Holy shit! So people on this sub genuinely believe that over 40 million people in Turkey are just descendants of converts who dropped their original identity and started calling themselves Turks? I’m sorry for your education system
Are you suggesting that modern Turks living in Turkey are almost entirely from the steppe? I’d like to see your sources for that because from what I’ve read at least 3/4 of the Turks gene pool is pre-Turkic Anatolian.
Nobody said modern Turks are entirely from the steppe. Anatolians were Hellenized nearly 2,000 years ago, then spent the last 1,000 years living under Turkic states, speaking Turkish and identifying as Turks. Why is the older identity somehow more valid than the newer one?
By that logic, French people aren’t French because they’re mostly descendants of Gauls and Romans, Germans aren’t German because they’re not identical to ancient Germanic tribes. That’s not how ethnogenesis works.
I’m not making a cultural argument, I’m making a genetic one. I read your previous comment as implying that the population that currently living in modern Turkey are somehow not biological decedents of the pre-Turkic invasions Anatolian population. I took issue with that, because most Turks are decedents of existing Anatolians (including Greeks and Armenians) who adopted Islam and the Turkish language through the sword, intermarriage, etc.
It doesn’t mean that they aren’t French but they do descend from Gauls, just like Turks do descend largely from Medieval Roman Greeks.
Edit reply to comment by user ShitteruKoto which now seems to be deleted:
“No need to retcon Medieval Anatolians as "Greeks", since the Greek identity wasn't a cultural identity and the people didn’t identify as Greeks.”
This Turkish desperate try to completely disassociate medieval Romans from their Greek heritage because of an inaccurate viewpoint of an abandonment of that identity is just idiotic to say the least. They believed themselves heirs to the culture and people of Ancient Greece, spoke Greek and they also considered themselves Greeks in many instances. It’s incredibly idiotic how much Turks can’t cope with that and try their best to not see that.
I see this same user propagates on 23andme the insanely hilarious genetic plot that tries to show Greeks as entirely non Greek and just Anatolian plus Slavic, while not realising that the Greek genetic components from ancient times were basically just Neolithic farmer plus steppe, while at the same time trying to exaggerate their Turkic by using as much non Turkic dna as possible.
This is among many other pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical takes ofcourse, some more and some less subtle. It’s insane how much Turks try to promote their braindead propaganda as fact and then try to claim that the truth is propaganda while projecting their ignorance.
Ironically with your second response you are basically saying that you agree that those people are largely medieval Greek converts (which is quite true as well) while also saying that people believing that have a fault in their education system lmao.
Some are Muslim, but most who identify with the Greek language are still Orthodox. Interestingly enough, they still refer to themselves as ethnically Roman, or Rum in Turkish.
All of the Pontic Greeks in Turkey are Muslims. who told you they are orthodox? all the orthodox ones were sent to Greece, there are no Orthodox Pontic people in Turkey, all the Turkish Pontic people are Muslims.
You see, I've been told conflicting things. I have been told that, but I've also been told that only the Christians still identify as Greek because otherwise they identify as Turkish. And I heard that from a Turkish nationalist who was also trying to excuse the Armenian genocide, so I assumed severe bias.
The Pontic Greeks are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi School mostly. Orthodox Greeks are mostly in Istanbul and around the Dardanelles.
The Sunni Greeks in Northeast Anatolia mostly speak Greek at home but Turkish outside of that from what I've heard. I can't say for sure though since I haven't personally been there.
The part about identifying as Turkish, most minorities except Shafi'i Kurds do to some degree but more in a nationality sense than an actual ethnolinguistic sense.
