Yörüks

The Yörüks, also Yuruks or Yorouks (Turkish: Yörükler; Greek: Γιουρούκοι, Youroúkoi; Bulgarian: юруци; Macedonian: 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 in Greece. Their name derives from the Old Turkish verb "yörü", meaning "to walk", and they are also called Yörük or Yürük. The contractions o > u and ö > ü in the first syllable in Rumelian dialects are typical, and while they are called Yörük in Anatolia, the Yürük form is used in Rumelia. These contractions are due to the Kipchak Turkic influence on dialects of Turkish. The Yörüks were under the Yörük Sanjak, (Turkish: 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.