Türkiye’de Peçeneklere dair literatür ve değerlendirilmesi

This chapter reviews the scholarly literature on the Pechenegs produced in Türkiye and evaluates its main tendencies. It sketches how East European Turkic history (DATT) developed as a field in Türkiye, from the influence of the Turkish History Thesis and of émigré Turkologists in the early Republic to later research. It then gives a classified list of Turkish publications on the Pechenegs: monographs, books and chapters containing information on them, articles, translated primary sources and studies, bibliographical works, master’s and doctoral theses, and one historical novel. The evaluation finds that this literature is limited in number and concentrates on political history, especially Pecheneg relations with the Rus’ and Byzantium. It compares the monographs of Akdes Nimet Kurat (1937) and of the author (2020), noting that the latter, unlike Kurat, argues that the Pechenegs founded two khaganates. It names the main difficulties researchers face: access to primary sources, the scarcity of translations made directly from the source languages, and the unresolved interpretation of Pecheneg clan, tribal, personal and place names. It discusses the emphasis in Turkish historiography on the Pecheneg role at Manzikert (Malazgirt, 1071). The chapter argues that the widespread view that the Pechenegs never formed a state arose for political reasons, first in Russian and then in Western historiography, and that Omeljan Pritsak and M. B. Kiselëva challenged it. It criticises Turkish historians for not following this literature and recommends that future research focus on Pecheneg cultural history and on new excavations in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.