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Türkiye'deki Pomaklar | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| 750,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Eastern Thrace | |
| Languages | |
| Pomak, Turkish | |
| Religion | |
| Sunni Islam | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| South Slavs (mainly Bulgarians and Macedonians) |
The Pomaks in Turkey refers to an ethnic group, who are Sunni muslims, and speak their own dialect of Pomak language. [1] They mostly live in Eastern Thrace, though some are also present in Anatolia. [2]
| Year | As first language | As second language | Total | Turkey's population | % of Total speakers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1935 | 32,661 | 8,380 | 41,041 | 16,157,450 | 0.25 |
| 1945 | 10,287 | 5,594 | 15,881 | 18,790,174 | 0.08 |
| 1950 | 36,612 | 0 | 36,612 | 20,947,188 | 0.17 |
| 1955 | 16,163 | 22,816 | 38,979 | 24,064,763 | 0.16 |
| 1960 | 24,098 | 28,602 | 52,700 | 27,754,820 | 0.19 |
| 1965 | 23,138 | 34,234 | 57,372 | 31,391,421 | 0.18 |
In the census of 1965, those who spoke Pomak as first language were proportionally numerous in Edirne (3.4%), Kırklareli (1.3%) and Çanakkale (1.0%).
The Pomaks of Turkey speak a Bulgarian dialect. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] According to Ethnologue at present 300,000 Pomaks in European Turkey speak Bulgarian as mother tongue. [9] It is very hard to estimate the number of Pomaks along with the Turkified Pomaks who live in Turkey, as they have blended into the Turkish society and have been often linguistically and culturally assimilated. [10] According to Milliyet and Turkish Daily News reports, the number of the Pomaks along with the Turkified Pomaks in the country is about 600,000. [10] [11]
The Demographics of Greece refer to the demography of the population that inhabits the Greek peninsula. The population of Greece was estimated by the United Nations to be 10,445,365 in 2021.
Demographic features of the population of Turkey include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Pomaks are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims inhabiting northwestern Turkey, Bulgaria and northeastern Greece. The c. 220,000 strong ethno-confessional minority in Bulgaria is recognized officially as Bulgarian Muslims by the government. The term has also been used as a wider designation, including also the Slavic Muslim populations of North Macedonia and Albania.
The Gorani or Goranci, are a Slavic Muslim ethnic group inhabiting the Gora region—the triangle between Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia. They number an estimated 60,000 people, and speak a transitional South Slavic dialect, called Goranski. The vast majority of the Gorani people adhere to Sunni Islam.
Western Thrace or West Thrace, also known as Greek Thrace, is a geographic and historical region of Greece, between the Nestos and Evros rivers in the northeast of the country; East Thrace, which lies east of the river Evros, forms the European part of Turkey, and the area to the north, in Bulgaria, is known as Northern Thrace.
The Muslim Bulgarians are Bulgarians who follow the faith of Islam. They are generally thought to be the descendants of the local Slavs who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule. Most scholars have agreed that the Bulgarian Muslims are a "religious group of Bulgarian Slavs who speak Bulgarian as their mother tongue and do not understand Turkish, but whose religion and customs are Islamic". Bulgarian Muslims live mostly in the Rhodopes – Smolyan Province, the southern part of the Pazardzhik and Kardzhali Provinces and the eastern part of the Blagoevgrad Province in Southern Bulgaria. They also live in a group of villages in the Lovech Province in Northern Bulgaria. The name Pomak is pejorative in Bulgarian and is resented by most members of the community, The name adopted and used instead of Pomak is Bulgarian Muslims.
Turkish people or Turks are the largest Turkic people who speak various dialects of the Turkish language and form a majority in Turkey and Northern Cyprus. In addition, centuries-old ethnic Turkish communities still live across other former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a "Turk" as: "Anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship." While the legal use of the term "Turkish" as it pertains to a citizen of Turkey is different from the term's ethnic definition, the majority of the Turkish population are of Turkish ethnicity. The vast majority of Turks are Muslims and follow the Sunni and Alevi faith.
Bulgarian Turks are ethnic Turks from Bulgaria. According to the 2021 census, there were 508,375 Bulgarians of Turkish descent, roughly 8.4% of the population, making them the country's largest ethnic minority. Bulgarian Turks also comprise the largest single population of Turks in the Balkans. They primarily live in the southern province of Kardzhali and the northeastern provinces of Shumen, Silistra, Razgrad and Targovishte. There is also a diaspora outside Bulgaria in countries such as Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Romania, the most significant of which are the Bulgarian Turks in Turkey.
