Gezginler Now

For most Turks, “Gezginler” was a vague memory: a whisper of wicker-wheeled wagons on dusty Anatolian back roads, of tinned coffee brewed over roadside fires, of fortune-telling and folk songs that changed key with every passing village. But Elif had grown up hearing her great-grandmother’s tales. And those tales didn’t match the stereotypes.

The file contained interviews with a community that had once crisscrossed the high plateaus between Konya, Antalya, and Mersin. Unlike the better-known Romani people, the Gezginler of this region had a distinct origin: they were descended from 16th-century Ottoman yörük nomads who never accepted sedentary life. When the Ottoman Empire forced land registration in the 1850s, the Gezginler chose their wheels over the scribe’s pen. They became the carriers of news, the itinerant musicians for village weddings, the unlicensed midwives who knew which herbs stopped bleeding. gezginler

Elif closed the file. Outside her window in Ankara, the E-90 highway roared with trucks. Somewhere, she knew, a great-grandchild of the Gezginler was driving a delivery van, still unable to stay in one city for more than nine months, still keeping a map in their head that had no fixed destinations. For most Turks, “Gezginler” was a vague memory: