Short answer: No, there is no evidence for a "Luwian confederation" at the end of the Bronze Age.

#What is Luwian?

Luwian is, like Hittite, a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Luwian is closely related to several other members of the Anatolian branch, the so-called "Luwic languages" - Carian, Pisidian, Sidetic, Lycian, and Milyan (Lycian B). The members of the Anatolian branch are Palaic, a Bronze Age language attested in fewer than a dozen tablets from the Hittite capital, and Lydian, attested in the Iron Age; the position of Lydian within the Anatolian branch remains uncertain.

Luwian is the only Anatolian language attested in both the Bronze Age and Iron Age. It was written with two scripts, first the cuneiform writing system used for Hittite and the older Near Eastern languages (Sumerian, Akkadian, Elamite, Hurrian, etc.) and later a hieroglyphic writing system known as "Anatolian hieroglyphs." Luwian was written with both cuneiform and hieroglyphs in the Bronze Age; it was written exclusively with hieroglyphs in the Iron Age.

Several dialects of Luwian are known, including Empire Luwian (the dialect used at the Hittite capital), Kizzuwatna Luwian (the dialect used in Cilicia), and Ištanuwa Luwian (attested in cultic songs from the town of Ištanuwa). It was Empire Luwian that gave rise to Iron Age Luwian, attested at sites like Carchemish, Malatya, Hama, and Aleppo.

#Who were "the Luwians"?

The chief references to the land of Luwiya are in the Hittite laws.

§5 deals with the murder of a merchant.

KBo 6.2 i 3-5

If anyone kills a merchant, he shall pay 100 minas of silver, and he shall look to his house for it. If it is in the land of Luwiya or in the land of Pala, he shall pay the 100 minas and also replace his goods.

§19a, §19b, §20, and §21 deal with cases of abduction.

KBo 6.2 i 36-38

If a Luwian abducts a free person, (whether) man or woman, from the land of Hatti and leads him/her away to the land of Luwiya, and subsequently the abducted person's owner recognizes him/her, (the claimant) shall confiscate the abductor's own estate.

KBo 6.2 i 39-41

If a Hittite abducts a Luwian man in the land of Hatti itself and leads him away to the land of Luwiya, formerly they gave 12 persons, but now he shall give 6 persons, and he shall look to his house for it.

KBo 6.2 i 42-44

If a Hittite man abducts a male slave belonging to another Hittite man from the land of Luwiya and leads him here to the land of Hatti, and subsequently his owner recognizes him, the abductor shall pay him 12 shekels of silver, and he shall look to his house for it.

KBo 6.2 i 45-47

If anyone abducts the male slave of a Luwian man from the land of Luwiya and brings him to the land of Hatti, and his owner (later) recognizes him, (the owner) shall take only his own slave, and there shall be no compensation.

These particular laws were written in Old Hittite, the oldest phase of Hittite, and indicate that Hatti and Luwiya were considered separate lands, albeit closely connected by trade.

The laws raise the question of the location of Luwiya. Hatti, the name for the Hittite kingdom, was based at the capital of Hattuša and was bounded by the Kızılırmak River (Maraššantiya in Hittite). Luwiya, on the other hand, was probably not a unified kingdom. Rather, the general scholarly consensus - championed by the Luwian scholar David Hawkins - is that it referred to a wide region of speakers of Luwian, including (but not limited to) western Anatolia. Luwiya can therefore be compared to similar ancient Near Eastern geographical labels like Hurri, the region of Hurrian speakers. The traditional view is supported by a later Hittite copy of the laws, which substitutes Arzawa, a Hittite toponym for western Anatolia, for Luwiya.

Recently, however, this view has been challenged by Ilya Yakubovich. In his dissertation, later published as Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language (2010), Yakubovich argues that Luwiya should be identified with the "Lower Land" of Hittite texts, roughly corresponding to the Konya plain. Western Anatolia, according to Yakubovich, was peopled by speakers of (Proto-)Carian, Lydian, and Lycian, who remained in the region through the Iron Age. The specifics of the linguistic analyses need not concern us here, but suffice it to say that the linguistic contact between Hittite and Luwian is the foundation for his arguments. Petra Goedegebuure, another Luwian scholar, produced a similar linguistic study in 2008 that demonstrated contact between Hittite and Luwian as early as the Old Assyrian period ("Central Anatolian Languages and Language Communities in the Colony Period: The Luwian Substrate of Hattian and the Independent Hittites" in Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period).

