Pomaks in Turkey Pomaks in Turkey The Pomaks in Turkey refers to an ethnic group, who are predominantly Muslim and speak their own dialect of Bulgarian. They mostly live in Eastern Thrace, though some are also present in Anatolia. In the census of 1965, 23,138 Turkish citizens spoke Pomak as mother language. Proportionally, they were most numerous in Edirne (3.4%), Kırklareli (1.3%) and Çanakkale (1.0%). 2,776 of these could only speak Pomak . Another 34,234 spoke Pomak as second best language. The Pomaks of Turkey speak a Bulgarian dialect. According to Ethnologue at present 300,000 Pomaks in European Turkey speak Bulgarian as mother
Thrace War of Independence. With the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Northern Thrace was incorporated into the semi-autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia, which united with Bulgaria in 1885. The rest of Thrace was divided among Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century, following the Balkan Wars, World War I and the Greco-Turkish War. In Summer 1934, up to 10.000 Jews were maltreated, bereaved and then forced to quit the region (see 1934 Thrace pogroms). Today, "Thracian" is a geographical term used in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. Two main gods of the Bessi Thracians were Dionysus (worshiped