Minorities in Turkey Minorities in Turkey Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, with at least an estimated 30% of the populace belonging to an ethnic minority. While the Republic of Turkey, following the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, recognizes Armenians, Greeks and Jews as ethnic minorities, this legal status is not granted to Muslim minorities, such as the Kurds, which constitute the largest minority by a wide margin (13–18%), nor any of the other minorities in the country. The amount of ethnic minorities is suspected to be underestimated by the Turkish government. Ethnic Albanians, Pontic Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, Bosniaks,
Population exchange between Greece and Turkey Population exchange between Greece and Turkey The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey (, ) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey. It involved at least 1.6 million people (1,221,489 Greeks from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Alps and the Caucasus, and 355,000 Muslims in Greece), most of whom were forcibly made refugees and "de jure" denaturalized from their homelands. The population exchange was envisioned by Turkey as a way to formalize, and make permanent, the exodus of