From Antigoni to Burgas

Compared to Prinkipo (Büyükada) and Halki (Heybeliada), whose stories we have told before, Antigoni (Burgazada) has a much more introverted life. This was a Greek village that continued to exist for 500 years after the conquest of Istanbul. In daily life and commerce, Greek, the mother tongue of the people, was used more than Turkish, the official language. Antigoni, which maintained its Greek-majority structure until the 1960s, underwent a rapid change parallel to the escalating Cyprus problem in 1963. While Greek families, especially those selling their businesses, began to emigrate to Greece, the local population of the island changed with people of Anatolian origin brought by internal migration. Today, Greek is heard in Antigoni only for a few months due to the presence of Greeks who come from Istanbul and Greece for their summer holidays.