|
|
|
|
Greeks Living in Turkey Today
Today, less than 5.000 Greeks are living in Turkey. Most of them lives in Istanbul. There are a few left in the cities of Anatolia. They are generally very old people. The young generation is leaving the country for Greece or North America.
The remaining Greeks live generally in modern regions of Istanbul as Kurtuluş, Nişantaşı, Şişli or Kadıköy at Anatolian part of the city. There are remaining Greek quarters with a very few Greek people living at the historical parts of Istanbul. In Kumkapı, Karagümrük, Samatya, Balat there are a lot of Greek churches but only a few people living in these very ancient Greek quarters. Even in Fener where the patriarchate is located, maybe less then 100 Greeks live today.
Some of
the population is distributed to the settlements near Bosphorus starting from
Marmara sea to the Black Sea end. For example in Yeniköy,
Arnavutköy, Emirgan, Kuzguncuk there are small Greek communities
with their churches even today. Nearly
all the Greeks have their summer residences in the Princess
Islands. Especially in Heybeliada,
Buyukada and Burgaz, there
are still a lot of Greeks and these islands are mostly populated by non-Muslims
like Armenians, Greeks and Jews.
Another
location where the Greek community lives is the islands Imroz
and Bozcaada near Dardanelles.
But today the community is diminishing very fast and only a few hundreds of
Greeks remained there. There are also people coming from Greek origin living in Hatay, Adana and Mersin. They were considered to be Arab Orthodoxes as they spoke Arabic, so they were excluded from the exchange and could be able to stay in Anatolia. They cannot speak Greek, and they have Turkish names now. Their population is about 4000-5000, and they are faithful to the Patriarchate of Antiochia in Damascus.
|
|
|