Regardless of where Luwiya was located in the Old Hittite period, both Hittite and Luwian were in use in western Anatolia (Arzawa) and central Anatolia (the Hittite heartland) during the Hittite Empire period. Hittite was the language of administration, and virtually all letters were written in Hittite, including letters between a king of western Anatolia and the king of Egypt. Luwian, on the other hand, was likely the most common spoken language in both regions, and linguistic interference in Hittite texts suggests that many scribes spoke Luwian as a first or second language. To cite one example, Hittite used the reflexive pronoun -za for reflexive verbs, whereas Luwian used the pronouns -mi (1st sing), -di (2nd and 3rd sing), -anza (1st plural), and -manza (2nd and 3rd plural). Scribes sometimes used both a Hittite and Luwian reflexive pronoun in the same sentence, an example of linguistic interference. It is therefore incorrect to think of "Hittite speakers" in "the land of Hatti" and "Luwian speakers" in "the land of Luwiya" in western Anatolia. Both regions had diverse linguistic landscapes.

#Western Anatolia in the Bronze Age: the view from Hittite texts

The land of Arzawa first appears in Hittite texts in the annals of Hattušili I, one of the founding kings of the Old Kingdom.

In the following year I marched against Arzawa and I took from it cattle and sheep.

Arzawa proved to be a hostile foe to the Hittites. Ruled by king Kupanta-Kurunta, Arzawa was among the countries that fought against the Hittite kingdom during the reign of Tudhaliya I, the first king of the New Kingdom. By the reign of Tudhaliya III, the grandson of Tudhaliya I, Arzawa had reached the height of its power and claimed territory as far east as Tuwanuwa (classical Tyana) in Cappadocia. The Kaška peoples, a group from the Black Sea region, swept through Hittite territory, and the Hittite capital of Hattuša was burned. The events were recorded dramatically in a decree of the later king Hattušili III (CTH 88).

In earlier days the Hatti lands were sacked by its enemies. The Kaskan enemy came and sacked the Hatti lands and he made Nenassa his frontier. From the Lower Land came the Arzawan enemy, and he too sacked the Hatti lands, and he made Tuwanuwa and Uda his frontier.

It was at this point that the Egyptian king Amenhotep III, aware of the rising prominence of Arzawa vis-à-vis Hatti, wrote to Tarhunta-radu, the king of Arzawa to propose a marriage alliance. A copy of the Arzawan king's reply was found at the site of Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) in Egypt.

See, this message which (the messenger) Kalbaya spoke to me (saying): "Let us make ourselves a marriage alliance," I do not trust Kalbaya. He spoke it verbally, but on a tablet it was not set down. Now if truly my daughter you are seeking, will I not indeed give (her) to you? (Of course) I will give (her) to you! Now dispatch Kalbaya back to me with my envoy in haste, and write back this matter to me by tablet.

Hatti was down but not out, however, and its fortunes reversed dramatically with the accession of Šuppiluliuma I to the throne. Šuppiluliuma was a born conquerer, managing to defeat Mitanni, one of the Great Powers of the Late Bronze Age, and sack its unidentified capital Waššukanni. Aleppo and Carchemish were placed under direct Hittite control, and Ugarit, Amurru (Lebanon and part of the Syrian coast), and several kingdoms in Syria (Mukiš, Nuhašše, and Kadeš) became Hittite vassals. Šuppiluliuma carried out several campaigns in the west, but Arzawa continued to pose a threat.

It fell to Šuppiluliuma's son, Muršili II, to deal with Arzawa. After two years campaigning against the resurgent Kaška, Mursili turned west and finally defeated Arzawa, deporting 65,000 people.