Anti-Turkism

Anti-Turkish sentiment, also known as Anti-Turkism ( tr, Türk karşıtlığı), or Turkophobia () is hostility, intolerance, or xenophobia against Turkish people, Turkish culture and the Turkish language.

The term refers to intolerance, not only against Turks across all regions, but also against the subjects of the Ottoman Empire, as well as descendants of ethnic Turks such as Syrian Turkmen and Iraqi Turkmen. It is also applied to groups who developed in part under the influence of Turkish culture and traditions while converting to Islam, especially during the time of the Ottoman Empire, such as Albanians, Bosniaks and other smaller ethnic groups around Balkans.

Early modern period

In the Early modern period, the fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman wars in Europe—part of European Christians' effort to stem the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor to Turkey—helped fuel the development of anti-Turkism. By the middle of the 15th century, special masses called ''missa contra Turcos'' ( Latin for "mass against Turks") were held in various places in Europe to spread the message that victory over the Ottomans was only possible with the help of God and that a Christian community was therefore necessary to withstand the Turks.

16th century

As the Ottomans expanded their empire west, Western Europe came into more frequent contact with the Turks, often militarily.

During the Fourth Ottoman–Venetian War, the Ottomans conquered Cyprus.

In the 16th century, around 2,500 publications about the Turks—including more than 1,000 in German—were released in Europe, spreading the image of the "bloodthirsty Turk". From 1480 to 1610, twice as many books were published about the Turkish threat to Europe than about the discovery of the New World. Bishop Johann Faber of Vienna claimed, "There are no crueler and more audacious villains under the heavens than the Turks, who spare no age or sex and mercilessly cut down young and old alike and pluck unripe fruit from the wombs of mothers."

During this time, the Ottoman Empire also invaded the Balkans and besieged Vienna, sparking widespread fear in Europe, and especially in Germany. Martin Luther, the German leader of the Protestant Reformation, took advantage of these fears by asserting that the Turks were "the agents of the Devil who, along with the Antichrist located in the heart of the Catholic Church, Rome, would usher in the Last Days and the Apocalypse".

Luther believed that the Ottoman invasion was God's punishment of Christians for allowing corruption in the Holy See and the Catholic Church. In 1518, when he defended his 95 Theses, Luther claimed that God had sent the Turks to punish Christians just as he had sent war, plague, and earthquakes. (In response, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull in which he threatened Luther with excommunication and portrayed him as a troublemaker who advocated capitulation to the Turks.) In his writings ''On War Against the Turk'' and ''Military Sermon Against the Turks'', Luther was "consistent in his theological conception of the Turks as a manifestation of God's chastising rod". He and his followers also espoused the view that the Ottoman–Habsburg Wars were a conflict "between Christ and Antichrist" or "between God and the devil".

Spurred by this argument, the Portuguese Empire, seeking to capture more land in East Africa and other parts of the world, used any encounter with the "Terrible Turk" as "a prime opportunity to establish credentials as champions of the faith on par with other Europeans".

Stories of the "dog-Turk" reinforced the negative image. The dog-Turk was claimed to be a man-eating being, half-animal and half-human, with a dog's head and tail. After the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the image of the dog-Turk became a figure used to ridicule Turks in carnival processions and masquerades, where "dog-Turk" characters began to appear alongside witches and clowns.

17th–18th centuries

According to some sympathetic Orientalist authors, negative accounts of Turkish customs and people written during the 17th and 18th centuries "served as an 'ideological weapon' during the Enlightenment's arguments about the nature of government", creating an image of the Turks that was "inaccurate but accepted". However, some contemporary reports documented brutality and corrupt governance against subjugated Christians, including the practice of Devshirme (); where Ottoman soldiers would take European Christian males, aged 8 to 20, forcibly recruiting soldiers from among the children of their Balkan Christian subjects in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and relocate them to Istanbul. The devshirme was resented by locals for the fact that the children were taken forcibly from their parents.

In Sweden, the Turks were portrayed as the archenemies of Christianity. A book by the parish priest Erland Dryselius of Jönköping, published in 1694, was titled ''Luna Turcica eller Turkeske måne, anwissjandes lika som uti en spegel det mahometiske vanskelige regementet, fördelter uti fyra qvarter eller böcker'' ("Turkish moon showing as in a mirror the dangerous Mohammedan rule, divided into four quarters or books"). In sermons, the Swedish clergy preached about the Turks' cruelty and bloodthirstiness, and how they systematically burned and plundered the areas they conquered. In a Swedish schoolbook published in 1795, Islam was described as "the false religion that had been fabricated by the great deceiver Muhammad, to which the Turks to this day universally confess"''.''

In 1718, James Puckle demonstrated two versions of his new invention, the Puckle gun: a tripod-mounted, single-barreled flintlock weapon fitted with a revolving cylinder, designed to prevent intruders from boarding a ship. The first version, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets. The second, intended for use against the Muslim Ottomans, fired square bullets, designed by Kyle Tunis, which were believed to be more damaging and would, according to Puckle's patent, convince the Turks of the "benefits of Christian civilization".

Voltaire and other European writers described the Turks as tyrants who destroyed Europe's heritage; with Voltaire characterizing Turks as "tyrants of the women and enemies of arts" and "barbarian usurpers who must be chased out of Europe." In his book ''Orientalism'', Edward Said noted, "Until the end of the seventeenth century the 'Ottoman peril' lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger, and in time European civilization incorporated that peril and its lore, its great events, figures, virtues, and vices, as something woven into the fabric of life."

Anti-Turkism by Ottomans

Within the ruling class, Ottomans, called themselves "''Osmanlı''", to note a person of higher intellect and education with proficiency in Persian and Arabic literature, while the word "Turk" was used to discriminate against the nomad Turkomans of the steppes and Khurasan, and the illiterate Anatolian peasantry, and ethnic slurs such as ''Eşek Turk'' (donkey Turk) and ''Kaba Turk'' (rude Turk) were used to describe them. Other expressions included were "Turk-head" and "Turk-person". Within the Ottoman Empire, the term of "''Etrak-i bi-idrak''" was sometimes used to denote the Yörük backwoodsmen