Anti-Turkish sentiment

Anti-Turkism or Turkophobia is a term of being fearful, racist and discriminative against Turkish people or Turkic countries.

Two Turkish people being burnt to death

Bozkurt, the grey wolf in Turkic mythology, is also a symbol for far-right and fascist politics in Turkey.

The term refers to intolerance against the Turks across all regions but also against Turkic groups as a whole, including Azerbaijanis, Crimean Tatars and Turkmens. It is also applied on groups who developed in part under the influence of Turkish culture and traditions while they converted to Islam, especially during Ottoman times, such as Albanians, Bosniaks and other smaller ethnic groups around the Balkans during the period of Ottoman rule. It can also refer to racism against Turkish people living outside of Turkey, who form the Turkish diaspora.

The main historical adversaries of Turkic peoples are considered to be Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, and Serbs. The main reasons for the historical conflicts lie in the annexation of their ancestral lands by Turkish colonists.^[1]

The roots of anti-Turkism can be traced back to the arrival of the Huns in Europe. While the ethnic background of the Huns is a matter of dispute among historians, they are widely believed to have been of Turkic origin, and their invasion inspired fear among Europeans. In the Late Middle Ages, the fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman wars in Europe caused European Christians’ efforts to stem the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor to Turkey, which helped fuel the development of anti-Turkism.^[2]

Related pages

• Khojaly Massacre