I’ve read a few books about Troy recently.
This week I read “Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor”. It was serviceable.
Who were the people living in Troy?
Was it an break-away Greek settlement?
Nope.
Many peoples have lived at the site, there are layers and layers of settlement. I guess I’m interested in the Bronze Age and the time of Homer’s poem.
Checking in with gpt5.2, it seems they were (probably) Anatolian, at least during the Bronze age.
The Anatolian peoples were a diverse group of ancient cultures who lived in Anatolia (modern Turkey) from prehistory through classical antiquity, acting as a bridge between the Near East, the Aegean, and the Balkans. They included early Indo-European–speaking groups such as the Hittites, Luwians, and Palaic peoples, as well as non-Indo-European cultures like the Hattians and Hurrians; later Anatolian societies included the Phrygians, Lydians, Carians, and Lycians. These peoples developed powerful states (most notably the Hittite Empire), controlled key trade routes, and blended influences from Mesopotamia, the Levant, and the Aegean while maintaining distinct languages, religious traditions, and political systems, before gradually being absorbed into Greek, Persian, and Roman worlds.
These are not the (medieval) “Turks”.
Turks originate from Central Asia and began migrating into Anatolia only after the 11th century CE, especially following the Battle of Manzikert (1071). Modern Turkey gets its name, language, and primary ethnic identity from these later Turkic migrations…
Also see:
Later, after the Bronze Age collapse it became a settlement by Greek-speaking people (Greeks? Hellenes?).