Lingualia LingualiaEurope’s regional and minority languages

Languages · Turkic languages

Turkish

Spoken in : Greece

01. Data about the language

At a glance

Identifiers
ISO 639-3 tur · Glottolog nucl1301

The Turkish-speaking population of Greece live in Western Thrace. They are Muslims by religion. During the last two decades, a few thousand Turkish speakers (mostly gypsies) have emigrated to Athens and Thessaliniki urban areas. The vast majority of Muslim gypsies (who lived originally only in Western Thrace) have Turkish as their mother tongue. There is also a small Turkish-speaking community on the Dodecanessa islands.

Hellenised, latinised, and then slavinised ; Thrace received the first arrivals of Turkish people in the XIth century ; migrations continued during the whole Ottoman period. At the end of the war between Greece and Turkey, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 regulated the population movements in between the two countries. One Muslim minority was allowed in one country and one Christian minority in Turkey. The Muslim minority of Greece includes Turkish people, Muslim Bulgarians (Pomaks) and some of the Gypsies ; its existence is warranted and its rights are officially established.

Updated, sourced data, checked on 14 October 2026 · scope : Grèce (Thrace occidentale) · Get updates for this language

Status

The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) protects the rights of the Muslim minority of Thrace, including freedom of worship and teaching in Turkish1.

02. Poem

Original Translation
Ben Yürürüm Yana Yana
I Walk Burning
Ben yürürem yana yana Aşk boyadı beni kana Ne âkilem ne divane Gel gör beni aşk neyledi
I walk on, burning, burning, Love has dyed me in blood, I am neither sane nor mad, Come and see what love has done to me.
Gâh eserim yeller gibi Gâh tozarım yollar gibi Gâh çağlarım seller gibi Gel gör beni aşk neyledi
Now I blow like the winds, Now I rise like the dust of the roads, Now I roar like the floods, Come and see what love has done to me.
Ben yürürem elden ele Dost sorarım dilden dile Gurbette halim kim bile Gel gör beni aşk neyledi
I wander from land to land, I ask for my friend in every tongue, Who knows my plight in exile? Come and see what love has done to me.
Benzim sarı gözlerim yaş Bağrım yara ciğerim taş Halim bilen derdli kardaş Gel gör beni aşk neyledi
My face is pale, my eyes are wet, My breast is wounded, my heart is stone, O grieving brother who knows my plight, Come and see what love has done to me.
Aşkın beni mest eyledi Aldı gönlüm hast-eyledi Öldürmeğe kast eyledi Gel gör beni aşk neyledi
Your love has made me drunk, It took my heart and made it sick, It has resolved to kill me, Come and see what love has done to me.
Ben YUNUS-i biçareyim Aşk elinden avareyim Baştan ayağa yareyim Gel gör beni aşk neyledi
I am Yunus the helpless, A wanderer at the hand of love, Wounded from head to foot, Come and see what love has done to me.
Yunus Emre (v. 1240 - v. 1320)
Original text: Halk Edebiyatı Antolojisi, on Turkish Wikisource (public domain)
Translation: Lingualia (2026)

03. Linguistic description

Turkish is an agglutinative language: a single verb can carry six or seven grammatical categories as suffixes, including negation1. It has no grammatical gender and puts the verb at the end of the sentence1. Its grammar distinguishes what one has witnessed from what one reports or infers1. Tea is çay, from Chinese cha1,2.

Sources

The 2003 CD had no description of this language: this text was written for the site from the sources below.

  1. WALS Online – Turkish, World Atlas of Language Structures, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 2013 (v2026).
  2. Ö. Dahl, « Tea », chapitre 138 du WALS, World Atlas of Language Structures, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 2013.

04. Cartoon

Pepee - Yeni Bölüm - Uyumak Çok Güzeldir 1 Pepe - Çocuk Şarkıları & Eğitici Çizgi Film | Düşyeri
Cartoon · 5 min 10 s · channel: Düşyeri · YouTube

Video hosted on YouTube and published by the channel shown; its author may remove it at any time.