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 1927, Turkish officials had settled 32,315 individuals from Greece in the province of Bursa alone. According to some sources, the population exchange, albeit messy and dangerous for many, was executed fairly quickly by respected supervisors. If the goal of the exchange was to achieve ethnic-national homogeneity, then this was achieved by both Turkey and Greece. For example, in 1906, nearly 20 percent of the population of present-day Turkey was non-Muslim, but by 1927, only 2.6 percent was. The architect of the exchange was Fridtjof Nansen, commissioned by the League of Nations. As the first official high commissioner for refugees, Nansen