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
Albanian-speakers of Western Thrace Muslims of Western Thrace and the Christians of Istanbul. Under this provision, the Albanian Orthodox community of Eastern Thrace, was re-accommodated in Western Thrace, where they settled mainly in new and ethnically homogeneous villages built in order to receive the refugees. Today, this population lives in the same villages, but a part emigrated to bigger towns such as Thessaloniki and Athens, making the Albanian language less used. Albanian-speakers inhabit 15 homogeneous and 14 mixed villages: Albanian-speakers of Western Thrace Albanian-speakers form a linguistic minority in Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace along the border with Turkey. They speak the Northern Tosk