Turks in Algeria

[14] Headed by Oruç Reis and his brother Hayreddin Barbarossa, they took over the rule of the city and started to expand their territory into the surrounding areas.

In addition, the Sultan sent 2,000 janissaries, accompanied by about 4,000 volunteers to the newly established Ottoman province of the Maghreb, whose capital was to be the city of Algiers.

[14] Likewise, to indicate in the registers that a certain person is an offspring of a Turk and a local woman, the note "ibn al-turki" (or "kuloglu") was added to his name.

[17] For example, members of the elite adhered to Hanafi law while the rest of the population subscribed to the Maliki school.

[17] From its establishment, the military-administrative elite worked to reinvigorate itself by enlisting volunteers from non-Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire, mainly from Anatolia.

[18] The recruitment policy was therefore one of the means employed to perpetuate the Turkishness of the Ottoman elite and was practiced until the fall of the province in 1830.

[12] This policy can be understood as part of the Ottoman elite's effort to perpetuate its Turkishness and to maintain its segregation from the rest of the population.

Therefore, the Algerian Ottoman elite had a clear policy dictating the perpetuation of its character as a special social group, which was separated from the local population.

"[21]In the neighbouring province of Tunisia, the maintenance of the Turkishness of the ruling group was not insisted upon, and the kuloğlus could reach the highest ranks of government.

The Tunisian situation partly explains the continuation of the Algerian janissary corps' recruitment policy and the manifest will to distance the kuloğlus from the real centres of power.

[24] Nonetheless, by 1832, many Algerian-Turkish descended families, who had not left Algeria, joined a coalition with Emir Abdelkader in order to forge the beginning of a powerful resistance movement against French colonial rule.

Moreover, the Ottoman mosques in Algeria - which are still used by the Turkish minority - are distinguishable by their octagonal minarets which were built in accordance with the traditions of the Hanafi rite.

[34] Thus, the Turks settled mainly in the big cities of Algeria and formed their own Turkish quarters; remnants of these old Turkish quarters are still visible today,[35] such as in Algiers (particularly in the Casbah)[36][37] Annaba,[38] Biskra,[39] Bouïra,[40] Médéa,[41][42] Mostaganem,[42] and Oran (such as in La Moune[37] and the areas near the Hassan Basha Mosque[43]).