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
Islam in Greece aimed to give the impression that the Muslims of the region are the descendants of Ottoman-era ethnic Greek converts to Islam like the Vallahades of pre-1923 Greek Macedonia and so thereby avoid a possible future situation in which Western Thrace is ceded to Turkey on the basis of the ethnic origin of its Muslim inhabitants. The term "Muslim minority" (Μουσουλμανική μειονότητα "Musulmanikí mionótita") refers to an Islamic religious, linguistic and ethnic minority in western Thrace, which is part of the Greek administrative region of East Macedonia and Thrace. In 1923, under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek