Abstract
Contemporary Greece is an environment where varieties of Oghuz Turkic are spoken. However, it is known that different Turkic varieties, other than contemporary ones, were spoken in the country in the past. The emergence of the present scenery is a substantial outcome of the Ottoman period. Nevertheless, Turkic groups like the Huns, Avars, Oghurs, Bulghars, Pechenegs, Cumans, and the Oghuz had arrived in Greece and settled there. The former four spoke Bulghar Turkic (Proto-Bulgarian), as distinct from the rest, and had invaded and settled in Greece at different periods. The social influence of their languages varied in accordance with the manner they arrived in Greece. In this period, Turkic sometimes had served as an immigrant or a settler language, whereas sometimes it was used as the language of soldiery. Occasionally, it was solely used as a community language, whereas sometimes it was used as the language of the administration. As a matter of fact, it even had been used as a lingua franca, despite deep-seated languages like Latin and Greek. Naturally, the social strength of the language was directly related to the social status of its speakers. Therefore, Turkic had gained various social statuses in Greece during the Hunnic, Avaric, Oghur, and Bulghar periods. However, these statuses were sometimes influenced by each other. This work aims to establish the social influence and strength of Turkic in Greece during the invasion of these four Bulghar Turkic-speaking groups with reference to limited historical records on hand.