Muslim minority of Greece

[2] 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, with most numbers descending from Ottoman-era Greek converts to Islam and 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.

During the Balkan wars and the First World War, Western Thrace, along with the rest of Northern Greece, became part of Greece and the Muslim minority remained in Western Thrace, numbering approximately 86,000 people,[3] and consisting of three ethnic groups: the Turks (here usually referred to as Western Thrace Turks), the Pomaks (Muslim Slavs who speak Bulgarian), and the Muslim Roma, in smaller numbers, that descended from Ottoman-era Greek converts to Islam, like the Vallahades, each of these groups having its own language and culture.

[3] According to the Greek government, Turkish speakers form approximately 50% of the minority, Pomaks 35% and Muslim Roma 15%.

This was in correspondence with the Millet system of the Ottoman Empire, where religious and national allegiance coincided, and thus Greece and Turkey were considered the parent state of each group respectively.

[8] The Sharia law used to be mandatory among the Muslim citizens of Greece, a situation that stems from the Ottoman era and predates its reinforcement by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty,[9][10] making Greece the only country in Europe which had applied Sharia law to a section of its citizens against their wishes.

However, the European Court of Human Rights in its 2018 ruling, found unanimously that the mandatory application of Sharia law on the Muslim minority to be a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), by Greece.

[11][12] According to the lawyers, this was a big step since, as the minority's issues would be, from now on, judged according to the Greek law instead, which gives same rights to men and women, unlike Sharia.

[3] Human Rights Watch alleges that this is against Lausanne Treaty which grants the Muslim minority the right to organize and conduct religious affairs free from government interference[21] (although it is unclear whether issues such as inheritance law are religious matters).

According to official statistics 46,638 Muslims (most of them being of Turkish origin) from Thrace and the Dodecanese islands lost their citizenships from 1955 to 1998, until the law was non-retroactively abolished in 1998.

[23] The final controversial issue is the use of the ethnic terms "Turk" and "Turkish" when describing the religious minority in Western Thrace as a whole.