The Turkic Jewish Khazar State and the Turkic Origins of the Ashkenazim and the Russians

Kaan Arslanoğlu

Dedicated to Anatole Klyosov

Between the sixth and tenth centuries, the Khazar Turkic Khaganate ruled over a vast territory in Eastern Europe and emerged as a great and powerful state that left a deep imprint on world history. It constituted the origin of the first Rus’ polity and of several other states. The roots of the Ashkenazi Jews—and indeed of all Jews of Eastern and Northern Europe—lie in Khazar Turkic society. The well-known saying, “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tatar,“ recorded even in the Oxford Dictionary and widely recognized both in the West and in Turkey, was not coined without reason. In many respects, the Khazar Turkic state may also be regarded as the first Rus’ state.
Between the sixth and tenth centuries, the Khazar Turkic Khaganate ruled over a vast territory in Eastern Europe and emerged as a great and powerful state that left a deep imprint on world history. It constituted the origin of the first Rus’ polity and of several other states. The roots of the Ashkenazi Jews—and indeed of all Jews of Eastern and Northern Europe—lie in Khazar Turkic society. The well-known saying, “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tatar,“ recorded even in the Oxford Dictionary and widely recognized both in the West and in Turkey, was not coined without reason. In many respects, the Khazar Turkic state may also be regarded as the first Rus’ state.
Between the sixth and tenth centuries, the Khazar Turkic Khaganate ruled over a vast territory in Eastern Europe and emerged as a great and powerful state that left a deep imprint on world history. It constituted the origin of the first Rus’ polity and of several other states. The roots of the Ashkenazi Jews—and indeed of all Jews of Eastern and Northern Europe—lie in Khazar Turkic society. The well-known saying, “Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tatar,“ recorded even in the Oxford Dictionary and widely recognized both in the West and in Turkey, was not coined without reason. In many respects, the Khazar Turkic state may also be regarded as the first Rus’ state.

At the same time, it was the largest and most powerful Jewish state in history; excluding pre–Common Era polities, it may be considered the first modern Jewish state. Mainstream pseudo-scientific narratives are unable to explain why the Ashkenazim suddenly emerged in a specific geographical region, nor can they adequately account for why the Ashkenazim constitute a branch entirely distinct from the Sephardim. Instead, they advance speculative and unfounded hypotheses. By contrast, we are able to explain this phenomenon on a solid analytical foundation.

Early Ashkenazi Jews did have some Hebrew–Levantine ancestry. Yet I believe that Turkic–Rus’ origins were far more dominant. This lineage continued over the last millennium, although it is now debatable whether Levantine or Turkic ancestry is the prevailing one.

Let me summarize my bibliography at the outset: Osman Karatay’s The Khazars, Jewish Turks; Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe; Kevin Alan Brook’s The Jews of Khazaria; and Tan Can’s Flowers Bloom Crimson in Khazaria: The True History of the Ashkenazim. James Fergusson (1808–1886), a prominent scholar of his time, stated that the names of the Saxons, Scots, Ashkenazim, and Scandinavians derive from the Saka–Scythians and that these groups originate from the same lineage. From Türkiye, Prof. Mehmet Bayrakdar and Osman Çataloluk have addressed the same subject. In the following pages, the reader will also encounter numerous Western authors and viewpoints that articulate this same fundamental reality.

In previous centuries, many Ashkenazi elites and many ordinary Jews were aware of their Turkish ancestry. However, they deliberately chose to conceal it. Being Jewish already brought them many difficulties, and a Turkish identity could create far greater problems in the West, multiplying these challenges many times over. When faced with grave dangers, they primarily sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire and later in the Republic of Türkiye.

SLAVS AND RUSSIANS

As is well known, the Slavs entered the historical record in the fifth century. The ethnonym “Rus“ and the Rus’ people emerged in the ninth century. The first Slavic state—apart from several minor polities or principalities—was the First Bulgarian Empire, which is widely accepted to have been founded by a people of Turkic origin.

The Khazar Turkic Khaganate ruled between the sixth and tenth centuries and collapsed in 969. Its territorial extent included the northern Black Sea region and Crimea, with present-day Ukraine as its core, stretching westward to Romania and eastward to the Caucasus. This population, composed of numerous Turkic tribes, was primarily Cuman–Kipchak in character and descended from the Scythians.

