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Comment by adrianmonk | Hacker News Reader

I'm no historian, but looking at a map, Turkey seems geographically prone to getting trampled over and over.

It's basically the hub that connects Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia together. If someone builds an empire in any of those areas and tries to expand to another one, they're going to want to control the territory that connects them. Even if they don't want Turkey for its own sake, it's a stepping stone.

In other words, if you want to not get invaded, it really helps to be off in a corner that's not on anybody's way from anything to anything. Turkey is the opposite.

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I don't know if that is necessarily the case. I'm from eastern Turkey and my DNA results showed mostly Iranian and Armenian ethnicity. I'd assume, a place that was constantly trampled would have a little more variety, especially considering the last time the Persian or Armenian empires controlled the city I'm from (Malatya) was thousands of years ago.

It's valuable real estate but not so easy to conquer. Probably because of the mountains. When the Arab's were on a role, they couldn't get too far into Turkey, same with Tamerlane, as well as many other invaders throughout history.

My father, a Turk, has a couple of close Armenian friends from Arapkir, a county of Malatya, from his childhood right after WWII. Going back 30-40 years before that period, Armenians were the majority ethnic population in many counties of eastern Turkish cities. Not sure about Persians, but having an Armenian connection in a big chunk of your DNA if you're from the area shouldn't be that surprising.

Fun fact. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, has Malatya and Arabkir districts.

edit: typo

> I'm from eastern Turkey and my DNA results showed mostly Iranian and Armenian ethnicity. I'd assume, a place that was constantly trampled would have a little more variety

Historically, being "conquered/trampled" didn't mean genetic displacement or even mixing. Especially if an established and stable population already existed there. It just meant the masses had a new master. The mongols conquered china but china is still chinese. The arabs conquered iran but iran's still iranian. The brits conquered india but india is still indian.

> especially considering the last time the Persian or Armenian empires controlled the city I'm from (Malatya) was thousands of years ago.

But turks don't speak persian or armenian. They speak turkish. They don't use armenian script but used arabic alphabet previously and now the latin alphabet. Turks aren't christian or zoroastrian or buddhist, but are muslim.

A predominantly genetic iranian/armenian population that speaks turkish, is muslim and uses the latin alphabet. That's pretty diverse.

Eastern Turkey is remarkably hard country and lowly inhabited. That natural geographical border is probably why that has been a political border frontier of many past and present states for probably 3000+ straight years.

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