Turkish presence in the region ranging from Morocco to Afghanistan which is today called the Middle East can be traced back to the Umayyad era. In 674 AD, Ubeydullah bin Ziyad, who was the governor of Khorasan, set out from Bukhara with his army of 2,000 Turkish warriors, and after conquering Baykand, Nasaf, Râmîten and Sagāniyân arrived in Basra where he ordered the Turkish warriors under his command to settle. That is the first trace of the Turks in the Middle East, in which they made their impact for the following centuries. Thereafter, the westward march of the Turks began with the Turkish-Islamic state of the Tulunid Dynasty (868-905 AD) which ruled the territories known today as Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Syria. Then the Turkish dynasty of Ikhshidids held sway over the Hedjaz region, where the Ka’bah is located, for the first time as a Turkish state, in addition to the territories of Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Syria. Although Turkish immigration to the region increased in these periods, the mass movement of Turks towards the Middle East started with the Seljuks. Many Oghuz (Turkish) tribes, along with the Seljuks, arrived in today’s Middle East from Central Asia and then moved to Anatolia. In this sense, one could say that the mass migration of the Turks towards the Middle East took place from the 10th and 11th centuries onwards.
