I know it was conquered and stuff, but how did the ethnic composition change so much? Even before the population exchanges after the fall of the ottomans, it was mostly Turkish. Are Turks in that area just ethnic Greeks who were Turkified/converted to Islam or are they central Asian Turkic people?
Are Turks in that area just ethnic Greeks who were Turkified/converted to Islam?
There are many genetic studies making this conclusion but these studies suffer from major sampling bias (1).
Anatolia went through chaotic population movements, especially in the last two centuries of the crumbling and imploding Ottoman Empire. This needs to be considered if one wants to make a correct sampling.
Another problem is in defining what a Turk is, in genetic terms. Genetic studies make certain assumptions to make a reference Turk and compare it to the samples they collected. As a result, errors and biases creep in.
We should also mention that usual national conflicts affect this discussion. Just like the Serbian nationalistic agenda considers Bosnians as Serbs who had been converted to Islam, some Greek and Armenian genetic studies promote the idea that modern Anatolian population is mostly converted Greeks/Armenians with barely an Central Asian touch within. In contrast, Turkish agenda completely opposes this idea. If one knows where to take samples in modern Anatolia, all of these hypotheses can be "proven" by genetic studies.