Western Thracians reject "Muslim Greek" identity, demand ethnic recognition

[Bosniensis]

Well, Arabs and other middle easterners call you guys "Yunaney" or "Yunan" since ancient times which is a word came from the Persian word for the Ionians - one of the four main Greek tribes or peoples of the ancient world since they had very close contacts with the middle east for many centuries, not Rum or Rumey which is an Arabic word for Roman.

Except that they speak Greek instead of Latin.

They are called Romans because they were first conquered by Romans in multiple wars.

Western and Eastern Balkans has more Roman Emperors and Latin history than entire Greece and Anatolia combined.

They were called Yunaney which means Ionians, ION was son of Japheth who came from Anatolia and founded Athens and central greece region today.

Romans however are mix of Anatolians, Italians and Balkaners. Kosovars and Albanians are the closest to Ancient Romans today.
Romans:

1. Kosovan (7.844)
2. Bulgarian (11.16)
3. Romanian (12.12)
4. Tuscan (12.38)
5. Bosnian (12.81)
6. North_Italian (12.87)
7. Greek (13.91)
8. Greek_Thessaly (14.64)

[ioan assen]

lol bullshit.
My grandparents did not know a word other than Greek, Shove your cultural marxism where the sun don't shine - don't be salty at our homogeinity.

Sure, but its absurd to deny that a lot of other ethnicities were absorbed, especially if the faith was the same. For example a lot of Greeks were bulgarized on the Black sea coast and a lot of Romanians were bulgarized in northwestern Bulgaria. The same way lots of Bulgarians were Hellenized in Northern Greece. Yes, there was exchange (huge), but still many people remained.

[Thanas Django]

If Muslims in Western Thrace feel they are Turks they should go to the border and exchange their place with a refugee trying to flee their beloved homeland for Greece.

[Petros Houhoulis]

I'm talking about the native Arabs, not others.

Still, he didn't ask them.

[Epirus DNA]

If Muslims in Western Thrace feel they are Turks they should go to the border and exchange their place with a refugee trying to flee their beloved homeland for Greece.

[Dianatomia]

Modern Greeks learned their language in 19th century under the reforms of King Otto, before that you would have to go to Anatolia to learn proper Greek.

Yeah, they were such good forgers that they even invented dialects. I take it that you are trolling or you have no idea about Greek history.

Even today there is about 70 - 100 milion ex-Greek speakers in Turkey and Levant, and they have Roman ancestry.

The Greeks around the Aegean were the core of the Byzantine empire. Constantinople, Thessalonica, Peloponesse, Mystras, the islands, Nicaea. These people not only identified as Romans, but also had a deeper Hellenic consciousness. This is clear from late-Byzantine texts. They were the engine of the empire. When the Greeks fell, so did the empire. It was the ancestors of essentially the modern Greek people who kept the torch alive. The near east was never truly Greek speaking. As for Anatolia, some Greek speakers mixed with large numbers of Irano-Turanic tribes, while many have Armenian, Kurdish and other ancestors.