Greek Muslims
Greek Muslims, also known as Grecophone Muslims, are Muslims of Greek ethnic origin whose adoption of Islam dates either from the contact of early Islamic caliphates with the Byzantine Empire or to the period of Ottoman rule in the southern Balkans and Anatolia. In more recent times, they consist primarily of descendants of Ottoman-era converts to Islam from Greek Macedonia, Crete, and northeastern Anatolia.
Despite their ethnic Greek origin, the contemporary Grecophone Muslims of Turkey have been steadily assimilated into the Turkish-speaking Muslim population. Sizable numbers of Grecophone Muslims, not merely the elders but even young people, have retained knowledge of their respective Greek dialects, such as Cretan and Pontic Greek. Because of their gradual Turkification, 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, very few are likely to call themselves Greek Muslims. In Greece, Greek-speaking Muslims are not usually considered as forming part of the Greek nation.
In the late Ottoman period, particularly after the Greco-Turkish War, several communities of Greek 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 and Islam with being Turkish, despite ethnicity or language.
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. 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," again regardless of their ethnicity or language. An exception was made for the native Muslim Pomaks and Western Thrace Turks living east of the River Nestos in East Macedonia and Thrace, Northern Greece, who are officially recognized as a religious 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 through immigration.
Motivations for conversion to Islam
Taxation
Dhimmi were subject to the heavier tax, jizya, versus the Muslim zakat. Other major taxes were the Defter and İspençe and the more severe Haraç, whereby a document was issued which stated that "the holder of this certificate is able to keep his head on the shoulders since he paid the Haraç tax for this year..." All these taxes were waived if the person converted to Islam.Devşirme
Greek non-Muslims were also subjected to practices like Devşirme, in which the Ottomans took Christian boys from their families and later converted them to Islam with the aim of selecting and training the ablest of them for leading positions in Ottoman society. Devşirme was not, however, the only means of conversion of Greek Christians. Many male and female orphans voluntarily converted to Islam in order to be adopted or to serve near Turkish families.Legal system
Another benefit converts received was better legal protection. The Ottoman Empire had two separate court systems, Islamic and non-Islamic, with the decisions of the former superseding those of the latter. Because non-Muslims were forbidden in the Islamic court, they could not defend their cases and were doomed to lose every time.Career opportunities
Conversion also yielded greater employment prospects and possibilities of advancement in the Ottoman government bureaucracy and military. Subsequently, these people became part of the Muslim community of the millet system, which was closely linked to Islamic religious rules. At that time, people were bound to their millets by their religious affiliations, rather than by their ethnic origins. Muslim communities prospered under the Ottoman Empire, and as Ottoman law did not recognize such notions as ethnicity, Muslims of all ethnic backgrounds enjoyed precisely the same rights and privileges.Avoiding slavery
During the Greek War of Independence, Ottoman Egyptian troops under the leadership of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt ravaged the island of Crete and the Greek countryside of the Morea, where Muslim Egyptian soldiers enslaved vast numbers of Christian Greek children and women. Ibrahim arranged for the enslaved Greek children to be forcefully converted to Islam en masse. The enslaved Greeks were subsequently transferred to Egypt, where they were sold. Several decades later in 1843, the English traveler and writer Sir John Gardner Wilkinson described the state of enslaved Greeks who had converted to Islam in Egypt:A great many Greeks and Slavs became Muslims to avoid these hardships. Conversion to Islam is quick, and the Ottoman Empire did not keep extensive documentation on the religions of their individual subjects. The only requirements were knowing Turkish, saying you were Muslim, and possibly getting circumcised. Converts might also signal their conversion by wearing the brighter clothes favored by Muslims, rather than the drab garments of Christians and Jews in the empire.
Greek has a specific verb, τουρκεύω, meaning "to become a Turk." The equivalent in Serbian and other South Slavic languages is turčiti or poturčiti.
