The Romani people in Turkey () or Turks of Romani background () are Turkish citizens and the biggest subgroup of the Turkish Roma. They are Sunni Muslims mostly of Sufi orientation, who speak Turkish as their first language, in their own accent, and have adopted Turkish culture. Many have denied their Romani background over the centuries in order to establish a Turkish identity, to become more accepted by the host population. They identify themselves as Turks of Oghuz ancestry. More specifically, some have claimed to be members of the Yörüks, Amuca, Gajal or Tahtacı.
Since 1996, their official name in Turkey has been Romanlar and not Roma. They are also called Şopar ("Gypsy kid") in Rumelian Romani dialect, and Manuş ("Human") or Çingene ("Gypsy") in Turkish, while once in Ottoman Turkish they were named Cingân ("Gypsy"), Kıptî ("Copts") and Mısırlı ("Egyptians"). As Gastarbeiter some Turkish Roma came to Germany and Austria and other European countries and fully assimilated in Turkish European communities.
There are an estimated 5,000,000 Romani people in Turkey.
History
There are records of the presence of Romani people from AD 800 in Thrace, known in Greek as Athinganoi. At the time of the Rome–Constantinople schism of 1054, Athinganoi settled outside the Walls of Constantinople. Later in the Ottoman times, this quarter was named Sulukule, said to be the oldest Roma settlement in Europe.
With the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish speaking Muslim Romani people settled in Rumelia (southeastern Europe) under Ottoman rule. The Ottoman Turkish Historian Evliya Çelebi explains in his Seyahatnâme, that Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, took Muslim Roma from Balat, Didim and former Menteşe (beylik), as well as the irreligious Roma from Gümülcine, and settled them in Istanbul, but both Groups didn't get along well, and some of the Gümülcine Groups went back. He also wrote, that the language of the Roma from Gümülcine have Banyan merchants roots. Ottoman Archives of the 18th century and 19th century talk about 4 clans of those called Türkmen Kıpti (Gypsy). The groups in these historical documents may be related to the contemporary Balkan groups who spoke Turkish only with few Romani words in their jargon and who are often Alevis of Bektashi Order, as a separate group of other Roma people in Rumelia. They once migrated from Anatolia and settled finally in the Balkans and Crimea. Uniquely to Ottoman history, the Muslim Roma people were given their own Sanjak at the Kırklareli Province, by the order of Suleiman the Magnificent at 1530. Until today the Turkish Roma see Thrace as there Homeland. The Turkish Historian Reşat Ekrem Koçu, explained that Muslim (Horahane), Eastern Orthodox (Dasikane) and Pagan Roma (Gadjikane) Groups lived in the Ottoman Empire. He also explained that the Christian Lom people who lived in Istanbul converted to Islam in the 19th century
Origin
The Romani people in Turkey are of very mixed ancestry. According to their own oral tradition, (but it varies in some stories), their ancestors once came from Hindustan The Early Romani originate from the Indian subcontinent, especially from Rohri in the Sukkur District of Sindh. The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in Central India: The language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines. More precisely, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Sanskrit and Prakrit. In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were "children of India". The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community, spread across 30 countries, as a part of the Indian diaspora.
Genetic
Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Early Romani originated in Indian subcontinent. Another genetic study shows that Turkish Roma are related to the Changar tribe from Pakistan of Punjab. While the Early Romani people traces back to the Indian subcontinent, gene flow from the Ottoman Turks spilled over and established a higher frequency of the Y-haplogroups J and E3b in Balkan Roma Groups. Greeks and South Slavs DNA also influenced the Balkans Roma people. The genetics of peoples of the Caucasus also influenced the genetics of Roma people.