Omer Asan

The Turkish writer, Omer Asan was born in 1961 in Trebizond, Byzantine Monastery 5th century, Pontos an area with strong Islamic traditions and with many Greek speaking inhabitants. It is where an aging community still speaks the Pontian language that is related to Greek. Omer Asan, an economist turned writer, is a Greek-speaking Turk who was driven to write Pontos Kultura in 1996. He said, "I began to search for my identity because of the fact that the language my ancestors spoke was not Turkish ... At school they taught us that we were Turks ... but at home, in the village, everyone in the family spoke to each other in the language we called 'Romaiika'... By asking 'Who am I?' I plunged into the unknown. I had to find the answer ... I began, in amateur fashion, to collect Pontian words. I decided to focus my research on Erekioi, my village of Of, [in Trebizond] and to study its living culture as an extant trace of Pontian culture."

http://fstav.freeservers.com/asan.html

Voilà comment la reprise par les grecs de l'idée que les grecs, les romii, ne pouvaient pas etre musulmans, a conduit ces grecs musulmans à être considérés comme turcs; et ils habitent toujours la région de Trébizonde, sauvés par leur religion contrairement à leurs compatriotes chrétiens.