Eray Karaketir

The Elamite Kingdom, founded in Southwestern Iran in the first quarter of the 3rd millennium BC by the Elamites, whose ethnic affiliation has not yet been definite, continued its political life until the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The Elamite Kingdom, the oldest and longest-lasting state in Iran, had a strong structure not only militarily and politically but also socio-culturally. One of the leading factors of this strong structure is the Elamite, which has survived to the present day through clay tablets and stone inscriptions. It is still being discussed which language family Elamite should be classified in, as it is known for certain that it does not belong to the Indo-European and Semitic language families. In this study, translated from English into Turkish, it is argued that Elamite and Turkish have similar aspects and various evidences are revealed in this direction. In this respect, the study is of interest not only to Elamologists and ancient historians, but also to Turkologists and philologists. Therefore, it was decided to translate this work, which has a rare place in its field, into Turkish, especially considering that it will contribute to the possible future studies of Turkish scholars on the Elamite-Turkish relationship. The study was written by Hâmit Zübeyir Koşay, one of Turkey’s leading philologists, archaeologists, historians and ethnographers. Koşay who realised that Elamite had similarities with Turkish during his research on Turkish and Turks, published the results he obtained by focusing on the Elamite-Turkish relationship in his several studies. This translated work is one of them. In the study, firstly, the migrations from various regions to Iranian lands in the Ancient Age and the socio-cultural developments in Iran in the Prehistoric Period are briefly discussed. Following these parts, the Elamite Kingdom was evaluated geographically, politically and culturally, and especially Bedrich Hrozny’s views on the Elamites and the Elamite Kingdom were included. In the last part of the study, the origin of the Elamites is analysed and the grammatical and lexical similarities between Elamite and Turkish are mentioned. In this section, which is supported by references to the papers of various scholars, grammatical similarities between Elamite and Turkish such as reduplication, possessive suffix and vowel harmony as well as the equivalents of seventeen Elamite words in Turkish are given. In conclusion, based on all these, the possibility that the Elamites and Turks may be ethnically related has been pointed out.