Turkish

The Turks of Anatolia speak an Oghuz Turkic language and are mostly Sunni Muslims, with a large Alevi minority. Turkic settlers from Central Asia entered with the Seljuk Turks, whose victory at Manzikert in 1071 opened Anatolia to migration. The Sultanate of Rum, founded in 1077, ruled from Konya until the Mongol victory at Köse Dağ in 1243 made it a vassal.

As Ilkhanid power faded after about 1277, Turkish lords founded competing beyliks across western and central Anatolia, among them Karaman and the small Ottoman beylik near Söğüt. While related Turkoman tribes stayed nomadic, settled Turks farmed, traded and worked crafts.

The Ottoman line expanded under Osman I and Orhan, who took Bursa in 1326 and crossed into Europe in 1354; Mehmed II took Constantinople in 1453, and under Suleiman the Magnificent the Ottoman Empire stretched into Hungary, Iraq and North Africa. The failed 1683 siege of Vienna and the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz began a long contraction of the Turkish-speaking world back toward Anatolia.