Modern Greece's Multi-Ethnic Coloured Rainbow

[Onur]

Bill77`s post in this thread;

This is all borrowed from "My Opera" blog back in 25. FEBRUARY 2009, 00:17:22.

Urum http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=uum

A language of Georgia
ISO 639-3:
Rum-Population 97,746 in Georgia (2000 WCD). Population total all countries: 192,729.
Region Caucasus.
In recent years there has been emigration of Urum speakers from Georgia to Greece. Also spoken in Greece, Ukraine.
Dialects Related to Crimean Tatar. A number of inherently intelligible dialects.
Classification-Altaic, Turkic
Comments Spoken by ethnic 'Greeks'.

Also spoken in:
Ukraine
Language name Urum
Population 94,983 in Ukraine (2000 WCD).
Region- A few villages in the Donetsk Oblast of southeastern Ukraine. 10 villages total.
Comments Spoken by ethnic 'Greeks'.

URUMI http://www.qypchaq.unesco.kz/urums-en.htm
The Urums are a national minority...
The official name of these people is Greeks.
North Azovian Urums - Greeks Speaking Turkic Language

My post here from last year;

Urums are christian Tatar Turks by ethnically and linguistically. There is no doubt about that.

They lived around Crimea(historical Tatar land) to today`s Georgia, Azerbaijan and they never spoke Greek throughout history. Their mothertongue is Tatar dialect of Turkish as you can guess. They had pretty much no relation whatsoever with Greeks or Greek language except their adherence to Istanbul patriarchy in Ottoman Empire era.

When Russians decided to expel all the Tatar Turks out of Crimea, they were also the subjects of the great exodus even tough they weren't muslims because they were Turks nevertheless. They forcibly migrated into Anatolia. Some stayed in Turkey but some migrated into Greece. The ones who gone to Greece most likely undergone into Hellenic assimilation machine.

I`ve read the book of one of the earliest travelers in Europe few weeks ago and that`s why i revived this thread. Read this;


The bondage and travels of Johann Schiltberger, a native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427

Schiltberger travels through to the north of Blacksea here, somewhere between today`s Ukraine and Georgia. As you can read here, he is talking about priests and a christian community there who preaches in their Turkic/Turkish mothertongue (Tartar tongue in his term) around 1396 AD. Schiltberger uses the word "infidels" for the muslims, so we understand that these priests was also converting muslims to christianity. Already these people was muslim for only 2-3 generation at that time.

Ottoman empire annexed these lands in 1470s and b4 that, these places were under Venetian/Genoa dominance who does commerce by using Crimean seaports for about a century and together with eastern Romans, they were constantly sending missioners to these lands to christianize local Turkic speaking people. And after Ottoman empire took over the north of Blacksea in 1470s, these Turkish speaking christians (later to be called as Urums of Crimea and Georgia) obviously went under the influence of the Istanbul patriarchy.

Russians expelled all the Turkish speaking population from these lands (regardless of christian or muslim) after 1850s and then they settled today`s Ukrainian people in there. These so-called "Turkish speaking Urum Greeks" eventually ended up in Greece and their numbers was far more than 100.000. Actually there was a post in this forum with migration statistics to Greece which includes the so-called Greeks of Caucasus but i couldn't find it.

So, where are our Greek forum members who always claims that these people supposedly forced to speak Turkish in Ottoman era??? Schiltberger confirms the existence of Turkish speaking christians even b4 the Ottoman domination in the north of Blacksea and several other travelers noted the same for central Anatolian Turkish speaking christians (karamanlides, cappadocians) as early as 15th century. Also eastern Romans was talking about the Turks being converted as christians in early 13th century. So, these historical facts and proofs leaves no question that these people was originally speaking Turkish ~1000 years ago and they only learned to speak Greek ~100 years ago. They also constitutes considerable amount of today`s so-called Greek population.