When and where was the first Rus’ state established? In 829, precisely in this region. Its name was the Kiev Rus’ Khaganate—significantly, a Khaganate (Kağanlık), a term of clear Turkic origin meaning “kingdom“ in Turkish. There exist highly credible sources indicating that this state was founded by remnants of the Khazar polity and that many of its commanders were directly of Turkic origin.

The first Georgian state was likewise founded by Khazar remnants in 856. The Circassians descend from the Khazar Kabardian lineage, and Khazar Kabars also established rule in Hungary in 890. The founders of the Polish Kingdom were similarly Khazar remnants. Thus, the Khazars left an exceptionally substantial legacy for future states and peoples.

Returning to the Russians, Anatole Klyosov—one of the world’s foremost authorities in ethnic genetics—has argued that if there is such a thing as an “Indo-European“ people or language, its core consists of the Slavs and the Russians, characterized by haplogroup R1a. He also notes that certain ancient Turkic-speaking societies in Eurasia carried the R1a gene. According to Klyosov, what characterizes the Turks, or more precisely the Proto-Turks (Arbin), is haplogroup R1b. Together, these groups and genetic lineages formed the principal populations that historically constituted Middle and Western European peoples. Consequently, it is entirely natural to find dense proto-Turkic and modern Turkic elements at the roots of European languages.

As the American Turkologist Norm Kisamov has observed, Anatole Klyosov is a scientist of groundbreaking caliber, worthy of a Nobel Prize. However, these evident realities have been marginalized by mainstream “science,“ which is controlled by major political and financial interests and often finds such conclusions inconvenient. In any case, the Nobel Prize itself has frequently been awarded to individuals of highly questionable character.

This central reality has been articulated from different perspectives by numerous Western scholars, both historical and contemporary, across many branches of science. The most recent list in my possession includes 307 authors (1). They refer to Turanian peoples, Turkic groups, Proto-Turks, Etruscans, Trojans, or directly Tatars and Turks; they speak of the Saka and the Scythians—yet all broadly point to the same conclusion. The Saka and the Scythians constituted a vast confederation of peoples incorporating primarily haplogroups R1a and R1b, along with others: a Turanian population that dominated Eurasia from northern China and northern India to Western Europe.

The identities and interconnections among the Saka, Scythians, Scots, Kushans, Śākyamuni (Buddha), Saxons, Scandinavians, Ashkenazim, and the Turkic–Russian commonality represent a crucial and highly sensitive issue.

What follows is my list of authors who establish solely the Scythian–Saka Turkic, Turanian, and Tatar connection:
Sven Lagerbring, Leonard Woolley, Norm Kisamov, Max Müller, Yuri Nikolayeviç Drozdov, Pope Pius II, Snorri Sturluson, G. Monmouth, Pedro Tafur, Leon Cahun, James Fergusson, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Robert Gordon Latham, Edward Harper Parker, Robert Caldwell, H.C. Rawlinson, Wilhelm Radloff, John Simpson, Svetlana Pankova, Mario Alinei, Nicolas Boillet, Otto Franke, J.M. Groot, Barthold Georg, Kevin Alan Brook, George Grote, Lev Nikolayeviç Gumilev, Heinrich Kiepert, Géza Nagy, Andreas David Mordtmann, Géza Kuun, Ellis Minns, H. Triedler, B. Lüfer, Hasan Pirniya, Arminius (Hermann) Vambéry, N. Rosliakov, Johann Eberhard Fischer, Karl Friedrich Neumann, Friedrich Schlegel, Károly Czeglédy, Ramón Sainero, A. Sanducci, John Ghast, John Beddoe, Agathias of Myrina, Priscus of Panium, Anatoly M. Khazanov, Joseph Reinach, Ernest Lavisse, Johan Philip G. Ewers, Johannes Fressel, among others (1).

In my dictionary of Turkic roots within European languages, I have thus far identified approximately 22,000 Western lexical items—drawn from English, German, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Basque, and Celtic—that I argue to be of Turkic origin. I have also demonstrated the presence of Turkic remnants within the grammatical structures of these languages, as well as within their alphabets. I have provided some illustrative examples from Russian as well, though I have not yet undertaken a systematic analysis of Russian, deliberately reserving it for last. This is because, in light of the available data, I am already confident that a far denser concentration of Turkic elements will be found there (2, 3).