There are several major differences and many smaller ones. In some areas, Turkey and Iran are as different to the Arab world as Europe. In others, they are far more similar.
Language: Turkey’s primary language is Turkish, and there are Kurdish, Georgian, Greek, and other minorities in Turkey. Turkish is a Turkic language, closely related to those spoken in Central Asia and Siberia, but especially to the Caucasus variant spoken in Azerbaijan. Iran’s primary languages are a mixture of several Indo-Iranian languages, notably Persian, but also Baluchi, Mazandarani, Kurdish, Gilaki, and many other non-Iranian languages like Azeri, Qashqai, and Brahui. Iran and the area inhabited by Kurds have ancient ties to India and share a common origin with many north Indian languages, like Gujarati, Bangladeshi, and Hindi. In contrast, Turkey has ancient ties to Central and North-East Asia.
Genetics: Both Iranians and Turks fall into the West Asian cluster. Iraqis and Lebanese also fall into this cluster, but actually adopted Arabic AFTER Indo-Europeans arrived in the area, around the same time as Turkic speakers, and after the rise of Islam. The original languages of Iraq and the Levant were Semitic, but only distantly related to Arabic. The West Asian cluster includes obviously Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, but also Iran, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and part of Pakistan, and has a very high prevalence in Greece, India, Italy, and parts of Eastern Arabia. This component is lower in Arabia proper, highlighting one of the major genetic differences between Northern and Southern Middle Easterners.
Religion: Before the adoption of Islam and Turkish, the native population of Anatolia spoke a mixture of Greek, Kartvelian and Armenian, but also used to speak Anatolian Indo-European languages like Hittite. The religions of Anatolia were diverse but Christianity was very widely practiced, perhaps more so than other areas of the Roman empire. Before this, Caucasus languages were most likely spoken, but their origin and family are unknown. The religion of many Turkic people in Western Eurasia was Islam, but before this it was Tengriism, which still has some influence in Siberian cultures today. Iran, on the other hand, has shared close ties with the ancient societies of West Asia, like the Mesopotamians or Phoenicians, as well as the Greeks, Indians, and the now extinct Iranians of Central Asia, like the Scythians. The original religion of the Iranian peoples was Mithraism, followed by Zoroastrianism. The most famous non-Iranian society on the Iranian plateau were the Elamites, who were either Caucasian or Dravidian in origin, though this remains a mystery. The religions of the aboriginal West Asians was probably closely connected to the Mesopotamians.
No comments:
Post a Comment