, invaded muslim lands and quickly adopted their civilisation. Iranian Seljuks were almost completely Persian in culture. Conversion to Islam was a very good thing for Turkics. otherwise they would have been like the Mongols today (btw, Turkish and Mongol are quite different languages, from different sub- families). 

- A branch of Seljuks moved into Anatolia soon after. All nomads who moved in before them had been controlled, killed or assimilated by the Byzantines, but they survived, because they already had influence of Persian civilisation. Anatolian Seljuks combined Turkic nomad language, and a small amount of genetics and traditions (but not civilisation) with Persian, Byzantine and Arabic civilisations and local genetics. It is this mix, what creates the Turkish culture and makes a Turk what he is. Even though the Turkish nation state invents a glorious millenia long history for the Turks of Turkey, Turkish history starts with the Sultanate of Rum. Without this mix, there is no Turk, but something else, Azeri, Iranian, Arab, Bulgarian, whatever... It has been this way all through our history, and it is this way now. This is why the 'Turkcu' who thinks being Turk means having Turkic descent is not a Turk himself, he is an alien to the Turkish culture! 

- Ottomans just expanded the Sultanate of Rum's mentality, and added Balkans to the mix. They developed Turkish versions of Arabic script. Literacy was very low in the Ottoman Empire, not because of the script, but because Ottomans were a backward state. Everyone everywhere on the planet had low literacy (like 1%) until the 19th century. Ottomans were, of course, more backward than other European states. 

- Towards the end, nationalism came from the west and Turks had invented their nation. At this point they wanted to create a pure Turkish language, since the language is the only thing which makes them Turks. They asked for language reform, which included the script. Turkish intellectuals like Zia Gokalp did this, not Ataturk. Ataturk followed them.

- The empire collapsed and the nationalists have created a new country. They wanted to westernise, to create a nation out of the subjects of an empire. They did this to cut the 'nation' from its past, so their myths would propagate more easily. That's the main reason why they changed the script, Murtaza is right.

- On the other hand, it is true that Arabic script is not suited to Turkish at all, it is even worse than the Orkun script! Whereas the modern one easier to learn and is quite efficient. This probably helped the increase in literacy rates. But the literacy rates are factors of schooling. If you have schools for everyone, people will learn no matter how difficult it is. The Japanese use three alphabets, Kanji (the Chinese alphabet) with THOUSANDS of symbols, as well as two local alphabets with 100 symbols each, ALL TOGETHER. They have to know thousands of symbols to read the f**king newspaper. Yet literacy rate in Japan is 100% since the mid 20th century. Even though Turkish alphabet is infinitely simpler, Turkish literacy rate is between 85-90% today. So, while it was true that the Ottoman script needed a big reform, but change of script into latin was a bit extreme, in my opinion.

yalbuzdag

I think you, moron should not accuse other races, because you conquered them. We have our culture l, and we dont need belittle other cultures.