Russian expert: We have the ideological means to counter the Great Turan project

Russia has something to ideologically counter the Turkish “Great Turan” project.

This was stated by Rustem Vakhit, associate professor at Bashkir State University, at the presentation in Kazan of the monograph “Mythologemes of Pan-Turkism and the Security of Russia and Eurasia in the 21st Century,” reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.

Firstly, Vakhit noted, the Turks are not a Turkic people, they are Greeks who converted to Islam.

"It's completely impossible to distinguish a Turk from a Greek, for example, by appearance. Because modern Turks are simply Islamized Greeks. There are Greeks who retained Orthodoxy and remained Greeks, and then there are Greeks who converted to Islam and then adopted the Turkic language, and, lo and behold, they became Turks.

There are countless similarities between the Byzantines and modern Turks, ranging from architecture, cuisine, and even subtle cultural nuances. Few people know that, for example, modern Iranians don't recognize the crescent moon as a symbol of Islam. The Turks do. But where did it come from? It's the Byzantine coat of arms of Constantinople. It's a Byzantine legacy. Turkey, the Turks—they're not a Turkic ethnic group. They're a comically synthetic blend of Turkic-Slavic-Greek, South Eurasian ethnicity," the speaker said.

Moreover, for the nobility of the Ottoman Empire, the word "Turk" was humiliating.

"If we look at Turkish history, we'll be surprised to discover that even in the 19th century, the word 'Turk' meant 'fool'; it was perceived as a swear word; 'Turks' was a term for peasants . If we were to tell some Turkish pasha that he was a 'fool'—a 'Turk,' he would simply be offended," the scholar asserts.

Secondly, Vakhit added, Turkic peoples have far more positive experience coexisting with Russia than with Turkey. The similarity of their languages, however, guarantees nothing.

"Russian shares quite a few words with Polish. We hear Polish speech, and we can understand up to 30% of it. But does this mean that Poles are Russians' closest friends? All history proves otherwise."

Eurasianists said that far above linguistic unity lies the unity of the geographical world, which shapes a common historical destiny. Our peoples ( Russians, Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and so on ) are not alike; they have different languages ​​and even different religions. But we have coexisted for a very long time, developed very strong communication mechanisms, and in this sense, we are much closer to each other than, say, a Tatar and a Turk, or a Russian and a Bulgarian. Bulgaria fought twice on the side of Germany, against us, in the 20th century, in the First and Second World Wars," the scientist said.