The Turkification of the greek populations in Asia Minor and the greek Muslims of Anatolia

Turkification is the transformation of entities, or cultures into the various historical Turkic states and cultures, such as the Ottoman Empire. As the Turkic states developed and grew, there were many instances of this cultural shift, voluntary and involuntary. Peoples of the local population succumbed to the dual process of Turkification and Islamization include Anatolian , Balkan , Caucasian and Middle Eastern peoples from different ethnic origins , such as Albanians, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Greeks, Jews, Romani, South Slavic peoples and East Slavic Ukrainians, Iranic peoples such as Kurds, as well as Lazs from all the regions of the Ottoman Empire and Iran. An early form of Turkification occurred in the time of the Seljuk Empire among the local population of Anatolia, involving intermarriages, religious conversion, linguistic shift, and interethnic relationships, which today is reflected in the predominant indigenous Anatolian genetic makeup nearly half of the modern Turkish people. The term is used in the Greek language since the 1300s or late-Byzantine era as "εκτουρκισμός", or "τούρκεμα". It literally means "becoming Muslim or Turk". For example: "Είχε τουρκέψει κάτω από βία, τον καιρό της άτυχης εκείνης επανάστασης του 1770, τούρκεμα κανονικό με "σουνέτι" (περιτομή) από Τούρκο παπά (Χότζα)", i.e. "He had been turkified by force, at the time of the unfortunate revolution of 1770. A real turkification, with circumcision by a Turkish priest (Hoja)".  Apart from persons, it may refer also to cities that were conquered by Turks or churches that were converted to mosques. It is more frequently used in the form of the verb "τουρκεύω" (turkify, become Muslim). In Serbian and other South Slavic languages the verb is turčiti ( imperfective) or poturčiti (perfective); however, this verb does not imply adopting the Turkish language. Rather, it usually signifies the conversion of Slavic people to Islam during Ottoman rule of the Balkans. Andrew Mango describes the diversity of phenotypes amongst the Turkish people as follows: "The Turkish nation took shape in the centuries of Seljuk and Ottoman power. The nomadic Turkish conquerors did not displace the original local inhabitants: Hellenized Anatolians (Greeks), Armenians, people of Caucasian origins, Kurds, Assyrians and in the Balkans Slavs, Albanians and others. They intermarried with them, while many local people converted to Islam and 'turned Turk'. They were joined by Muslims from the lands north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, by Persian craftsmen and Arab scholars, and by European adventurers and converts, known in the West as renegades. As a result, the Turks today exhibit a wide variety of ethnic types. Some have delicate Far Eastern, others heavy local Anatolian features, some, who are descended from Slavs, Albanians or Circassians, have light complexions, others are dark-skinned, many look Mediterranean, others Central Asian, many appear Persian. A numerically small, but commercially and intellectually important, group is descended from converts from Judaism. One can hear Turks describe some of their fellow countrymen as 'hatchet-nosed Lazes' (a people on the Black Sea coast), 'dark Arabs' (a term which includes descendants of black slaves), or even 'fellahs'. But they are all Turks." Anatolia was home to many different peoples in ancient times who were either natives or settlers and invaders. These different people included the Hittites , Persians , Luwians , Hurrians , Mongols , Greeks , Cimmerians , Galatians, Colchians, Iberians, Carians , Lydians , Lycians , Phrygians, Arameans , Assyrians , Corduenes, Cappadocians , Cilicians , Jewish people ,Truvans and scores of others. The presence of many Greeks, and the process of Hellenization , gradually caused many of these peoples to abandon their own languages in favor of Greek, especially in cities and along the western and southern coasts, a process reinforced by Romanization. Nevertheless, in the north and east, especially in rural areas, many of the native languages continued to survive, including both many extinct and a few extant languages such as Armenian and Assyrian Aramaic. Byzantine authorities routinely conducted large-scale population transfers in an effort to impose religious uniformity and the Greek language. After the subordination of the First Bulgarian Empire in 1018, for instance, much of its army was resettled in Eastern Anatolia. The Byzantines were particularly keen to assimilate the large Armenian population. To that end, in the eleventh century, the Armenian nobility were removed from their lands and resettled throughout western Anatolia. An unintended consequence of this resettlement was the loss of local military leadership along the eastern frontier, opening the path for the inroads of Turkish invaders. Beginning in the eleventh century, war with Turks led to the deaths of many in the native population, while others were enslaved and removed. As areas became depopulated, Turkic nomads moved in with their herds. Once an area had been conquered, and hostilities had ceased, agricultural villagers may have felt little inconvenience with the arrival of these pastoralists, since they occupied different ecological zones within the same territory. Turkic pastoralists remained only a small minority, however, and the gradual Turkification of Anatolia was due less to in-migration than to the conversion of many Christians to Islam, and their adoption of the Turkish language. The reasons for this conversion were first, the weak hold Greek culture had on much of the population, and second, the desire by the conquered population to "retain