"It depends. What is it that you call "Turkish"? You surely can't say that Turkish identity appeared from nowhere in the 19th century?"
My reply:
You are not really saying much here. Can you show that the Seljuks and the Ottomans used the name Turkish or described themselves as being Turkish? If you cannot then they are not Turkish. However, if you are going to claim that they were Turks without knowing they were and without expressing it (and what you are doing is really this), then, I guess, anyone can also claim that Kurds are Turks but they don’t know it. For a group of people to become something, they need to accept that they are that something. Terms such as the Ottoman Turks and the Seljuk Turks are inventions by modern historians. These states never existed. The Ottomans did not even use the name Ottoman most of the time, but at least they used it to identify themselves.
If you really want to find a state or a state like political formation that used the name Turk, you will have to go back to the Türük Empire of the 6th and 7th centuries AD, and I would like to see how you link them with the Seljuks or those who entered Anatolia or Asia Minor in the 11th century. However, before doing this, you should probably explain how both Greeks and Armenians were confused about the Turkishness of these so-called Turks, since they called them either Persians or Taciks frequently. Obviously the identity of the newcomers was not too obvious or enforced upon them with enough determination to deserve a special place.
"If you mean that being "Turkish" is simply a cultural synthesis as a result of mixing Seljouks, Ottomans, Tatars and other Turkic people with the native people of Asia Minor, then I disagree."
My reply:
What I am saying is not necessarily a cultural synthesis between those groups you have mentioned in your post, especially since not all of these groups existed at the same time. Instead, I am saying that the idea of Turkishness, the modern Turkish identity of Turkey, was created in the 19th century, in a region that included both the southern Balkans and the western Anatolia and by people who have been living there for centuries and described themselves as Muslims. Not all of these people who created this identity and the culture that went with it had arrived from the Central Asia. In fact, most of them seem to have been the natives of this region. There were even Jews among them.
"Call it Ottoman, call it Turkey: it's still the same ethnic people aren't they?"
My reply:
Call it Turkish, call it Armenian: it is still the same species, Homo sapiens sapiens, isn’t it?
"The Ottomans back in 14th century did not speak Ottoman, did they? I guess it's more of a semantic question, but I wouldn't say that the Turkish identity developed in Anatolia."
My reply:
What language do you think the Ottomans spoke? We are inclined to say Turkish, but this really depends on how we define the Ottomans in this context? The Ottomans were never a nation, nor a race, nor an ethnic group; they were a house that became a state eventually. There were all kinds of languages and ethnic groups within the House of Osman, although the language everyone commonly shared either as their first or second language was the Ottoman Turkish. What is even more interesting is that if you try to determine what ethnic groups existed within the Ottoman House or State, Turks will come up as the smallest group. So, using what marker should we call these people Turks?
"(...)(which is by the way a Turkish invention for Asia Minor and the Armenian Highland). No one called that perticular region for "Anatolia" until the Berlin Congress, when the Turkish authorities renamed the Armenain Highland to Anatolia as a first step to get rid of the reocurring problem of European demands for reforms in the Armenian provinces (or as the Turks called them "Eremeni vilayaten"). "Anatoli" is Greek for "Orient" or "East" and was before that used to refer to the lands beyond the Caucasus and the Caspian."
My reply:
And about the term Anatolia, you are making a major mistake. You are right in that it means east in Greek, but the term was applied to Asia Minor not by the Ottomans but the Romans or, if we are to use their modern name, the Byzantium Empire. This name thing happened after the 7th century AD. However, you are right in that the Armenian lands were usually not included in Anatolia until the modern period. As a geographical region Anatoli used to end at the Euphrates. Why the Romans or the Greeks, if you prefer it, started calling this area Anatoli or Anatolikon is closely connected to the thematic system they devised right around the 8th century. So, you are not correct in claiming that nobody used this term before the Berlin Congress. Also, another thing you need to know about this Anatoli business is that to Romans Anatoli was the area that was to the east of Constantinople; so in this manner, everything, including Armenia, was part of Anatoli.
You may find the name of the primary source that uses the word Anatoli for the first time in the following link:
Etymology of Anatolia