Successive Greek Government policies refused to acknowledge the existence of an ethnic Turkish community in Northern Greece, and insisted on referring to Western Thrace Turks as Greek Muslims, suggesting that they were not of ethnic Turkish origin but were the descendants of Ottoman-era Greek converts to Islam like the Vallahades and other Greek Muslims of Greek Macedonia. This policy was introduced immediately after the unilateral declaration of independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983 on lands that once had an 82% Greek majority before becoming refugees during the Turkish invasion in 1974. The Greek government declared that it was a measure to avert the possibility of the Greek region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace becoming a "second Cyprus" sometime in the future or of being ceded to Turkey on the basis of the ethnic origin of its Muslim inhabitants.