In 1923, following the mass killing of Christian Ottomans across Anatolia, the surviving Cappadocian communities were forced to leave their native homeland and resettle in Greece by the terms of the Greek–Turkish population exchange.

In the Hellenistic era, following the conquest of Anatolia by Alexander the Great, Greek settlers began arriving in the mountainous regions of Cappadocia at this time.

[38][39] The region became a key Byzantine military district after the advent of Islam and the subsequent Muslim conquest of Syria led to the establishment of a militarized frontier zone (cf kleisoura and thughur) on the border of Cappadocia.

During this period Cappadocia became crucial to the empire and produced numerous Byzantine generals, notably the Phokas clan, warlords (see Karbeas of Tephrike), and intrigue, most importantly the Paulician heresy.

Because they were living in such a volatile region, the Cappadocian Greeks created elaborate underground cities in the volcanic formations of eastern Cappadocia and would take refuge in them during times of danger.

In the 10th century Leo the Deacon recorded a journey to Cappadocia by Nikephoros Phokas, in his writings he mentions that its inhabitants were called Troglodytes, in view of the fact that they “went underground in holes, clefts and labyrinths, as it were in dens and burrows”.

A well-preserved mummified corpse of a young Christian woman is popular with tourists; the blonde haired mummy is believed to be a nun and dates from the Byzantine era, from the 6th to the 11th century.

[47] During the tenth century the Byzantine Empire had pushed east into formerly Arab-ruled lands, including most of Armenia, and had resettled thousands of Armenians into various regions of Cappadocia.

This population shift intensified ethnic tensions between the Cappadocian Greeks and the Armenian newcomers in Cappadocia,[48] and left Armenia largely devoid of native defenders.

Many Byzantine Greek leaders were also tempted to convert to Islam in order to join the Ottoman Turkish aristocracy,[54] although in the beginning of the 20th century, the proportion of Christians in Anatolian population was more than 20%.

[56] Despite the turmoil in Anatolia, by the 13th century the Greeks of Cappadocia, Lycaonia and Pamphylia remained numerous, even under the pressure of the Turkmen nomads, possibly constituting majorities in some urban centers.

[41] During the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murad III (1574 to 1595) the region of Cappadocia became largely Turkified in culture and language through a gradual process of acculturation,[59][60] as a result many Greeks of Anatolia had accepted the Turkish vernacular and some of whom later became known as Karamanlides.

[62][63] Cappadocian Greeks living in remote less accessible villages of Cappadocia remained Greek-speaking and Christian, as they were isolated and consequently less affected by the rapid conversion of the bordering districts to Islam and Turkish speech.

[68] The Cappadocian Greeks, Armenians and Jewish minorities of the Ottoman Empire had created Graeco-Turkish, Armeno-Turkish, and Judeo-Turkish literatures by developing their own written traditions.

[68] Despite the fact that they had lost all knowledge of their own languages after they had been Turkified,[63] the majority of Karamanlides and many Turkophone Armenians eventually revived their original native tongues.

[73][74] During this period the architect Sinan, who was born of Greek parentage and a native of Cappadocia wrote a letter to the Sultan asking for his family to be spared from this population transfer.

[78] Demetrius Charles Boulger later describes their work character, "Each village is connected with some particular guild in Constantinople; one supplies bakals or small storekeepers, another sellers of wine and spirits, another dryers of fish, another makers of caviare, another porters, and so forth.

[80][81] The provinces of Cappadocia and Lycaonia had a large number of Greek settlements and sizeable populations in urban centres such as Kayseri, Nigde, and Konya.

In 1838 British scholar Robert Ainsworth wrote that "The Cappadocian Greeks are, generally speaking, pleasing and unreserved in their manners, and their conversation indicated a very high degree of intelligence and civilization, where there are so few books, and so little education, and consequently, little learning.

"[84] Sir Charles William Wilson, British consul-general in Anatolia from 1879 to 1882, described their character: The Cappadocian Greeks have a reputation throughout Asia Minor for energy and commercial activity; there are few towns in which a merchant from Kaisariyeh is not to be found; and the rocky nature of the country drives even the poorer classes to seek their living elsewhere.

Perhaps the most interesting trait in the character of these Greeks is their intense love of their native country; the great ambition of every man is to earn sufficient money to enable him to build a house and settle down in his beloved Cappadocia.

The south Cappadocian district, in which St. Gregory of Nazianzus once ministered, shows many signs of growing prosperity; building is going on, and the people are vacating, for houses above ground, the subterranean villages, to which they owe the preservation of their faith and language.

[88] On January 31, 1917, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg of Germany reported that: The indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians.

[1] The regions of Greece with significant settlements of Cappadocian Greeks include the cities of Karditsa, Volos, Kilkis, Larisa, Chalkidiki, Kavala, Alexandroupoli and Thessaloniki.

[67] At the beginning of the 20th century, the Cappadocian Greek language still had a strong presence at Gülşehir (formerly Arabison/Arapsu) north-west of Nevşehir, and in the large region southward as far down as Niğde and Bor.

John Robert Sitlington Sterrett travelled through Cappadocia in 1884 and noted: "Melegobi is a large and flourishing village, inhabited almost exclusively by Greek-speaking Greeks.

It is an indisputable fact, that the language of their oppressors has long since almost universally prevailed, and that in a great part of Anatolia even the public worship of the Greeks is now performed in the Turkish tongue.

[65] Today it is still spoken by mainly elderly Cappadocian Greeks in various regions of Greece including in Karditsa, Volos, Kilkis, Larisa, Thessaloniki, Chalkidiki, Kavala, and Alexandroupoli.

[91] Some Cappadocian Greeks who converted to Islam, allowing them to avoid the population exchanges of 1923, still speak the language in their traditional homeland in Turkey[citation needed].

These include the preparing of wind-cured meats known as pastirma,[102][103][104] a delicacy called in Byzantine times "paston",[105][106] along with the use of the ubiquitous Central Anatolian spinach-like herb madimak to make dishes such as a variant of spanikopita.