Why aren't Southern Italians and Sicilians allowed to claim Greek ancestry?

[Dandelion]

Eastern Roman Empire at its peak (it didn't manage to hold Italy for long, plague and subsequent instability happened) doesn't say anything about the Greek presence. Pre-Roman Greek settlements in Southern Italy including East Sicily do.

[JohnSmith]

Eastern Roman Empire don't buy the defacto Greek thing.

They did speak Greek.

[wvwvw]

I think it depends on how sure they can be. But it then opens the door for Turks on Asia Minor may also claim Greek ancestry.

Asia Minor Greeks have been ethnically cleansed those who weren't genocided.

[JohnSmith]

Asia Minor Greeks have been ethnically cleansed those who weren't genocided.

There is even a small Greek Population in India from the Alexander the Great conquest.

[JohnSmith]

"Many Greeks migrated to the new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as far away as what are now Uzbekistan, the northern Indian subcontinent (including modern-day Pakistan),[7] and Kuwait.[8] The Hellenistic cities of Seleucia, Antioch and Alexandria were among the largest cities in the world during Hellenistic and Roman times.[9] Under the Roman Empire, movement of people spread Greeks across the Empire and in the eastern territories Greek became the lingua franca rather than Latin. The Roman Empire became Christianized in the fourth century AD, and in the late Byzantine period, practice of the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity became a defining hallmark of Greek identity.[10]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_diaspora