Yörüks

The Yörüks, also Yuruks or Yorouks (Yörükler; Γιουρούκοι, Youroúkoi; юруци; Јуруци, Juruci), are a Turkish ethnic subgroup of Oghuz descent, some of whom are nomadic, primarily inhabiting the mountains of Anatolia, and partly in the Balkan peninsula. On the Balkans Yörüks are distributed over a wide area from the eastern parts of North Macedonia, parts of Bulgaria, north to Larissa in Thessaly and southern Thrace. Their name derives from the Turkish verb yürü- (yürümek in infinitive), which means "to walk", with the word yörük or yürük designating "those who walk on the hindlegs, walkers". The Yörüks were under the Yörük Sanjak, (Yörük Sancağı) which was not a territorial unit like the other sanjaks, but a separate organisational unit of the Ottoman Empire. According to some, those tribes residing in the east of the Kızılırmak river are called Turkmen and those in the west Yörük. Both terms were used together in Ottoman sources for Dulkadirli Turkmens living in Maraş and its surroundings. The ethnohistorical terms Turcoman and Turkmen are used synonymously in literature to designate Yörük ancestry. Historians and ethnologists often use the additional appellative 'Yörük Turcoman' or 'Turkmens' to describe the Yörüks of Anatolia. In Turkey's general parlance today, the terms "Türkmen" and "Yörük" indicate the gradual degrees of preserved attachment with the former semi-nomadic lifestyle of the populations concerned, with the "Turkmen" now leading a fully sedentary life, while keeping parts of their heritage through folklore and traditions, in arts like carpet-weaving, with the continued habit of keeping a yayla house for the summers, sometimes in relation to the Alevi community etc. and with Yörüks maintaining a stronger association with nomadism. These names ultimately hint to their Oghuz Turkish roots. The remaining "true" Yörüks of today's Anatolia traditionally use horses as a means of transportation, though these are steadily being replaced by trucks. The Yörüks are divided in a large number of named endogamous patrilineal tribes (aşiret).