Roma people in Turkey

The Xoraxane Roma, whose the official name since the 1990s in Turkish is Romanlar (singularRoman, male Rom, female Romliye), have other Turkish designations like Çingene (Gypsy), Esmer Vatandaş, Kıpti and many other names that are also in use.^[1] However, some use Çingene or Manuş (human) and Şopar (gypsy kid) for themselves in East Thrace.^[2] In English, they are called "Turkish gypsies", and the word "gypsy" is not pejorative for them.^[3] There are a number of subgroups, all of which are named after their old professional jobs. Their religion is Sunni Muslim of the Hanafi school, and some are Members of Sufi Tarika.^[4] Engagements, marriages and the circumcision of boys (Sünnet parties)^[5] are major festivals.

The Roma people in Turkey speak Turkish as their first language. Most not longer speak Romani. and many hide their Romani background, designate themselves only as Turks and do not want to be call as Roma.^[6] The majority live in East Thrace, which is jokingly called "Gypsy County" (Şoparistan), and in cities like Istanbul, Edirne and Izmir. They have Turkish citizenship and the Turkish culture and do not have Romanipen (a special Romani culture code) like the Christian Roma in Europe. The Romanlar from Turkey distance themselves from all other Roma groups from Europe, whether Christian or Muslims.^[7] The Romanlar are closer to Turks than to any Roma groups in Europe. They have only a lesser similarity to the Turkish-speaking Xoraxane Roma from Bulgaria, Romania (Dobruja) or Greece (Western Thrace).

They have no minority status and do not want to be called a minority. Some Turkish Romani came as guest workers to Germany and Austria in the 1960 and the 1970s. None of them was looked as Roma by the host population, only as Romanlar. In Germany,^[8] some of the Turkish-Romani men married with German or Austrian women, and their offspring are called Melezi (Half-blood), a Turkish loanword in Romani dialects of the Muslim Roma for people with mixed Romani blood.^[9] In Turkey, the Romanlar have all kind of low jobs but are also flower sellers, basketmakers etc.^[10]

History

Persian poets and historians in the Shahnameh record that King Bahram V of the Sassanid Empire brought several thousand musicians from India. From Persia, the descendants of the Indian musicians migrated to different countries.^[11] According to Ottoman and Turkish historians and linguists, the Romanlar are the descendants of mixed ancestry, the so called Chingan (musicans-dancers), who once came from Hindustan from trading relationships at the Silk Road with the Byzantine Empire, from the Indian subcontinent^[12] into Egypt, which was then part of the Byzantine Empire.^[13]

They settled in Koptos (Qift), on the Nile, for a while.^[14] Later, when the Muslim Arabs made them fight the Byzantines, the Romanlar went with them as camp followers to Asia Minor and settled first in Phrygia^[15] and then to Thrace, in Europe, in 800 AD. The Greeks called them Atsingani.^[16][17] The oldest sedentary Romanlar settlment was in Sulukule, in Constantinople, dating back to 1054 AD.^[18] The Byzantine historian Nikephoros Gregoras told of acrobats who came from Egypt to Constantinople in 1322.^[19] The Ottoman historian Evliya Çelebi described in his hook Seyhatnâme the language and the background of the Roma people and that after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II settled them from Gümülcine and Muslim Roma from Bayat village, in Aydın Province, and ther Sanjak of Menteşe to Constantinople as dancers and musicians.^[20][21]

During the Ottoman Empire, they got their own sanjak (district) in East Thrace in 1530 by the order of Suleiman the Magnificent.^[22] Turkish-speaking Muslim Roma also settled from Anatolia in the Balkans during the Ottoman Empire. Today, in Bulgaria, Greece (Western Thrace) and Romania (Dobruja)^[23] lives a Turkish-speaking Muslim Roma minority.^[24] Many Romanlar live in Istanbul , Edirne and İzmir.^[25]

Genetic studies showed that Turkish Gypsies are similar to Jats and Punjabis from Punjab (Pakistan).^[26] Also, gene flow from Turks and Southeast Europe people like Slavs, Greeks and Albanians into the Turkish Gypsies of the Ottoman Empire happend duting the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.^[27] Also, there were people from the Caucasus Mountains such as the Kubachi people^[28]

A. G. Paspati, in his Book of the Turkish Gypsies (1860-1863) mentions that Ottoman Turkish men often married Gypsy woman, and arround 200.000 Muslim Roma lived in Turkey.^[29] Under the reign of Abdul Hamid II, their status changed to that of Buçuk Millet.^[30]

At the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829),the Crimean War (1853–1856), the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), World War I 1914-1918,and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), many Turkish speaking Xoraxane Roma and other non-Romani Muslims were expelled from Bulgaria. Greece and the rest of the Balkans, who once belonged to the former Ottoman Empire, and settled in Turkey.^[31][32][33]

After the end of serfdom and slavery in Moldova in 1855 and Wallachia in 1856, Orthodox Christian Roma went to Constantinople. Called the Laxo Roma, they speak Vlax Romani.^[34] In 1923, most of the Laxo went to Greece.^[35]

Music and dance

The Romanlar in Turkey are well-known of their music and dance and play for weddings, Sünnet parties and the Kirkpinar Festival (oil wrestling), also for non-Romani People.^[36] The belly dance is performed in their own special style.^[37]

Kakava

Kakava is the name of the celebration of their own male Saint Baba Fingo.^[38], its hold every year on 5-6 May at Edirne. Its an old Folk Believe by the Romanlar^[39],^[40]

Sufism

Many Romanlar in Turkey belong to the Sufi Hindiler Tekkesi of the Qadiri-Tarika, which was founded in 1738 by Sheykh Seyfullah Efendi El Hindi in Selamsız, a Romani quarter at Üsküdar in Istanbul.^[41] He was originally a Muslim from Hindustan. The Romanlar are Muslims, but the old folk religion of Baba Fingo also exists.^[42]