Greek Muslims of Pontus and the Caucasus
Geographic dispersal
, is spoken by large communities of Pontic Greek Muslim origin, spread out near the southern Black Sea coast. Pontian Greek Muslims are found within Trabzon province in the following areas:Today these Greek-speaking Muslims regard themselves and identify as Turks. Nonetheless, a great many have retained knowledge of and/or are fluent in Greek, which continues to be a mother tongue for even young Pontic Muslims. Men are usually bilingual in Turkish and Pontic Greek, while many women are monolingual Pontic Greek speakers.
History
Many Pontic natives were converted to Islam during the first two centuries following the Ottoman conquest of the region. Taking high military and religious posts in the empire, their elite were integrated into the ruling class of imperial society. The converted population accepted Ottoman identity, but in many instances people retained their local, native languages. In 1914, according to the official estimations of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, about 190,000 Greek Muslims were counted in the Pontus alone. Over the years, heavy emigration from the Trabzon region to other parts of Turkey, to places such as Istanbul, Sakarya, Zonguldak, Bursa and Adapazarı, has occurred. Emigration out of Turkey has also occurred, such as to Germany as guest workers during the 1960s.Glossonyms
In Turkey, Pontic Greek Muslim communities are sometimes called Rum. However, as with Yunan or the English word "Greek," this term 'is associated in Turkey to be with Greece and/or Christianity, and many Pontic Greek Muslims refuse such identification. The endonym for Pontic Greek is Romeyka, while Rumca and/or Rumcika are Turkish exonyms for all Greek dialects spoken in Turkey. Both are derived from ρωμαίικα, literally "Roman", referring to the Byzantines. Modern-day Greeks call their language ελληνικά, meaning Greek, an appellation that replaced the previous term Romeiika in the early 19th century. In Turkey, standard modern Greek is called Yunanca; ancient Greek is called either Eski Yunanca or Grekçe.Religious practice
According to Heath W. Lowry's seminal work on Ottoman tax books, most "Turks" in Trebizond and the Pontic Alps region in northeastern Anatolia are of Pontic Greek origin. Pontian Greek Muslims are known in Turkey for their conservative adherence to Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school and are renowned for producing many Quranic teachers. Sufi orders such as Qadiri and Naqshbandi have a great impact.Cretan Muslims
The term "Cretan Muslims" or "Cretan Turks" refers to Greek-speaking Muslims who arrived in Turkey after or slightly before the start of the Greek rule in Crete in 1908, and especially in the context of the 1923 agreement for the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations. Prior to their resettlement in Turkey, deteriorating communal relations between Cretan Greek Christians and Cretan Greek Muslims drove the latter to identify with Ottoman and later Turkish identity.Geographic dispersal
Cretan Muslims have largely settled on the coastline, stretching from the Çanakkale to İskenderun. Significant numbers were resettled in other Ottoman-controlled areas around the eastern Mediterranean by the Ottomans following the establishment of the autonomous Cretan State in 1898. Most ended up in coastal Syria and Lebanon, particularly the town of Al-Hamidiyah, in Syria,, and Tripoli in Lebanon, where many continue to speak Greek as their mother tongue. Others were resettled in Ottoman Tripolitania, especially in the eastern cities like Susa and Benghazi, where they are distinguishable by their Greek surnames. Many of the older members of this last community still speak Cretan Greek in their homes.A small community of Cretan Greek Muslims still resides in Greece in the Dodecanese islands of Rhodes and Kos. These communities were formed prior to the area becoming part of Greece in 1948, when their ancestors migrated there from Crete, and their members are integrated into the local Muslim population as Turks today.
Language
Some Grecophone Muslims of Crete composed literature for their community in the Greek language, such as songs, but wrote it in the Arabic alphabet. although little of it has been studied.Today, in various settlements along the Aegean coast, elderly Grecophone Cretan Muslims are still conversant in Cretan Greek. Many in the younger generations are fluent in the Greek language.
Often, members of the Muslim Cretan community are unaware that the language they speak is Greek. Frequently, they refer to their native tongue as Cretan instead of Greek.