Who Are the Turks? The Turks are a branch of Shin-Ra Inc. that supposedly recruit worthy members for SOLDIER, Shin-Ra's army. Of course, this is only a cover-up. This elite branch's actual purpose, aside from protecting the Shin-Ra president, is to take care of Shin-Ra's dirty work--murder and abduction, to name a few. The Turks Hierarchy In the Shin-Ra hierarchy, the Turks are below the president, vice president, and departmental offices and above SOLDIER and other various minor offices. However, this one branch of the company has an hierarchy all its own. Please note: This is not an official breakdown of the positions in the Turk branch. I did a little research and a lot of guesswork to create this. Please do correct me if any information is wrong. Head Turk The most experienced Turk would most likely be granted this position. This person judges the performance of all other Turks. In Before Crisis, the man who holds this position is called Verd, but in Vincent's day, it would obviously have been someone else. Leader and Superiors Tseng is leader, a step below Head Turk, in both Before Crisis and Final Fantasy VII. He refers to Reno and Rude as superiors, so that puts them above regular or newly recruited Turks. I'm not too sure if that would make them Tseng's equals, but I'm guessing from interactions in FF7 that they're not. Regulars and New Recruits The equavalents to regular members of SOLDIER--the grunts of the group. The Real Turks The actual Turks have an incredibly long history, much of which does not pertain to this site in any way, so I'm going to skip to the main idea. The Turks were a nomadic group of people that moved and traveled in western Asia. During the 9th century, many of them made their way to Muslim Persia. Most of the first to arrive came as mercenaries and adventurers, but eventually, as these few gained success, other Turks also began to settle in Persia. The Turks soon converted to the Islam religion, and once again began to migrate elsewhere. Judging by the fact that the real Turks were pretty fierce mercenaries, I think it would be safe to say that that's what Squaresoft based the Shin-Ra Turks on. Or the name of the group, at least. There are also things about Shin-Ra's Turks that lead me to believe that there are even more sources Square used. Take the FBI, for example. The suits that the FF7 Turks wear and Rude's glasses remind me of a lot of FBI-inspired shows and movies that I've seen. You could probably even say that the Turks are somewhat mafia inspired because they're able to do all sorts of illegal things without getting so much as a slap on the wrist. "BACK" |