Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest in Eastern Thrace and Western Asia), Turkey takes part in lots of Westerner organisations including their NATO membership in 1952 and associate membership in the European Economic Community in 1959. Test transmissions started on TRT 1 on 31 January 1968. A full national television schedule, which at that time linked the areas in and around Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir, started in December 1971. TRT renewed its membership in the European Broadcasting Union (having been a founding member previously offering only radio) starting on 26 August 1972 with Turkey's first Eurovision Network event, a football match (Turkey vs. Italy), on 13
Turks of Western Thrace usually insisted that the basis of identification of a minority is religious and not ethnic (or national). Thus Greek officials refer to the Muslim minority in Greece as Greek Muslims, who were based mainly in Western Thrace. Muslim communities also lived in Greek Macedonia, Epirus, and Crete (see Cretan Turks) and were the descendants of Ottoman-era Greek converts to Islam who joined the Turkish Millet (Ottoman Empire). However, these particular communities were relocated from Greece to Turkey following the Population exchange signed between the two countries in 1922-23, with only the Greek Muslims of Western Thrace exempted from it. Successive