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
Bulgarians in Turkey Orthodox Bulgarians who settled in Ottoman-ruled northwestern Anatolia, possibly in the 18th century, and remained there until 1914. Much more intense was the fate of the Bulgarian population of Eastern Thrace in the Ottoman Province ("vilâyet") of Edirne. According to Lyubomir Miletich's detailed study of the province published in 1918, the Bulgarian population of the province (today mostly in Turkey, with smaller parts in Greece and Bulgaria) in 1912 numbered 298,726, of whom 176,554 Exarchists, 24,970 Patriarchists, 1,700 Eastern Catholics and 95,502 Muslims (Pomaks). In the Çorlu and Constantinople regions, Miletich estimates the Bulgarian population at a further 10,000. After