What makes a person Turkish or Greek? Is it the land where they were born? The language they speak? The religion they practice? The state of which they are a citizen? Or the community to which they feel they belong? From today's perspective, many people might regard these as questions with straightforward answers. Yet, for many people living during the final century of the Ottoman Empire, categories such as territory, language, religion, citizenship, and communal belonging we

Abstract This article examines the major population movements that reshaped Anatolia and Rumelia between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Building on the political and institutional context outlined in Ottomans and Karamanids , it analyzes the long-term repercussions of Ottoman expansion, the application and evolution of forced relocation (sürgün), the demographic effects of the Celâlî rebellions, migrations driven by Ottoman–Safavid frontier dynamics, and the large-