Why did Turkey agree that Turks in Greece should be considered a Muslim minority and not Turkish minority?

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gugu

There is an "it goes without saying" mentality in the terminology of some post-ottoman arrangements.

During the later years of Ottoman history, "Rum" became the word for Greek which originally (a millenium ago) meant Roman.
However it always meant Orthodox. Even Serb Orthodox people have been refered as Rum in many Ottoman documents.
And for muslims in Greece or for Turks in western Thrace at that time Turk or Muslim could be used interchangeably. The terminology could have easily been Orthodox people on one side, Turkish people on the other side.

This did not create any problem in Turkey as nobody denied their religious Orthodox Identity to the Greeks. However it caused a problem in Greece because a succession of Greek governments have emphasized word play and denied Turkish muslim population in Greece the Turkish part of their identity.

Edit: Dear Hanibal, I totally agree with you but Lady S is not Greek.
Edit2: Moonlight, sÄ±ktÄ±n ama haaa, what you are constantly doing is against Y/A guidelines. Go and find yourself a forum or something.

habisce

It is true that the Lausanne Treaty refers to the existence of Muslim minority, which consists of Turks, Pomaks and Roma, however, it does not assert that members of the Muslim minority do not have the right to explore and express their ethnic identities. The Lausanne Treaty gives the Muslim minority the right to learn their native languages such as Turkish. If they did not have the right to express their ethnic identities, how could they have had the right to the native language education?

Edit: We do not claim all members of the Muslim minority are Turkish, but every one of these groups compose the Muslim minority separately should have the right to express their ethnic identities. To be more specific, Turks should have the right to say "we are Turkish"; Pomaks should have the right to say "we are Bulgarian"; Roma should have the right to say "we are Roma.".

dingdong

i think its because there are other muslim minorities there as well as turks

Trotsky vs Kerensky-Ð´Ð°Ñ…Ñ Ð´ÑÐ¸

Lausanne Treaty of 1923 stated that there was a Muslim minority in Greece, the names "Turk" and "Greek" were not specifically used apart from the bilateral agreements in the subsequent years. Instead, in Lausanne there were "Muslim" and "Non-Muslim" minorities. So that is probably why Turkey did not bother with the terms and accepted it, because the same was true for Greece. Calling the minority "Muslim" is probably the only action of the Greek government that coincides with the Lausanne Treaty because not honoring her signatures, Greece 1) Deliberately leaves Western Thrace underdeveloped as opposed to the rest of Greece -W. Thrace is the poorest region in Greece- 2) Expropriated the land owned by Turks on the pretext of building universities, industrial sites, military bases 3) Denies Turkish applications for land holding and threatens to drop the citizenships of "non-Greek" ethnic elements if they decide to go abroad with the *purpose of not returning back* (This part is usually overlooked by the Greeks) 4) Does not let graduates of teacher training in Turkey to teach at ill-equipped, usually one-classroom minority schools and instead appoints bad-quality Hellenized teachers 5) Interferes with the electoral process of the Mufti's and appoints these Mufti's in accordance with their own wishes ....

The list goes on and on. As you can clearly infer from the mistreatment of the Thracian Turks, one should have a good deal of optimism and a great deal of imagination to expect Greece to recognize her minorities as Turks, if you please, Pomaks, Albanians but not as Muslims and acknowledge the existence of other ethnicities, like the Macedonians. Greece still, rather incredibly, believes that Turkey might use the Turks of Thrace in the future to pursue irredentist policies so does everything in its power to supress Turks and if possible, force them to emmigrate to Turkey. Turkey, a country that has never considered Greece a serious threat, does not have any trouble calling Turkish citizens of Greek origin, "Greeks" WE have nothing to fear.

xanthochroi

after the peace aggrement turkish minorities in greece were recognized as the only minority group within Greece's territory but many political problems had arisen between turkey and greece after this aggrement Greece couldnt trust turks as we didnt them among the many ethnic groups in greece the most important one was turks therefore greeks have established a military zone closed to all civillians the beginning of the 1950's greek government has started denying the presence of turks every turkish names which were using of organizations have prohibited i dont wanna talk about 19th article of the greek citizenship law after the Junta took over control in 1960's took back all rights of the minorities they said that we were "greek muslims" as always be turks did not assimilate but divided into several groups as pomaks, Turks, Gypsies their aim is to support these minority groups to create a different culture turkey wanted to help us of course but minority rights have been taken under this guarantee is defined as only "Muslim" in the Lausanne treaty

Edit: zoi i know who pomaks are have you ever heard Vlachs,Arvanites,Slavophone Greeks which have never recognized in Greece do you think they're greeks ?

ziggy

dear Hannibal if we behaved them as you behaved to Greeks it would mean we should treat them as slaves.We don't like slavery...

hanibal

You were also a minority at Ottoman Empire . You can still speak Greek and practise your relicon. 500 years can be enough to change or forget these things for a minorty . Is'nt it ?
Just behive them how Ottoman did to you...

Moonlight Turkish Muslim â˜ª

Turkiye is Muslim country.

ÎžÎµÎ½ÏŒÎ¼Î±Ï‡Î¿Ï‚

First of all let me declare you my admiration for your irreproachable logic.
But let me also wonder how you was led to this amazing conclusion.
As far as I have studied the mathematical probabilities, both theoretical and practical, there is a probability for a phenomenon to appear only in one place, and in necessarily in two. That means that if there is a Greek minority in Turkey, there is not also necessarily a Turkish one in Greece.

I hope i solved your reflection.

Keyser: The Greek government has official statistics about the Muslim minority:

In 1922, the Muslim minority of Greek Thrace numbered 86,000 people. Today, that number has climbed to approximately 120,000.

The minority is composed of three ethnic groups, from which the element of homogeneity is absent. More specifically, 50 percent of the minority is of Turkish origin, 35 percent are Pomaks (an indigenous population that initially lost its native tongue and subsequently espoused Islam during the Ottoman occupation), and 15 percent are Roma. Each of the aforementioned groups has its own language and traditions. It was for this reason that the drafters of the Treaty of Lausanne, aware of the diverse ethnic composition of the minority, characterized it as a "religious" minority.

http://www.hri.org/MFA/foreign/musmingr.htm
http://www.hri.org/news/greek/misc/96-04-06.mgr.html

Keyser

absolute excellent question.

i thought that myself,and always wondered why.could it be an easier more efficient way to do a census maybe? instead of counting albanian muslims,turkish muslims and other muslim dispora,its better to just group them all together?

well i dont agree with that atall.noone should be identifed religiously in a census or population count,but rather by nationality.

this idea that all muslims are the 'same' doesnt make sense either.as im sure turks in greece do not get on with kurds in greece,and they r the same religion.interesting indeed.

Augustus

Zoi, your avatar is gorgeous

Totally Blunt

I think Gugu is right.

Also, Orthodox Turks from Karaman were sent to Greece during the population exchange, too. They spoke only Turkish and who knows what hardships they endured, going some place they don't know, having to learn a language they don't speak and being called "Turk" derogatively in the process.

I don't remember people calling the muhacirs sent to Turkey "Greek" derogatively.

PS. OUR language maintains many words from the Indo-European languages, the old ones from Persian, the new ones from French or Italian.

I don't know what this proves about our identity.

That Ottoman Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire maybe? The reason being, the dynasties changed, the religion changed, the SECT within the religion changed but the Roman Empire continued? All through to the 21st century, too, perhaps? :DDD

Logic is a nice toy to play with.

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