When Did Turkey stop speaking Greek?

Upon the death of Alexander, Asia Minor was ruled by a number of Hellenistic kingdoms such as the Attalids of Pergamum. A period of peaceful Hellenization followed, such that the local Anatolian languages had been supplanted by Greek by the 1st century BC.

What do Turks think about the Byzantines?

Byzantine rulers were considered to be corrupt despots, entangled in various palace intrigues (in Turkish: Bizans entrikaları), and their subject people have been traditionally described as welcoming the Turkish conquerors, who they considered to be more just and fair than their own rulers.

Did the Ottomans speak Greek?

Educated Ottoman Turks spoke Arabic and Persian, as these were the main non-Turkish languages in the pre-Tanzimat era. In most of Anatolia, Turkish was the majority language, but Greek, Armenian and, in the east and southeast, Kurdish and Aramaic languages were also spoken.

What is the relationship between the Byzantine Empire and the Greeks?

After a period of Mongolian rule, they conquered more and more land until the 15th Century when they were attacking the Byzantine Empire from all sides. With the Venetians in the west and the Turks in the east, the Greeks are sandwiched between two major powers, both taking what they want and fighting over the rest.

What happened to the Greeks who were in the Ottoman Empire?

After the end of the Greco-Turkish War, most of the Greeks remaining in the Ottoman Empire were transferred to Greece under the terms of the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The criteria for the population exchange were not exclusively based on ethnicity or mother language, but on religion as well.

Why is it wrong to say that Greece was occupied by Turks?

For this reason it is also incorrect to say that Greece was occupied by the Turks for 400 years. There was no Greece to occupy. We use the name Greece to refer to the geographic area in which ancient City States (that were independent countries after all) evolved and fought. In Roman times it was a province as it was during Ottoman times.

What happened to the Greek community in Istanbul?

After years of persecution (e.g. the Varlık Vergisi and the Istanbul Pogrom ), emigration of ethnic Greeks from the Istanbul region greatly accelerated, reducing the Greek minority population from 119,822 before the attack to about 7,000 by 1978.