Karamanli

The karamanli (in Greek Καραμανλήδικα , in Turkish karamanlıca ) was Turkish written in Greek characters by the orthodoxe Christians of Cappadoce (Anatolia) of which a part had been turquisée, while an other practiced a crossbred Greek Turkish dialect, the Cappadocien.

As the remainder of the populations of Anatolia, these Christians came probably as well from the ancient populations christianized as of the later waves of immigration. Turkish propaganda nationalist (see e.a. the article of Tomaselli) wants however to see in them the descendants of Seldjoukides christianized, following the example Gagaouzes, descendants of Ouïghours, which would make some, with the Chuvash , one of the three Christian Turkish ethnicities.

The founder and first patriarch of the Turkish orthodoxe Church, Baba Eftim , is generally presented like a pope karamanli, it was in any case originating in Kayseri, in Cappadoce. The creation of this patriarchate in 1922 met two aspirations: that of orthodoxe Christians of Anatolia who thus thought of escaping, as Turks or Turkish-speaking, with collective expulsion towards the Greece issued by the Traité of Lausanne in 1923, and that of the Turkish government which thus laid out of an alternate interlocutor with the oecumenical Patriarche which had taken party for Athens during the gréco-Turkish war.

External bonds

Rinaldo Tomaselli, Karamanites of Turkey, today, Istanbul Strange, Istanbul Guides Net, 2004
Ilhan Alemdar, Karamanli (with a text in karamanli, plus its transcription in Latin characters)
Mehmet Koksal: The long voyage of Ashik Garip - a poetic legend of Karamanlis, Minorites.org, November 24th, 2005

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