four Greek speaking Muslim settlements in Cyprus: Lapithiou, Platanissos, Ayios Simeon and Galinoporni that identified themselves as Turks. A 2017 study on the genetics of Turkish Cypriots has shown strong genetic ties with their fellow Orthodox Greek Cypriots. Greek Muslims of the Aegean Islands Despite not having a majority Muslim population at any time during the Ottoman period, some Aegean Islands such as Chios, Lesbos, Kos, Rhodes, Lemnos and Tenedos, and on Kastellorizo contained a sizable Muslim population of Greek origin. Before the Greek Revolution there were also Muslims on the island of Euboea, but there were no Muslims in Cycladic or Sporades island groups. Evliya Chelebi mentions that there were 100 Muslim houses on the island of Aegina in 1660s. On most Islands Muslims were only living in and around the main centers of the islands. Today Greek-speaking Muslims numbering about 5-5,500 live on Kos and Rhodes because Dodecanese Islands then governed by Italy were not a part of Greece and therefore they were exempt from the population exchange. However many migrated after Paris Peace Treaties in 1947. 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. Lebanon and Syria There are about 7,000 Greek-speaking Muslims living in Tripoli, Lebanon and about 8,000 in Al Hamidiyah, Syria. The majority of them are Muslims of Cretan origin. Records suggest that the community left Crete between 1866 and 1897, on the outbreak of the last Cretan uprising against the Ottoman Empire, which ended the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. Sultan Abdul Hamid II provided Cretan Muslim families who fled the island with