Anatolia
What does “Anadolu” mean? Where does it come from? Of course it is the Turkish equivalent of the English “Anatolia.” But which led to which? Or could both be translations of a third word in some other language? Alternatively, is it possible or plausible that the Turkish word came first? That, moreover, it was originally a combination of two other Turkish words, ana for mother and dolu for full, so that ana+dolu = Anadolu must mean “land of mothers” or “a land full of mothers”?..
This interpretation is not very new. It goes back at least ninety years and to a not very nice kind of precedent: the Kemalist Cultural Revolution of the 1930s, and the unhealthy environment it created for a state-ordained hyper-nationalism.
Not every revolution begets a cultural revolution. Upheaval in politics, society, and the economy does not necessarily extend to culture, and entail a total break with the past in that sphere. This is much more difficult, and hence more ultra, than all other aspects of revolutions...
In going from Empire to Republic, [Kemalism] tried to forge a new modernist nation-state identity and affinity. Islam was not wanted. The Ottoman past was not wanted. Ankara was to be counterposed to Istanbul. The Society for Research on Turkish History (later the TTK, the Turkish Historical Society) counterposed to the Committee on Ottoman History... The Turks had to be associated with Europe and the West through both racial and civilizational arguments. Last but not least, Anatolia had to be shown to have belonged to “us” from time immemorial. All of which implied creating a new past conforming to the new present — hence a whole new theory of history...
It was all topped by the Sun Theory of Language and the Turkish Thesis of History. According to the latter, once upon a time there had been a very very ancient Turkish civilization in Central Asia — prior to 7000 BC. It was (baselessly) said to have been Turkish. It was also (and equally baselessly) said to have been civilized — even more, the very first civilization on Earth. Then, however, the climate changed, a new desert-and-steppe environment made agriculture impossible, and emigration began. Those who stayed behind reverted to nomadism. Those who left spread all over the world, taking a superior race (?!), a pure blood (?!), and a high civilization wherever they went. (When I was small, there was a map of “The Turks’ Motherland and Routes of Migration” that was never taken back to my primary school’s map room but used to hang all the time to the front-right of the blackboard. From a dark pink blob in Central Asia, thick red arrows radiated in all directions...)
These Turkish movements starting c.7000 BC meant, among other things, that “we” had entered Anatolia not after AD 1071 but much earlier, like the 2nd millennium BC. Atatürk, indeed, had explicitly stated that Turks could not be regarded as the real masters of this country if it were to be admitted that they had arrived only in the 11th century... A solution (of sorts) was provided by the Hittites, who were now said to have been Turkish, and who came to be re-named as the Eti Turks. And of course the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, too, were Turkish, since, together with the Hittite language, Sumerian was also (totally baselessly) identified as a Turkic language...
Up to a point, we can understand (but not sympathize with) their concerns. This legendary Central Asian civilization enabled them to bypass both Islam and the Ottomans, while with the Hittites they appeared to have made Anatolia “our own” at a time when there were no Greeks around. But it was all junk, a pile of rubbish, devoid of any scientific foundation whatsoever. Even worse was the rude intervention of politics in history. The Great Leader’s personal orders resulted in utter disregard for scientific methodology. The academic world’s need and ability to evolve by its own internal rules and procedures was crushed underfoot. What was encouraged and promoted was not genuine scholarship but loyalty to the state. It had a corrosive, debilitating, immoral, unethical impact.
And it was within this overall framework, and with a kind of crass arrogance that can only result from a combination of ignorance with untouchable power, that various amateur linguists who had made their way into Atatürk’s close circle began to vie with one another in proposing word-meanings intended to bolster the Turkish Thesis of History. From that evening table [Kemal's drinking was legendary], the famous sofra of Kemalist lore and legend, a virtual hysteria rose and spread to the rest of the elite. Such spasms have marked many hyper-nationalist dictatorial cultures. The time, too, was auspicious: Fascism and Nazism were on the rise; Mussolini had already come to power in 1922, and Hitler was about to do so in 1933. Trolls flourished, and some unbelievable etymologies were concocted, all the way to Ancient Greek gods and goddesses. Turks and Turkish seemed to have been everywhere, naming everything, including South and North America. Hence the Amazon came to be derived from amma+uzun (how long it is)...
[In history] As Byzantium’s eastern defences collapsed, more and more Turcoman tribes made their way through Azerbaycan to establish new homelands.. for themselves in former Roman territory. It was not a unified, centralized invasion but a much more diverse and fragmented kind of wave under various tribal or semi-tribal war-leaders. Just who among them might have had this ana+dolu brainwave? How, then, would he have made it stick? By convening an assembly and getting everyone else to agree? Would they have cared the slightest bit about such nomenclature, such modern cognitive and classificatory problems? But even if we hypothesize that they did, just where and when did it happen? And where might we find it in our sources or primary documents?...
So then, in linguistic terms where was Anadolu..?
It was always there (or here); it was a Greek word waiting for the Turks to arrive. Long before Byzantium, it already existed in Ancient Greece and under the Roman Empire. It didn’t have anything to do with mothers; instead, it had everything to do with the east and the sun...
And so it is with Greek, where ἀνατέλλω (anatello) means “to rise up,” so that ἀνατολή (anatolḗ) means the direction where the sun rises, hence the east, and is used to designate (looking out from Greece) eastern regions in general.