Greek Muslims - Crimea

Crimea

In the Middle Ages the Greek population of Crimea traditionally adhered to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, even despite undergoing linguistic assimilation by the local Crimean Tatars. In 1777–1778, when Catherine the Great of Russia conquered the peninsula from the Ottoman Empire, the local Orthodox population was forcibly deported and settled north of the Azov Sea. In order to avoid deportation, some Greeks chose to convert to Islam. Crimean Tatar-speaking Muslims of the village of Kermenchik (renamed to Vysokoe in 1945) kept their Greek identity and were practising Christianity in secret for a while. In the nineteenth century the lower half of Kermenchik was populated with Christian Greeks from Turkey, whereas the upper remained Muslim. By the time of the Stalinist deportation of 1944, the Muslims of Kermenchik had already been identified as Crimean Tatars, and were forcibly expelled to Central Asia together with the rest of Crimea's ethnic minorities.