its property or else to avoid being at a disadvantage in other ways." One mark of the progress of Turkification was that by the 1330s, place names in Anatolia had changed from Greek to Turkish. Greek Muslims, also known as Greek-speaking Muslims, are Muslims of Greek ethnic origin whose adoption of Islam dates to the period of Ottoman rule in the southern Balkans . They consist primarily of the descendants of the elite Ottoman Janissary corps and Ottoman-era converts to Islam from Greek Macedonia (e.g.,NVallahades), Crete (Cretan Muslims), northeastern Anatolia and the Pontic Alps (Pontic Greeks). They are currently found mainly in western Turkey (regions of Izmir, Bursa , and Edirne) and northeastern Turkey (regions of Trabzon, Gümüşhane , Sivas, Erzincan, Erzurum , and Kars. Despite their ethnic Greek origin, the contemporary Grecophone Muslims of Turkey regarding their identity have been steadily assimilated into the Turkish-speaking Muslim population. Apart from their elders, sizable numbers, even the young within these Grecophone Muslim communities have retained a knowledge of Greek and or its dialects such as Cretan Greek and Pontic Greek , though very few are likely to call themselves Greek Muslims. This is due to gradual assimilation into Turkish society, as well as the close association of Greece and Greeks with Orthodox Christianity and their perceived status as a historic, military threat to the Turkish Republic . Whereas in Greece, Greek-speaking Muslims are not usually considered as forming part of the Greek nation.  In the late Ottoman period (following the Greco-Turkish war of 1897–98) several communities of Grecophone Muslims from Crete and southern Greece were also relocated to Libya, Lebanon and Syria , where in towns like al-Hamidiyah some of the older generation continue to speak Greek. Historically, Greek Orthodoxy has been associated with being Romios , i.e. Greek , and Islam with being Turkish , despite ethnic or linguistic references. Most Greek speaking Muslims in Greece left for Turkey during the 1920s population exchanges under the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations (sometimes in return for Turkish-speaking Christians such as the Karamanlides ). Due to the historical role of the millet system, religion and not ethnicity or language was the main factor used during the exchange of populations. All Muslims who departed Greece were seen as "Turks", whereas all Orthodox people leaving Turkey were considered "Greeks", regardless of ethnicity or language. An exception was made for Muslims ( Pomaks and Western Thrace Turks ) in East Macedonia and Thrace , Northern Greece , who are officially recognized as a religious, but controversially not as an ethnic minority by the Greek Government. In Turkey, where most Greek-speaking Muslims live, there are various groups of Grecophone Muslims, some autochthonous, some from parts of present-day Greece and Cyprus who migrated to Turkey under the population exchanges or immigration. The region of the Anatolia represents an extremely important area with respect to ancient population migration and expansion, and the spread of the Caucasian, Semitic , Indo-European and Turkic languages , as well as the extinction of the local Anatolian languages. During the late Roman Period, prior to the Turkic conquest, the population of Anatolia had reached an estimated level of approximately 4 million people. The extent to which gene flow from Central Asia has contributed to the current gene pool of the Turkish people , and the role of the 11th century invasion by Turkic peoples, has been the subject of several studies. These studies conclude that local Anatolian groups are nearly half the source of the present-day Turkish population. DNA results suggests the lack of strong genetic relationship between the Mongols and the Turkic people despite the historical relationship of their languages. Anatolians do not significantly differ from other Mediterranean populations, indicating that while the Asian Turks carried out an invasion with cultural significance (language and religion), the genetic significance is lesser detectable. Because modern day Turkish people descent from Oghuz branch of Turkic people which is the most populated and ethnically mixed Turkic group even before Oghuzes came to Anatolia from Central Asia and Persia. Recent genetic research has suggested the local Anatolian origins of the Turkic Asian peoples might have been slight.  These findings are consistent with a model in which the Turkic languages, originating in the Altai-Sayan region of Central Asia and northwestern Mongolia, were imposed on the indigenous peoples with genetic admixture, shows both ethnic mixing and linguistic replacement. Analysis suggested that, genetically, Anatolians were more closely related also with Balkan populations than to the Central Asian populations in early history. After eleven decades of Turkic migration to Anatolia including Oguz and Kipchak Turkic people from Central Asia, Persia, Caucassia and Crimea, today's population is genetically in between Central Asia and indigenous historic Anatolia Analogical results have been received in neighbouring Caucasus region by testing Armenian and Turkic speaking Azerbaijani populations, therefore representing language replacements and intermarriages. In conclusion, today the DNA components in Anatolian population are shared with European and neighboring Near Eastern populations and haplogroups related to Central Asian , South Asian and African affinity, which supports both the mass migration, and language replacement hypothesis on the region and ethnic mixing.
Πηγή: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Muslims

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkification