Short answers, pulled from the story.
Turkification, also called Turkization or Turkicization, describes populations or places adopting Turkic attributes such as culture, language, history, or ethnicity. The term is most often applied narrowly to Ottoman Empire policy or Republic of Turkey nationalist policy toward ethnic minorities.
The earliest instance of Turkification took place in Central Asia. By the 6th century AD, migration of Turkic tribes from Inner Asia caused a language shift among the region's Iranian peoples, and by the 8th century AD the Qarluq Turks had completed the Turkification of Kashgar.
The Turkification of Anatolia occurred during the time of the Seljuk Empire and the Sultanate of Rum, after Anatolia had long been a diverse, largely Greek-speaking region shaped by earlier Hellenization.
Ziya Gökalp was a sociologist and political activist who was one of Turkification's main supporters in the late Ottoman Empire. He believed a modern state had to become homogeneous in culture, religion, and national identity, with Turkishness as its unifying virtue.
Devshirme, literally "collecting" and also called the blood tax, was the Ottoman practice of pressing second or third sons of Christian villagers in the Balkans into military training as Janissaries. Recruits were taught Turkish and converted to Islam; the practice was started by Murad I and abolished early in Ahmet III's reign.
After the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, Turkification continued through laws such as the Surname Law, which forced Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds to adopt Turkish-style names, and the 1934 Resettlement Law, which set out forced assimilation through collective resettlement. Geographical names of non-Turkish origin were also replaced with Turkish ones.
The word Türk is considered imprecise because the Ottoman elite historically identified as Ottomans rather than Turks, and in the late 19th century "Turk" was a pejorative term for poor Yörük-Turkoman farmers. Since 1982, Article 66 of the Turkish Constitution has instead defined a Turk as anyone bound to the Turkish state through citizenship.