Muslim Roma in the context of "Balkan Romani"

The Muslim minority of Greece is the only explicitly recognized minority in Greece. It numbered 97,605 (0.91% of the population) 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.

Like other parts of the southern Balkans that experienced centuries of Ottoman rule, the Muslim minority of mainly Western Thrace in Northern Greece consists of several ethnic groups, some being Turkish speaking and some Bulgarian-speaking Pomaks, while others descend from Ottoman-era Greek converts to Islam and also Muslim Romas. While the legal status of the Muslim minority in Greece is enshrined in international law, namely the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which also governs the status of the "Greek inhabitants of Constantinople" (the only group of the indigenous Greek population in Turkey that was exempt from forced expulsion under the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, along with that of the islands of Imbros and Tenedos under Article 14 of the Treaty), precise definitions pertaining thereto and scope of applicability thereof remain contested between the two countries.

Muhacir is a term referring to Ottoman Muslim citizens and their descendants born after the onset of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Muhacirs overwhelmingly self-identified as Muslims and their numbers are estimated in the millions. The refugees from Macedonia, Bulgaria, and parts of Serbia had primarily Anatolian Turkish background. Other backgrounds included Albanians, Bosniaks, Chechens, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Pomaks, Macedonian Muslims, Greek Muslims, Serb Muslims, Georgian Muslims, Ossetian Muslims and Muslim Roma.

They immigrated to modern-day Turkey, mostly in the 19th and early 20th centuries to escape the persecution of Ottoman Muslims by Christians in territories formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Further migration from Bulgaria occurred from 1940 to 1990. Up to a third of the modern-day population of Turkey may have ancestry from these Turkish and other Muslim migrants.

Turks of Western Thrace (Turkish: Batı Trakya Türkleri; Greek: Τούρκοι της Δυτικής Θράκης, romanized: Toúrkoi tis Dytikís Thrákis) are ethnic Turks who live in Western Thrace, in the province of East Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece.

According to the Greek census of 1991, there were approximately 50,000 of Turkish origin in Western Thrace, out of the approximately 98,000 strong Muslim minority of Greece. Other sources estimate the size of the Muslim community between 90,000 and 120,000. Their community of Western Thrace is not to be confused with Pomaks nor with Muslim Roma people of the same region, counting 35% and 15% of the Muslim minority respectively.

During the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Muslim inhabitants (including Turks, Kurds, Albanians, Bosnian Muslims, Circassians, Serb Muslims, Greek Muslims, Muslim Roma, Pomaks) living in territories previously under Ottoman control often found themselves persecuted after borders were re-drawn. These populations were subject to genocide, expropriation, massacres, religious persecution, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing.

The 19th century saw the rise of nationalism in the Balkans coincide with the decline of Ottoman power, which resulted in the establishment of an independent Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. At the same time, the Russian Empire expanded into previously Ottoman-ruled or Ottoman-allied regions of the Caucasus and the Black Sea region. These conflicts such as the Circassian genocide created large numbers of Muslim refugees. Persecutions of Muslims resumed during World War I by the invading Russian troops in the east and during the Turkish War of Independence in the west, east, and south of Anatolia by Greek troops and Armenian fedayis. After the Greco-Turkish War, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey took place, and most Muslims of Greece left. During these times many Muslim refugees, called Muhacir, settled in Turkey.

Rumelian Romani is a dialect of Southern Balkan Romani of strong Turkish pronunciation with Turkish and Greek loanwords, traditionally spoken by Muslim Romani people (Xoraxane) in the Balkans. It was historically spoken by Romanies in Ottoman Rumelia, especially by sedentary Romani people of various subgroups in Edirne in East Thrace First described by Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname in 1668, of the Muslim Roma in Gümülcine, and later by William Marsden in 1785 and by Alexandros Georgios Paspatis (Paspati), a scholar of the Romani language in 1870. This Romani dialect is almost extinct in East Thrace, but still spoken by Muslim Roma in West Thrace and some other parts of the Balkans.