Laz people

But within that territory, there were groups liv- uh, groups that were living in that territory who were indigenous and who were not Turkish.

Uh, there were many groups that were Kurdish, Arabic, Laz, Armenian, and other ethnicities.

So long story short, when Turkey was established as a modern nation state, it was not a nation state.

It was a group of different ethnic groups that it took decades for the Turkish elite, the bureaucratic elite, the military, the Turkish military, to create a sense of homogeneity and of, uh, Turkey's national pride and unity.

The problem was that the lyrics of many of these songs that had been collected were not in Turkish because the people who were singing the songs were not Turks.

They were coming from different ethnic backgrounds.

They were Greeks, Armenians, Laz people, Arabs, Kurds, et cetera, et cetera.

So they collected thousands of songs, and then they sat down around a table, and they started designing the new national folk music of Turkey.