Mystery around my grandfather’s -possibly Greek- lineage

Hello the Greek side of reddit,

I’ve already posted this on r/genealogy, but I guess it’s also a good idea to post it here. As I learned some new info, I’m slightly editing some parts. Anyway, here it goes:

I’m a Turkish-born guy. Here is a bit of background: Most of my grandparents were born outside of the current borders of Turkey. My paternal grandfather was born in Stip, Macedonia while my maternal grandmother was born in Baku (Russian Empire back then). And my paternal grandmother was born in Edirne, very close to the current Greek/Bulgarian border. The only mystery here seems to be my maternal grandfather. Nobody knows a thing about him. He was supposedly born in Ankara, Ayas. As the story goes, for some reason, he lost his parents when he was very young. And although he had older sisters (who are all dead as of today), he went to Istanbul to work when he was still a kid (probably not older than 12-13), which always seemed bullshit to me. From what I understood they weren’t doing bad economically. Why would you let your little orphan brother go to another city, especially if you don’t need money?

But the real mystery started when I first used the genealogy service of the Turkish state five years ago. FYI the Ottoman Empire started to record population in the mid-19th century, and for example, I can trace my paternal grandmother to the mid-1800s. But there are no records of where my maternal grandfather’s parents were born, let alone in Ayas. The same records exist for my grandfather who was born in Stip and my grandmother who was born in Baku as they registered their birthplace when they first immigrated to Turkey. When I ask about these inconsistencies to my mom and her family, nobody gives me a straight answer but tbh they don’t seem to know much rather than lying. As my maternal grandfather died before I was born -almost 35 years ago- it is a bit too late to ask questions. Especially my mom regrets that she never talked about these things with him.

So, to start somewhere I did a DNA test from AncestryDNA. Recently, I received the results. My DNA results show a high percentage of Greek ethnicity (the Aegean Islands combined with Greece & Albania make up to %42). Therefore, I suspect that he was either from Greece or from a Greek family located in Ankara (I saw on one forum that there were Greeks in Ankara, Ayas in the pre-WW1 period), as we have no known relatives or a connection to that region, even not to the Turkish Aegean region.

Of course, you might think that my mother’s side could be also Albanian but here is the catch: Although Ancestry doesn’t give you which parent is mother/father, they give you a chart where you can see the percentages of each ethnicity you inherited from your parents (they give these percentages under Parent 1 and Parent 2 titles). I think Parent 2 is my dad as Parent 2 has %12 Balkan ethnicity while also having %9 Greece-Albania which, in his case, suits up with his parents being in North Macedonia and Edirne for hundreds of years. But when I see the Greek Islander ratio is very close to the Greece-Albania (%12 to 18) in Parent 1, which should be my mom, I took this as a whole Greek thing. And one final important thing to mention: My maternal grandfather was supposedly born in 1924, so his birth coincides with the population exchange between Greece and Turkey (see the link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population\_exchange\_between\_Greece\_and\_Turkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey)).

So here are the possibilities that I sketched out:

Possibility 1: My grandfather’s parents were Greek Muslims who have been sent to Turkey.

Possibility 2: They were Greek Christians who converted to Islam to avoid population exchange.

Possibility 3: My grandfather was given to a Turkish family, then assimilated. This would also explain his sisters’ indifference to his departure to Istanbul at a young age.

So, do you guys know anything about the Greek communities in Ankara, Ayas before 1924? Can you lead me to some sources and/or scholars? I have found literally nothing in Turkish. It’s far-fetched I know, but even better, maybe some of your families were connected to that region and can help me out a bit.

Ευχαριστώ!