South Kipchakya
South Kipchakya (Turkish: Güney Kıpçakya) is a name coined by the Turkish historians Fahrettin Kırzıoğlu and Yunus Zeyrek[1] to refer to the South Caucasus marchlands comprising the historical Georgian and Armenian lands that border with or are now part of Turkey. According to these historians, these areas were allegedly inhabited, in the Middle Ages, by the Kipchak Turks recruited by the kings of Georgia in their armies and subsequently largely Christianized until the Ottoman conquest of the region converted them into Islam.
Historical theses to lay claims for a non-Georgian/non-Armenian or Turkic ancestry for these areas have been encouraged, to some extent, by the Turkish State, but have been heavily criticized by Georgian and Armenian scholars as "nationalist distortions of the history of the region".[2][3]
References
- (in Turkish) Zeyrek, Yunus (2001), Acaristan ve Acarlar. Ankara, ISBN 975-97635-0-8;
Fahrettin Kırzıoğlu, "Yukarı Kür ve Çoruk Boylarında Kıpçaklar. İlk-Kıpçaklar (M.Ö. VIII.-M.S. VI. yy.) ve Son-Kıpçaklar (1118, 1195) ile Ortodoks-Kıpçak Atabekler Hükûmeti (1267-1578) (Ahıska/Çıldır Eyâleti Tarihi'nden)".
Fahrettin Kırzıoğlu, Osmanlılar'ın Kafkas - Elleri'ni Fethi (1451-1590); Ankara 1998. - Hann, Chris (2003), History and Ethnicity of Anatolia. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers No. 50. Halle (Saale), ISSN 1615-4568.
- (in Russian) Zulalyan, Manvel Karapeti (1970), Voprosy drevneĭ i srednevekovoĭ istorii Armenii, pp. 32, 106, 107. Izd-vo. Akademii Nauk Armianskoĭ SSR.
- Black Sea: Encyclopedic Dictionary (Özhan Öztürk. Karadeniz: Ansiklopedik Sözlük. 2. Cilt. Heyamola Publishing. Istanbul. 2005. ISBN 975-6121-00-9.)
- Paul J. Magnarella (1979), The Peasant Venture: Tradition, Migration and Change among Georgian Peasants in Turkey. Schenkman Publishing Company: Cambridge, MA. ISBN 0-8161-8271-X.