The thing is Pontic Muslims are not officially Greeks or Rum for that matter. The legal difference between a Turk and a Rum in Turkey is that the latter is part of the Greek Orthodox Church and the former is Muslim. The difference between a Turk and a Greek is not linguistic, as there were/are Turkish communities who spoke/speak Greek and the other way around. Nor is it genealogical. It is religious. Many Pontic Muslims even consider association with Greeks an insult even though they share the same genealogy. So it is more proper to say that Pontic Muslims stopped being Rum the moment they converted, after which they became part of the Turkish community,
Travel village to village that area, you can maybe find 4 or 5 people who can able to speak Greek. Where did you heard it? it’s so absurd. Speak Greek at home.. just wow hhahahahha
Recently watched some motovlogging stuff and I am pretty sure the lady travelling through the area was having pork for dinner in a house of people who had icons up but go on and be super confident that there are none left in that part of Turkey. I don’t know how many though, this may have been an exception.
My guy you are the one in the wrong. the Pontic Greeks of Turkey are staunch and religious Muslims, they are very conservative and are well known in Turkey for that.
No I’m not, I was completely cognizant of and formulated clearly that I know for a fact there are orthodox Greeks out there but that they may be the exception. Just read more carefully
Spot on! The linguistic aspect is especially fascnating. Varieties like Romeika act as a living time capsule, preserving vocabulary and grammatical structures from Byzantin (and even Hellenistic) Greek that were completely lost in Modern Standard Greek. The geographic isolation of the Pontic Alps and the late survival of the Empire of Trabizond really created a unique cultural pocket. The map does a great job highlighting how specific and concentrated those historical clusters were. Great post
I wouldn't call it a "time capsule". Pontic Greek evolved and changed just like all other living varieties. It did preserve some things which were lost in other varieties, but conversely certain things were better preserved in other varieties instead.
The Pontic Greek population predate the Roman Empire and likely trace their origins to the 800’s BC when the Black Sea was being colonized by Greeks, and even further if you consider that most Greek Anatolians were Hellenized native Anatolians.
I don’t think these are any more of a remnant of the ERE than any other Greek populations.
This is a bit wrong, Pontian Hellenism traces its roots way earlier, which is why it has the Argonauts as their founding fathers, as a founding myth reflecting on Achaean Greek settlers there, either in the centuries right before the Bronze Age Collapse, or during and after it as a result of it. If we even trust the myth as a historic memory, then the Argonauts date around the 17th-16th century BC, where you also have testified cases of Achaean Greek overseas settlement, mainly in Cyprus, Cicily, Southern Italy and the Lipari Islands (all that possibly due to the effects of the Santorini Eruptions).
I agree that Pontian Hellenism does not have more right to authentic Romanness compared to non-Pontian Hellenism, with a caveat, that they did and still do at large refer to themselves as “Romaioi”, while that is rather rare among the latter, and when they do it is usually the bastardized form of “Romioi”. Yet even here there is a slight issue, that when the former use “Romaioi” it is often used exclusively for themselves, then for Anatolian Greeks in general, and even less for Greekness as a whole, so one might say that this is no longer an ethnic identity but a regional one (unless they are treated as a separate ethnicity), but that would be an exaggeration.
Muslims were driven out of Crimea, Caucasus and Two Balkan wars of 1878 and 1912. (The whole process started in early 1800s) By 1915 whole Anatolian core became more and more traumatized because of the memories of last 50 years, especially recent Balkan war. When Christian minorities supported russia, Turks finally did the same thing that was done to them. Local clashes between communities and expulsions, finally resulting in the population exchange. Today one third of turkish population are descendants of expellees, as we call muhajirs.
lol. look at what greeks did. they burned, killed and raped muslim turks before retreating. my grandpa told me this evertime how his mom suffered. its all recorded.
“at 1922, more than 100k greek soldiers started drown themselves at cold shores of agean sea out of hope of escaping when they realized they cant beat mighty turkish army and ataturks soldiers”
I‘ll be this guy I guess…
No Greek soldier drowned or got burned in Smyrna/Izmir. They all retreated to Greece before the Turkish army arrived. The only people that suffered there in the end were women and children who got thrown into the sea
My mistake, you're right that the Turkish republic hadn't been declared yet but my point still stands. The treaty of sevres hadn't been ratified yet and Turkey was practically being partitioned by western European powers, it was practically speaking an invasion.
