The Yörüks, also Yuruks or Yorouks (Turkish: Yörükler; Greek: Γιουρούκοι, Youroúkoi; Bulgarian: юруци; Macedonian: Јуруци, Juruci), are a Turkic ethnic subgroup of Oghuz descent,[4][5][6] some of whom are nomadic, primarily inhabiting the mountains of Anatolia, and partly in the Balkan peninsula.

In Turkey's general parlance today, the terms "Türkmen" and "Yörük" indicate the gradual degrees of preserved attachment with the former semi-nomadic lifestyle of the populations concerned, with the "Turkmen" now leading a fully sedentary life, while keeping parts of their heritage through folklore and traditions, in arts like carpet-weaving, with the continued habit of keeping a yayla house for the summers, sometimes in relation to the Alevi community etc.

The remaining "true" Yörüks of today's Anatolia traditionally use horses as a means of transportation, though these are steadily being replaced by trucks.

Among recent tribes mentioned in the literature are Aksigirli, Ali Efendi, Bahsıs, Cakallar, Coşlu, Qekli, Gacar, Güzelbeyli, Horzum, Karaevli, Karahacılı, Karakoyunlu, Karakayalı, Karalar, Karakeçili, Manavlı, Melemenci, San Agalı, Sanhacılı, Sarıkeçili, Tekeli and Yeni Osmanlı.

[16][6] In the past centuries, many Sarıkeçili tribes also resided in these areas: İçil (today Mersin), Aydın, Konya, Afyonkarahisar, Akşehir, Saruhan, Doğanhisarı, Antalya, Lake Eğirdir, Isparta, Burdur, Dazkırı, Uluborlu.

[18] French historian and Turkologist Jean-Paul Roux visited the Anatolian Yörüks in the late 1950s and found that the majority of them were practicing Sunni Muslims.

"[24] Although the Yörüks had acquired a reputation for being deliberately resistant to formal education, Roux found that a full quarter of Yörük children he encountered were attending school, despite the difficulties of living a nomadic lifestyle in remote locations with limited access.

[29][30] Due to religious, linguistic and social differences, most part of Rumelian Turks did not intermarry or mix with the native populations of the Balkans.

Originally, these Yörük nomads were taken from West Anatolia (Saruhan, Menemen) to colonize parts of Rumelia, such as Thessaly and Rhodope in the Greek-Bulgarian-Macedonian borderland, or Plovdiv and Yambol in Bulgaria.

After the establishment of the feudal system in 1397 many of the Seljuk noble families came over from Asia Minor; some of the beys or Muslim landowners in southern Macedonia before the Balkan Wars may have been their descendants.

[26] Clans closely related to the Yörüks are scattered throughout the Anatolian Peninsula and beyond it, particularly around the chain of Taurus Mountains and further east around the shores of the Caspian Sea.

An interesting offshoot of the Yörük mass are the Tahtacı of the mountainous regions of Western Anatolia who, as their name implies, have been occupied with forestry work and wood craftsmanship for centuries.