Turkification, Turkization, or Turkicization (Turkish: Türkleştirme), describes both a cultural and language shift whereby populations or states adopted a historical Turkic culture, such as in the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish nationalist policies of the Republic of Turkey toward ethnic minorities in Turkey. As the Turkic states developed and grew, there were many instances of this cultural shift. An early form of Turkification occurred in the time of the Seljuk Empire and Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia, which had been a diverse and largely Greek-speaking region after previously being Hellenized.