Cretan Muslims

Historical Muslim population of Crete

Cretan Muslims were descendants of ethnic Greeks who had converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest of Crete in the seventeenth century. They identified as Greek Muslims, and were referred to as "Turks" by some Christian Greeks due to their religion; not their ethnic background. This high rate of local conversions to Islam was similar to that in Bosnia Herzegovina, Albania, parts of western North Macedonia, and Bulgaria; perhaps even a uniquely high rate of conversions rather than immigrants. The Greek Muslims of Crete continued to speak Cretan Greek. Intermarriage and conversion to Islam produced a group of people called Turkocretans; ethnically Greek but converted (or feigning conversion) to Islam for various practical reasons. European travellers' accounts note that the 'Turks' of Crete were mostly not of Turkic origin, but were Cretan converts from Orthodoxy." Sectarian violence during the 19th century caused many Muslims to leave Crete, especially during the Cretan Revolt (1897–1898), and after Crete's unilateral declaration of union with Greece in 1908. Finally, after the Greco Turkish War of 1919–1922 and the Turkish War of Independence, the remaining Muslims of Crete were compulsorily exchanged for the Greek Christians of Anatolia under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). At all periods, most Cretan Muslims were Greek speaking, Those who left Crete in the late 19th and early 20th centuries settled largely along Turkey's Aegean and Mediterranean coast. Alongside Ayvalık and Cunda Island, they settled in İzmir, Çukurova, Bodrum, Side, Mudanya, Adana and Mersin.

A study by one Greek researcher counts six Cretan Muslims who engaged themselves into music in Cretan Greek dialect. The Cretans brought the musical tradition they shared with the Cretan Christians to Turkey with them:
One of the significant aspects of Giritli culture is that this Islamic—often Bektashi—sensibility is expressed through the Greek language. [There has been] some confusion about their cultural identity, and an assumption is often made that their music was somehow more "Turkish" than "Cretan". In my view this assumption is quite wrong

But certain instruments were more often used by Christians: there are few cases of Muslim Cretan lyra players compared to Christians: the very name for that instrument in Turkish language being Rum kemençesi – Greek kemenche.

Nuances may be observed among the waves of immigrations from Crete and the respective behavioral patterns. At the end of the 19th century Muslims fled reprisal to take refuge in the present day territory of Turkey or beyond (see Al Hamidiyah). During the 1910s, with the termination of the Cretan State which had recognized the Muslim community of the island a proper status, many others left. The Greco Turkish War (1919–22) the adaptation to the "fatherland" did not always take place without pain, including that of being subjected to slurs as in other cases involving immigration of people. According to Peter Loizos, they were often relegated to the poorest land:
They were briefly feted on arrival, as 'Turks' 'returning' to the Turkish heartland like the Asia Minor Christians seeking to settle on land in northern Greece, the Muslim refugees found that local people, sometimes government officials, had already occupied the best land and housing. The same author depicts a picture where they did not share the "Ottoman perceptions of certain crafts and trades as being of low status", In the summary translation of a book on Bodrum made by Loizos, it is stated that, even as late as 1967, the Cretans and the 'local Turks' did not mix in some towns; they continued to speak Greek and mostly married other Cretans.