Urums

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• Urum
• Urum
• Urumi
• Уруми
• Урумы
• Уруми

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History of Greece

Urums, singular Urum IPA: [u'rum] (Greek: Ουρούμ Urúm, Turkish: Urum, Crimean Tatar: Urum) is a broad historical term that was used by some Turkic-speaking peoples (Turks, Crimean Tatars) to define Greeks who lived in Muslim states, particularly in the Ottoman Empire and Crimea. In contemporary ethnography, the term Urum (or Urum Greek) applies only to Turkic-speaking Greek population.

Ethnonym

The term Urum is derived from the Arabic word رُّومُ (rūm), meaning Roman and subsequently Byzantine (Eastern Roman) and Greek (see: Rûm). Since words beginning in [r] were not typical for Turkic languages, earlier speakers would add an extra vowel in order to facilitate the pronunciation. In modern Turkish, the Urum spelling, despite being still used by some, is considered obsolete and is replaced by the spelling Rum.

The term is presently used by the following sub-ethnic groups of Greeks as a way of ethnic self-identification:

• Crimean-Tatarophone Greeks of North Azov (Ukraine)
• Turcophone Greeks of Tsalka (Georgia)

North Azovian Urums

Historically, the Greeks of Crimea (and later of the adjacent Azovian region; present-day Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine) were represented by two groups: the Hellenic-speaking Romaioi and the Turkic-speaking Urums (also called Graeco-Tatars). Both groups populated the region for many centuries (they consisted of both the descendants of the 4th century BC – 4th century AD colonizers and those who immigrated from Anatolia at various times), however the latter underwent social and cultural processes, which led to them adopting Crimean Tatar as a mother tongue. In 1777, after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Catherine the Great ordered all Greeks from the peninsula to settle in North Azov, and they have been known as the North Azovian Greeks (приазовские греки / priazovskie greki) henceforth. Some linguists believe that the dialect spoken by the North Azovian Urums differs from the common Crimean Tatar language on a more than just dialectical level and therefore constitutes a separate language unit within the Kypchak language sub-group (see Urum language).

Urums practice Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Throughout history, they represented an isolated cultural group and rarely settled in towns populated by the Romaioi, despite sharing Greek heritage with them.^[1] Unlike Greek, Urum has never been a language of secondary education in Ukraine. Turkologist Nikolai Baskakov estimated that by 1969, 60,000 people spoke Urum as a native language. According to the All-Ukrainian Population Census of 2001, only 112 of the Donetsk Oblast's 77,516 Greeks listed languages other than Greek, Ukrainian and Russian as their mother tongue.^[2]

Tsalka Urums

Very little is known about this ethnic subgroup. They are sometimes referred to as the Trialeti Greeks or the Transcaucasian Turcophone Greeks. Pontian Greeks call them Τσαλκαλιδείς (Tsalkalideis); a name that refers to the Georgian town, where Urums once made up the largest ethnic community.

From the 18th to the early 20th century the Caucasus experienced mass migrations of Greeks from the Ottoman Empire, mainly from the region of Pontus. Many Pontian Greeks spoke Turkish either as part of their Greek-Turkish bilingua, or as a mother tongue due to linguistic assimilation processes that isolated groups of the Anatolian Greeks were exposed to. According to Andrei Popov, throughout the 19th century hundreds of Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox families from Erzurum, Gümüşhane and Artvin moved to Southern Russia and settled on the Tsalka Plateau, in present-day Georgia.^[3] During the Soviet era they populated over 40 villages in Georgia's Tsalka, Dmanisi, Tetritsq'aro, Marneuli, and Akhaltsikhe regions. In 1926, there were 51,000 Greeks living in Tiflis and the neighbouring area with 45,000 of them being Turcophone.^[4]

The dialect spoken by the Tsalka Urums is similar to many other Central Anatolian dialects of Turkish. However some linguists, like Nikolai Baksakov, classify it as a separate Oghuz language due to differences in phonetics, vocabulary and grammar.^[5] Present-day Urum Turkish is also thought by some to be phonetically closer to Azeri than to the literary Turkish, which leads them to believe that it is rather a dialect of Azeri.^[6] Late Soviet censuses also showed Azeri as the mother tongue of the Tsalka Urums, however this may have been done simply due to the Soviets' somewhat unfavourable attitude towards Turkish culture. No secondary education in Urum Turkish has been available; its speakers attend schools where subjects are taught in Russian.

The Tsalka Urums themselves call their language bizimdilce (Turkish: our language/talk). With the popularization of the Russian language, many experienced linguistic assimilation and adapted to Russian. Also starting from the 1950s, some sense of a cultural revival has been observed among the Turcophone Greeks. Historian Airat Aklaev's research showed that 36% of them considered Greek their mother tongue despite their lack of knowledge of that language. 96% expressed their desire to learn Greek.^[7]

In comparison with the Hellenophone Greeks of Georgia, the Tsalka Urums were less exposed to emigration after the fall of the Soviet Union, hence nowadays they constitute the majority of the country's Greek population. Nevertheless some migration did take place, which is why Greeks are no longer the largest ethnic group in Tsalka. Between 1989 and 2002 their numbers within the region went down from 45,000 to 3,000. Many emigrated to Greece and to the Stavropol Krai, Krasnodar Krai, Russia (cities of Essentuki, Piatigorsk, Stavropol, Krasnodar, Abinsk, Sochi, and Gelendzhik).

See also

References