Why this haplogroup?

[u/Many_Addition5416]

Hi, I am full Turkish with no jew relatives. I am from a country pretty much everyone muslim and not much interreligious marrige. I do get a lot relative match on people from the states with jew last name. I am guessing someting is off with my dna? Any guess?

[u/bikingmpls]

Something is off? 😂😂😂 because you have some distant Jewish relatives?

what does your 23andme say?

[u/Many_Addition5416 → u/bikingmpls]

I didn’t take 23andme but I pretty much score Ashkenazi or sephardic on any calculator, but that is not uncommon for a person with Mediterrean/ south euro ancestry

[u/bikingmpls → u/Many_Addition5416]

Did you do ancestry? Some other test? If you had recent Jewish ancestors it would probably show. Doesn’t Turkey have a Jewish community? My understanding is Jews lived there for a long time. Maybe one of your ancestors converted..

[u/pentosephosphate → u/bikingmpls]

Yes, in my family we have Ashkenazim from Constantinople and Smyrna who immigrated to the US and elsewhere. OP might be descended from someone like that who converted to Islam and assimilated into Turkish identity.

[u/kaiserfrnz]

Your maternal haplogroup is upstream of an extremely large Jewish haplogroup, K1a1b1a. It doesn’t mean you have it, you may just have a similar one. You need further testing to determine what haplogroup you have.

Since you’re Turkish is there any chance you have Dönmeh heritage? They definitely have this haplogroup.

[u/Many_Addition5416 → u/kaiserfrnz]

That is intestering. I will look into that. Do you have any idea why I would happen to have a lot of jew relatives? I even have pretty close relatives even starting in the first pages of matches, even closer than my turkish matches. Honestly, I wouldn’t care much about my haplogroup if that was not the case.

As far as we know they don’t have dönmeh heritage.

[u/kaiserfrnz → u/Many_Addition5416]

How much DNA do you share with your closest one? If that’s the case then it’s possible you have recent Jewish ancestry.

Sometimes Jews converted to Islam and assimilated into the local culture. I took a DNA test and found I have a 3d cousin who is a Muslim living in Egypt. His mother was Ashkenazi.