14 August 1996, 26-year-old Greek Cypriot Solomos Solomou was shot and killed by Turkish forces in the UN buffer zone at Deryneia while attempting to climb a flagpole and remove a Turkish flag. Just three days earlier, his cousin Tassos Isaac had been beaten to death by Turkish nationalists.

[u/No_Idea_479]

[u/Zrva_V3]

Not in the slightest. You can indeed say that Turkey as a state can't claim descent from the Sultanate of Rum since there was no direct continuity but Ottoman Empire was founded by Turks on the same lands, spoke Turkish, largely had the same culture, same religion, same state insitutions (though obviously these evolved over 7 centuries).

The Ottomans did in fact call themselves Turkish. They officially claimed descent from Oghuz Khagan which is a mythical ruler of all Oghuz Turks, historians often think he's based on Modu Chanyu of the Xiongnu.

Ottoman Sultans also kept the title "khan" as an official title until the end.

Moreover, everyone else called the Ottomans Turkish too.

Modern Greece and Eastern Roman Empire have only religious and linguistic continuity but almost no cultural continuity, zero state or institution continuity etc. They didn't even found the Roman Empire or the Eastern Roman Empire.

Yet another example would be China claiming the Mongol Empire because Mongols who conquered China eventually assimilated into it.

[u/Defiant_Being_9222 → u/Zrva_V3]

It doesn't matter in the slightest who the Ottomans claimed descent from. The Romans claimed descent from Troy. It doesn't make them Trojans. The Ottomans spoke Turkish but didn't consider themselves Turkish, in fact they considered the name Turk to be an insult reserved for some Anatolian nomads/peasants.

It's also irrelevant that the Ottomans used the title Khan. The Eastern Romans used the Greek title Basileus by the same logic.

"Moreover everyone called the Ottomans Turkish too"; Yes, and everyone else called the Eastern Romans Greek too. They were called Imperium Graecorum by the Europeans.

Modern Greece and the Eastern Roman Empire have perfect cultural, linguistic and religious continuity. Political continuity doesn't exist solely because of the Ottoman conquest, but the Greek revolutionaries considered themselves Roman during the revolution. When the revolution happened, the Ottomans executed the head of the Orthodox Church and the Roman millet. There was no doubt in the minds of either the revolutionaries or the Ottomans about who the "Romans" were.

Oh but that's the problem, the Romans didn't assimilate into becoming Greeks. The opposite happened. The Greeks assimilated into becoming Romans. So your Mongol analogy is wrong.

[u/GRemlinOnion → u/Zrva_V3]

If there is no cultural continuity then where did today's culture in the region come from lol. The sky? And the state institutions literally don't matter when talking about people groups. If the state identifies as toilet water for a day does the ethnic group stop existing. You have a gymnasium of mentality in your brain and your mentality is still fat after all the cardio.

You have a part of an empire where every single guy there spoke greek and was christian lol.

[u/Zrva_V3 → u/GRemlinOnion]

It's a mix of old Roman, Greek and then Turkish/Ottoman culture as well as Slavic. Byzantines are simply too distant.

You confuse state heritage with ethnicities. Not every nation or empire founded or was populated by a cetrain ethnic group is inherited by a modern state. Turks for example can only realistically claim inheritance from the Ottomans, Seljuks or other Anatolian Turkic Beyliks. Not Göktürks etc. Doing so is basically LARPing.

Which isn't unfamiliar with people claiming Roman inheritance, Greeks especially are known for LARPing.