Minorities in Greece are small in size compared to Balkan regional standards, and the country is largely ethnically homogeneous. This is mainly due to the population exchanges between Greece and neighboring Turkey and Bulgaria, which removed most Muslims and those Christian Slavs who did not identify as Greeks from Greek territory. The treaty also provided for the resettlement of ethnic Greeks from those countries, later to be followed by refugees. There is no official information for the size of the ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities because asking the population questions pertaining to the topic have been abolished since 1951.
The Slavic dialects of Greece are the Eastern South Slavic dialects of Macedonian and Bulgarian spoken by minority groups in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace in northern Greece. Usually, dialects in Thrace are classified as Bulgarian, while the dialects in Macedonia are classified as Macedonian, with the exception of some eastern dialects which can also be classified as Bulgarian. Before World War II, most linguists considered all of these dialects to be Bulgarian dialects. However, other linguists opposed this view and considered Macedonian dialects as comprising an independent language distinct from both Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian.
Turks of Western Thrace are ethnic Turks who live in Western Thrace, in the province of East Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece.
The Muslim minority of Greece is the only explicitly recognized minority in Greece. It numbered 97,605 according to the 1991 census, and unofficial estimates ranged up to 140,000 people or 1.24% of the total population, according to the United States Department of State.
The official language of Greece is Greek, spoken by 99% of the population. In addition, a number of non-official, minority languages and some Greek dialects are spoken as well. The most common foreign languages learned by Greeks are English, German, French and Italian.
The languages of Turkey, apart from the official language Turkish, include the widespread Kurdish (Kurmanji) and Arabic, and a number of less common minority languages. Four minority languages are officially recognized in the Republic of Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty of 18 October 1925: Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Hebrew. In 2013, the Ankara 13th Circuit Administrative Court ruled that the minority provisions of the Lausanne Treaty should also apply to Assyrians in Turkey and the Syriac language.
The Romani people in Turkey or Turks of Romani background are Turkish citizens and the biggest subgroup of the Turkish Roma. They are Sunni Muslims mostly of Sufi orientation, who speak Turkish as their first language, in their own accent, and have adopted Turkish culture. Many have denied their Romani background over the centuries in order to establish a Turkish identity, to become more accepted by the host population. They identify themselves as Turks of Oghuz ancestry. More specifically, some have claimed to be members of the Yörüks, Amuca, Gajal or Tahtacı.
The geographical distribution of speakers of Macedonian refers to the total number of native speakers of Macedonian, an East South Slavic language that serves as the official language of North Macedonia. Estimates of the number of native and second language speakers of Macedonian varies; the number of native speakers in the country ranges from 1,344,815 according to the 2002 census in North Macedonia to 1,476,500 per linguistic database Ethnologue in 2016. Estimates of the total number of speakers in the world include 3.5 million people. Macedonian is studied and spoken as a second language by all ethnic minorities in the country.
Bulgarians in Turkey form a minority of Turkey. They are Bulgarian expatriates in Turkey or Turkish citizens was born there of full or partially Bulgarian descent. People of Bulgarian ancestry include a large number from the Pomak and a very small number of Orthodox of ethnic Bulgarian origin. Bulgarian Christians are officially recognized as a minority by the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty of 18 October 1925.
The "Revival Process" or the "Process of Rebirth" refers to a policy of forced assimilation practiced by the socialist Bulgarian government in the 1980s (1984-1989). It was the culmination of a series of repressive assimilationist campaigns directed at the country's Muslim minority. The "Revival Process" was in turn followed by the forced expulsion of over 300,000 Muslims in 1989.
Pomak language is a term used in Greece and Turkey to refer to some of the Rup dialects of the Bulgarian language spoken by the Pomaks of Western Thrace in Greece and Eastern Thrace in Turkey. These dialects are native also in Bulgaria, and are classified as part of the Smolyan subdialect. Not all Pomaks speak this dialect as their mother language.
Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, representing an estimated 25 to 28 percent of the population. Historically, in the Ottoman Empire, Islam was the official and dominant religion, with Muslims having different duties from non-Muslims. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious groups were legally identified by different millet ("nations").
