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Contents

The cycle at a glance

Four moments, one round trip

Period	Movement	Route
~1500s	Ottoman sürgün-iskân (deportation-settlement)	Karaman/Central Anatolia → Dobruca/Deliorman
1500–1878	Settled life (~300-400 years)	Çayır village (Hitovo), Hacıoğlu-Pazarcık
1878	93 Harbi (the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78), Bulgarian independence	Pressure and loss of land began
1907	Muhacir (muhajir) migration	Çayır → Köstence → İstanbul → Konya → Karaman

≈400-year cycle

The Migration of Migrations

The 1906-1907 migration of 94 Karabağlar households from Bulgaria to Karaman was not a one-way journey — it was the second leg of a roughly 400-year cycle. Their Avşar Turkmen ancestors had been forcibly moved from Anatolia to the Balkans in the 16th century under Ottoman policy; their 1907 return closed the loop.

Phase 1: From Anatolia to Rumelia (16th c.)

The Ottoman state pursued a deliberate sürgün-iskân (deportation-settlement) policy in the 16th and 17th centuries, relocating Turkic groups — particularly Avşar Turkmens from Central and Southern Anatolia (Karaman, Maraş, Adana, Niğde, Kırşehir, Sivas) — to newly conquered Balkan lands. The policy served two ends: pacifying restive Anatolian regions (especially during the Celali rebellions of the late 16th and 17th centuries), and stabilising Ottoman rule in the Balkans with loyal Muslim populations.

Settlement in Hacıoğlu-Pazarcık

The Karabağlar group was settled in the Hacıoğlu-Pazarcık region (today's Dobrich, Bulgaria). Ottoman tahrir records of 1518 show only 14 households in the founding Hacıoğlu settlement; by 1569, the district had become a kasaba (town) with two Friday mosques, nine mescits, and a school. The 76 villages of the nahiye (district) were populated entirely by Turks — 2,876 households (~14,000 people). The village of Çayır, from which Mesudiye's founders would later migrate, was established during this expansion period.

Three centuries on the Balkans

The Karabağlar community persisted in Bulgarian Rumelia for roughly 300 years, preserving their Avşar dialect, customs, dress, and patronymic naming conventions (the -es suffix still found in Mesudiye family names like Özşahines). By the 19th century, they were thoroughly local — farming, raising livestock, and integrating into the broader Rumelia Turkish community.

Phase 2: The 1906-1907 return

Following the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War and the establishment of Bulgaria as an independent kingdom in 1908, pressure on Turkish Muslim minorities intensified. In 1906, ninety-four households of Çayır village organised the return migration to Anatolia. Their journey — Çayır → Köstence → Haydarpaşa → Konya → Karaman — completed an approximately 400-year cycle. See /en/tarih/goc/ for full route detail.

Cultural continuity

The Karabağlar of Mesudiye still bear the marks of the journey. Their Rumeli Turkish dialect (the -es suffix, vowel shortening), their Balkan-style muhacir clay oven and the bread baked in it, their two-day wedding customs preserving Rumeli ceremonial practices — all are testaments to the cultural continuity that 300 years on the Balkans did not erase, but rather enriched.

The 16th Century: Sürgün-İskân from Anatolia to Dobruca

From the 14th century onwards, the Ottoman State applied a systematic settlement policy in order to Turkify permanently the lands of Rumeli that it had conquered. Yörük and Türkmen communities from Anatolia — sometimes voluntarily, most often by way of deportation — were settled in Thrace, in Macedonia, in Dobruca and in Deliorman.

Archaeological excavations carried out in the region of Hacıoğlu-Pazarcık (today's Dobriç) have revealed that there was no settlement whatsoever between AD 600 and 1500. The region came to life again in the 16th century through Ottoman settlement policy. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, settlement there began for the first time in this century, with the Yörüks.

The Anatolian Origin of the Migrants: Linguistic Evidence

Studies of the dialects of the Turks in the regions of Hacıoğlu-Pazarcık, Silistre, Şumnu, Razgrad and Eskicuma establish their origin with certainty. According to research on the dialects of Bulgarian Turkish, the Turks of this region belong predominantly to the Avşar tribe of the Oğuz.

Geography of origin

Maraş, Adana, Antep, Halep, Malatya, the southern districts of Sivas, Mersin, Niğde and Kırşehir — that is, the Türkmen geography of Central and Southern Anatolia.

The Celâli Rebellions and Forced Settlement

The Celâli rebellions, which shook Anatolia from the beginning of the 16th century onwards, became the fundamental driving force of this migration. An intense Türkmen migration (sürgün-iskân, deportation-settlement) took place from Tokat, Yozgat, Sivas, Kırşehir, Maraş, Adana, the Taurus mountains and the area around Mersin–Karaman to Deliorman and Dobruca. The Ottomans applied this policy deliberately, both to reduce the demographic pressure in the rebellious regions and to repopulate Rumeli.

According to academic sources, a part of the Türkmens settled in Rumeli came directly from the lands of the Karaman Beylik. This adds a deep irony to the story of Mesudiye: the descendants of the people who left Karaman for Dobruca returned to Karaman once again 400 years later.

The Synthesis in Dobruca

When these Anatolian Türkmens came to Deliorman and Dobruca, they did not find an empty land. A Türkmen community had been living in the region since the 13th century — one that had come together with Sarı Saltuk Baba. There were also remnants of the Kıpçak and Peçenek Turks. The newly arrived Avşar Türkmens mixed with these older communities. For this reason the Turkish of Deliorman-Dobruca developed a distinctive dialect bearing traces both of the Oğuz (Avşar) speech and of the Kıpçak idiom.

Traces in the dialect of Mesudiye

“macır” — the local pronunciation of the word muhacir.

“dızmana” and “tutmanik”, “ekşimik” — words of Dobruca origin.

the “-es/-ez” suffix (e.g. Özşahines) — the trace of Kıpçak influence in family names.

The Great Cycle: A 400-Year Journey

Mesudiye's migration story thus emerges not as a one-way line but as a cycle:

c. 1500s — Ottoman sürgün-iskân — Karaman/Central Anatolia → Dobruca/Deliorman

1500–1878 — settled life (~300–400 years) — Çayır village (Hitovo), Hacıoğlu-Pazarcık

1878 — 93 Harbi (the 1877–1878 Ottoman-Russian War), Bulgarian independence — pressure and loss of land began

1907 — muhacir migration — Çayır → Köstence → İstanbul → Konya → Karaman

If it is confirmed that the Karabağlar oymak came out of the lands of the Karaman Beylik — and the linguistic and historical evidence strongly supports this — then these people literally returned home. Without being aware of it, they came back to the lands their ancestors had left hundreds of years before.

Open Questions

For this cycle to be fully documented, there are still questions that need to be answered:

Is the Karabağlar oymak connected with the Bozulus Türkmens? “Karabağlar” does not appear directly in the Bozulus lists, but oymaks with similar names (Karallar, Durallar) do exist, and a part of the Bozulus was settled in Rumeli after 1699.

What is the founding date of Çayır village? A detailed examination of the 16th-century tahrir defterleri (tax registers) of the sancak of Silistre is required.

Which oymak in Anatolia do the family nicknames and the damga (brand mark) records correspond to? This information can only be obtained by comparing oral history with the archives.

Archival sources

The answers to these questions lie hidden in the tahrir defterleri and avârız defterleri of the sancak of Silistre in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, and in the population records of the Konya vilayet.