Guess the Gha has (been) eroded or diluted, just as the kha has. Thus Khayrli has become Hayrli and Khanum has become Hanum.

I tend to soften the gha further for ð, so it´s in between.   (N.B. am not a native speaker!)

This is from Geoffrey Lewis "Turkish Grammar":

(...) This ð, whether in borrowings or in native words, though audible as a "Northumbrian burr" of varying intensity in dialect, serves in standard Turkish to lenghten the preceeding vowel, a following vowel being swallowed up. (....) Between o and a, or o and u, it may be heard as a weak v or w: soðan ´onion´, soðuk ´cold´. (...) Otherwise, ð in conjuction with front vowels is heard as weak y: öðle ´noon´, deðer ´worth´.(...)

Thank you all for your replies. It´s been very helpful.

This is the first time I hear of northumbian burr and northumberland! we learn new things every day dont we

saðol

I still don´t know what the burr is

I´m just keeping ð simple for now - I´m not pronouncing it, lenghtening the previous vowel, and hoping that I´ll be somewhat understood

I have always thought that the "ð" sound, when you can hear it, is similar to "gli" in Italian - sort of a soft "y" sound made in the back of your palate, rather than the front. I think it´s called the "soft g" because you form the sound in the same part of your mouth as a regular g, but without the hard consonant noise.

In my version of Turkish which is standard Istanbul Turkish, "ð" is a consonant (in my opinion a semiwovel) which is difficult to notice as it is merely an instantaneous and barely noticable narrowing of the glottal opening. For all practical purposes, you could prolong the preceding wovel to get a similar effect.

Wikipedia says in Azerbeijani, Crimean and Tartarian Turkish it can be used at the beginning of a word. In Turkey´s Turkish it is never used like that.