 | ||
The Romani people in Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye'deki Romanlar) are an ethnic minority.
Contents
There are officially about 500,000 Romani in Turkey. By different Turkish and Non-Turkish estimates the number of Romani is up to 4 or 5 million while according to a Turkish source, they are only 0.05% of Turkey's population (or roughly persons).
Origin
The Romani people originate from Northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian states Rajasthan and Punjab.
The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that roots of Romani language lie in 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 exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.
Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of the modern European Roma.
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.
Migration to Turkey
The records about Romani people presence in 9th century Asia Minor exist, where they arrived from Persia. With the expanse of the Ottoman Empire Romani settled also in Rumelia (Southeastern Europe) under the Ottoman rule. Sulukule is the oldest Romani settlement in Europe. The descendants of the Ottoman Romani today are known as Xoraxane Romani and are generally of the Islamic faith.
Legal status
In modern Turkey, Xoraxane Romani do not have a legal status of ethnic minority because they are traditionally adherents of the Islamic faith, adherents of which, regardless of ethnicity or race, are considered part of the ethnic majority in Turkey. This goes as far back as the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), in which Section III "Protection of Minorities" put an emphasis on non-Muslim minorities.
In popular culture
A group of Turkish Romani appears in the 16th century Ottoman Constantinople of the video game Assassin's Creed: Revelations.