sentences:  Though the overwhelming majority is Turkish, the east of the region is also inhabited by the Laz, a people who speak a Kartvelian language which is closely related to Georgian and converted to Islam from Georgian Orthodoxy in the late Ottoman period as well as Muslim Georgians, also the Hemsin, Armenian converts to Islam, and Pontic Greeks, who converted to Islam in the 17th century.While a large community (around 25% of the population) of Christian Pontic Greeks remained throughout the Pontus area (including Trabzon and Kars in northeastern Turkey/the Russian Caucasus) until the 1920s, and in parts of Georgia and Armenia until the 2010s, preserving their own customs and dialect of Greek, the vast majority have since left, mainly to Greece.However, most Muslim Pontic Greeks remained in Turkey.