After
Crimean invasion by Russia in 1783, it brought a social phenomenon with a deep effect on
ethnical and social geograph in Ottoman Empire after the migration waves which began with
Crimean Turk-Tatars migration after the invasion of Crimea by Russia in 1783, and
that continued by Caucasian migration after the defeat of Muridism movement in 1864 and
ended with 1877-1878 Ottoman-Russian war defeat and the loss of Balkhans. With its
sociological and cultural changes that can also be seen today, this phenomenon has such a
great impact on Anatolia to where the waves of migration towarded. When we look at 1890s,
we see that Ottoman Empire was still a great country with its large land including Balkhan
cities like Selanik, Manastır, Kosova, Usküp, Ishodra, Yania, Rodos, and those Muslim
places in east like Aleppa, Syria, Damascus, Lebanon, Beirut, Musul, Kerkukp, Bagdat,
Basra, Hicaz, Umman, Jeruselam, Trablusgarp, Libya, Binghazi. Compared today’s
situation, it was still an Empire. After those wars above and others, the number of
immigrants from Crimea, Caucasia, Balkhans and other places to Anatolia reached 5 milions.
Being a clear reality, many more people were effected by
this migration phenomenon to Anatolia from those cities, states and regions after being
lost in war after 1908. Because statistics cannot be reliable in the years of war, it is
not possible certain figures of Muslims who migrated to Anatolia until the Turkish
Republic was established. And estimations are always questionable.
The Ottoman Census Statistics in 1884 is one of
the most detailed and reliable work that we can use to understand the deep effect of
migration phenomenon on the Anatolian ethnical structure. We can accept that there was no
immigrants excep Crimean Turk-Tatars in Ottoman population in these years in which the
migrations from Caucasia and Balkhans had not begun yet. In 1884, Ottoman population was
35,350,000 including Balkhans, West Trace, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia and Herzogovina,
Egean islands and autonomous Serbia in Europe and Syria, Iraq, Arabian Peninsula, Egypt,
Libya, Tunusia in East. Among them, 21,000,000 were Muslim, and 14,350,000 were non-Muslim
people. Acoording to this census, the number of Muslims in Anatolia were 11,805,000.
According to the data of this cencus, Muslim
population were increasing relatively lower than non-Muslim population. Other than
disasters and epidemics, this can be explained by the fact Ottoman army consisted of
mainly Turks. During the years of long Ottoman-Russian war between 1789 and 1829, there
was a high death rate Muslim male population and also long years at war had also negative
effect on reproduction and birth rates. In these years, non-Muslis were increasing in
population in one hand, and were getting stronger economical and financial position on the
other. The non-Muslim population as an upper class both sociological and economical aspect
were realy and relatively increasing in Ottoman society. Being a well adopted social
group, non-Muslims founded private educational institutes as well as having better
conditioned health service associations for themselves, that cannot even be comparet to
that of Muslim people. This, in fact, had a role in population increase. The non-Muslim
population in Ottoman Empire were under the shelter of Papacy and Christian missioners,
and also had the support from prominent European countries, which made their lives easier
and more comfortable.
According to 1897 Ottoman Population Census, just
after the intense migration from Caucasia started, there lived 40,000,000 people in
Ottoman Empire including Balkhans, West Trace, Bosnia, Yanya, Egean islands, Serbia,
Moldova, Syria, Musul, Kerkukh, Bagdat, Hicaz, Umman, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya and Tunusia.
The Muslims were 24,376,000 and non-Muslims were 15,624,000. The number of Muslim
population reched 12,813,000 in Anatolia in 1867. Despite the decrease in population
increase among Muslims for the reasons explained above, this increase of 1,008,000 people
in Muslim population in Anatolia was the result of Muslim immigrants from Caucasia and
Crimea.
Continued
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