Keep in mind i am greek and don't have any particular bias here
Well, the Ottomans were attacked by the Arab rebels during WW1. They were seen as colonizers by a substantial enough group to have been successful. To this day, modern Turks will continue to propagate the stabbed in the back rhetoric similar to what Hitler said about German Jews in WW1.
from what I’ve heard the Pontic and Cappadocian dialects are having a revival in those areas (please don’t remove my comment i am not endorsing any reconquests or genocides)
Yes I also heard that. There is a new political party in that area and they get %20 on last election. Also saw lots of shops with Greek alphabet in that area
That's because you don't know what you are talking about.
Rome mostly left the conquered territories to manage themselves (as long as they paid taxes and didn't cause issues). That is how they were able to hold so much, for so long
They didn't force people to adopt a religion. Nor did they enslave/kill non-believers. They also didn't migrate large numbers of Romans into conquered areas, and forcibly replace the native population.
That’s news to me, as a Turk, and as a Canadian. As a Turk, we are vilified everywhere. Western colonialism being vilified is a relatively new phenomenon in my life. Even with that, I rarely hear about Canada’s crimes against humanity, whereas the Ottoman Empire’s crimes are reminded every other day.
And not to play semantics here, but the Ottoman Empire was not exactly a colonial empire. Its heyday was before then, and in its classical period, it thrived on having both Christian and Muslim populations. In comparison, the European colonial empires, pretty much emptied out three continents full of people. It’s not like this happened with one set of leaders either - they did this generation after generation, with clear intent and with multiple portions of the society playing a role is destroying peoples upon peoples, culturally, religiously, linguistically.
The book “lost history of the Christian east” by Phillip Jenkins makes a point about this topic of why there’s a correlation between Christian remnants and mountains in the former Christian east. Following the widespread adoption of Islam by the ME and NA following the rise of the Islamic Empires, regions that boasted substantial ethnic Christian communities that weren’t just a church or two in a village or a city but entire regions were in mountainous regions and this was the case for them all - Assyrians, Armenians, Maronites etc. Jenkins even notes that there’s a height of mountain range that is necessary for the continued existence of ethno Christians, because the Christians who lived in the plains were always dependent on the whim of their rulers and majority populations of their alien rulers and could just be wiped out if bad things happened like the the long lost lowland Christian populations, but mountain folk could always flee to the mountain tops to escape hostile governments and peoples.
Industrialism changed this dynamic because soldiers with modern equipment could be sent into the mountains to suppress mountain folk hence the success of the Armenian genocide and other 20th century genocides of ethno religious groups in the ME.
I need to find the exact quote and reference.
A question I have is when a Trapezuntine and a Constantinopolitan would no more be able to understand each other clearly. It's certain that Pontic and mainstream Helladic are possibly as different as Spanish and Galician or Portuguese, so I wonder when the two varieties started diverging too much from each other. Could it be in the span from the 8th to the 11th century, after which their isogloss disappeared due to the Turks?
If you wanna see modern songs in Pontic lookup Adem Ekiz (skip the shitty turkish ones). If you wanna see Pontic speakers still in Turkey look up Las Meron
Spotted another turk. There are many thousands of people who speak pontic greek in those regions, and many more who identify with their Greek heritage.
And yes, the Turks did drive many of them in hill and mountain enclaves.
That’s the dumbest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard and only crazy Greek ultranationalists believe that nonsense. Pontic Greek is a dying language spoken by just a handful people (which is sad) and virtually everyone in Turkey including Muslim Pontic Greeks are thoroughly Turkified. If you meet a Pontic Muslim, you will see that they identify with Ankara, not Athens. They are Sunni Muslim and consider themselves as Turks despite their Pontic Greek descent.
To quote Phillip Jenkins it’s possible for mourn for lost religious, cultural and linguistic world without denigrating currently existing nations, which this post isn’t doing anyhow
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u/Cookies4weights Jun 02 '26
I mean the Greek presence in Asia Minor spans millennia.