https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15321/turkey-islamized-christians
“The Turkish persecution of Pontian Greeks and other Christian peoples began after the fall of Trabzon, starting slowly at first and gradually becoming more widespread and terrifying… Many Christians reluctantly converted to Islam to avoid oppression… and merely to survive. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, approximately 250,000 Pontian Greeks were forced to convert…. and speak Turkish.” — The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, 2014.
The conquests by Turks resulted in the violent and destructive Islamization of the Byzantine civilization.
The Turkish people need to learn the truth about the history of both the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Only the truth can liberate the people of Turkey from the past that haunts them to this day.
A recent statement by a Turkish mayor belonging to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was particularly noteworthy in the wake of the US Senate’s December 12 resolution to “commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance.”
Mayor Hayrettin Güngör of Kahramanmaraş was caught on camera telling a woman from Trabzon, “We made you Muslim.”