The Middle Ages Was the Best We Ever Had

[kılıç_mehmet]

However, blood is not a piece of clothing that you throw away.
And for that matter, I can tell you that there were turkish speaking greeks in Turkey, yet even though they didn't know how to speak greek, they still used the greek alphabet, referred to themselves as greeks, married only amongst their own, and were christians, not muslims.
It was almost too easy to distinguish them from the local Turkish population(in my native Konya region, especially Karaman), since they didn't dress like Turks, did eat pork, and did not even circumcize their young, like all Turks do. But they spoke only Turkish. Those were luckily sent along with the other greeks during the population exchange.
Even if you do not speak your own language anymore, you still do actually retain knowledge about who you really are. Those turcophone greeks have not forgotten who they were, and are now some of the leading nationalists in Greece.

In Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece a hundred years ago religion rather than language was the ethnic divide. Muslims in those areas regarded themselves as Turks, Christians as Greeks, Armenians or Bulgarians.

The population exchanges which occurred between Turkey and Greece in the 1920s sent Turkish speaking Christians to Greece and Greek speaking Muslims to Turkey.

Genetic studies say otherwise, the Azeris and Turks are more related genetically to their neighbors than with other Turkic peoples. Much the same with the Hungarians who are quite closely related genetically with Czechs, Slovaks and Poles than with their cultural cousins.

In Turkey, there were no genetic studies done. No one took blood samples from me, nor from any of my relatives, nor any of my friends.
So I wonder, from whom did those blood samples come from?
Not to mention that we have like 15 millions of kurds in the country too.
And I certainly don't think that any genetic studies were done for Azerbaijan, if they weren't done for Turkey.

The population exchanges which occurred between Turkey and Greece in the 1920s sent Turkish speaking Christians to Greece and Greek speaking Muslims to Turkey.

Greek speaking muslims were quite few in number(most were simply Turks who spoke Turkish), as I already said, that Ottoman authorities did not allow greeks to convert by personal association, so it's evident that most greek speaking muslims are simply assimilated Turks.
Not to mention that even now, most Turks in Greece know how to speak their mother language, and practice most of it's customs, as with the Turks in other areas of the Balkans.

In Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece a hundred years ago religion rather than language was the ethnic divide. Muslims in those areas regarded themselves as Turks, Christians as Greeks, Armenians or Bulgarians.

You speak of the Balkans, where the christians described the muslims as "Turks". The muslims did always make a distinction between Turks and themselves, just like the eygptians did with the Mameluks in Egypt. This is the reason that there are different nation states in the Balkans, otherwise, Albanians and bosnians would simply call themselves Turks. In Turkey, the non-turk muslims did not regard themselves as "Turks". They still don't. And the 15 million kurds in Turkey, testify to that. And well, the circassians, who number around 2 million, are recent newcomers, who were not around in Anatolia for that long, as a matter of fact.
Besides, I already said that most Turks can trace their family to a yörük family, or at least a family that was known to be Turkmens.
My family are of Tatars(Balsar clan), and of Balkan Turks(who trace their ancestry back to the Kurtoğulları clan).