Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe be declared as having lost Greek nationality...” The Turkish minority was forced to migrate. While the vast majority of migration wave was towards Turkey, some groups chose to migrate to other European countries, in particular to Germany. Today, the population of Western Thrace Turks in Germany amounts to 30,000. A considerable number of Western Thrace Turks live in other EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, England, Sweden, France, Belgium and Austria. The need to keep alive their cultural values and maintain solidarity in their host countries led the Western Thrace Turks to create collectively created associations. In Germany, the
Eastern Macedonia and Thrace governor and former Prefect of Rhodopi, (PASOK), elected in the 2010 regional election. The region is home to Greece's main Muslim minority, made up mainly of Pomaks and Western Thrace Turks, whose presence dates to the Ottoman period. Unlike the Muslims of Greek Macedonia, Epirus, and elsewhere in northern Greece, they were exempted from the Greek-Turkish population exchange following the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne (1923). According to the 1991 census, the Muslim minority numbered around 98,000 people or 29% of the population of Western Thrace, of which about half were Western Thrace Turks and the rest (35%) Pomaks and Muslim