arab copied greek music

You certainly don't know the history of Anatolia. Before Alexander the Great, it was a mix of peoples with various languages and cultures, including Greek colonists on shores. After was transformed in a Hellenistic state, was Hellenized, Greek language became the most used. Different from other Hellenistic states and regions that preserved their original language (Egypt, Syria, Judea etc), Anatolia fully adopted Greek language, with some exceptions, like the Armenians, the Celts (Galatians) in their first period etc. In fact, it always was a region in demographic change, many peoples migrating and settling here, or leaving, especially during the Byzantine and Turkish empires. Byzantines colonized many Slavs, Armenians and other peoples, Turks too brought many Balkan peoples, Arabs etc. And Turkification (adoption of Turkish language) was a slow process, perhaps in 15th century as much as half of population was still Christian and Greek speaking if no more, as it happened earlier in the territories conquered by Arabs (Syria, Egypt etc) which remained majoritary Christian until quite late, perhaps 12th century.

The today Turks are in small percentage descendants of Altai Turks, who were a Mongoloid looking people. Altai Mountains, the ancestral homeland of Turkic peoples, is where Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan and Russia meet and the people there is East Asian looking. And in early Turkish manuscripts, they depict themselves as Mongoloids, because the aristocracy didn't mingled with the common people some centuries.


Today Turks, as genetic studies shown, are more closely related with the Balkan populations than to the Central Asian populations:
Genetic history of the Turkish people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Culturally, the Turks have adopted the superior culture of the Byzantine (Anatolian) civilization, including the music style. If you heard Byzantine (Eastern Christian, Orthodox) liturgical music, you will observe that the Islamic music is an offspring of it and similarly, laical Turkish music was an offspring of laical Byzantine music. Byzantine music, which is a canonic set of chants that are sang or read at several services over a liturgical day, was wrriten before the Ottoman conquest, in fact some of the chants as are old as 4th (not 14th) century and most was written perhaps before the year 1000:

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To me, ( even though if I am unfamiliar with the sound of ancient Greek music) the sound of harp which is often portrayed on Greek drawings simply can't be anything like Central Asian instruments (that's where originally Turkish tribes came from.) And if to take in consideration that when Turks conquered Byzantium and took over Constantinople ( that's present day Istanbul in Asia Minor) they were already Islamic force, which made their culture ( music including) quite distinctively reminiscent of Arabic music.

Ofcourse Greek music from Antiquity differed from later periods. The advent of Christianity, which was a capital change in old world society (and lead to the transition from slavery to feudalism among others), has much had influenced the mentalities and as result the music. Byzantine society was extremely religious (even in the days before the Fall of Constantinople, they were debating religious dogma which seemed for them more important than the end of their civilisation). The religion was present in many if not most manifestations of their life and in fact, the great majority of artefacts, textes and buildings from the Byzantine period that survived to us are religious artefacts, textes and buildings. An this religiousness no doubt influenced the style not only of church music, but of laical music, the way we see a closeness between Islamic religious music and laical music of Islamic NE peoples.


Most of what you know as Arab music was created (as a style) during the Ottoman rule over the Arab world:




In fact, Arab music (what is usually know as that) is mostly Turkish music, not the other way around. The pre-Ottoman Arab music was different than the today one.




Central Asian music too, is different from Turkish music:

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You need to only listen to "Sirtaki" (in connection with it) which everyone recognizes as "typical" Greek music to figure out that "Turkish" tune it is not.

Sirtaki is not representative for Greek music, which as I said, is similar to Turkish music but with poorer modulations.
Look a dance and song of Pontian Greeks, which are Greeks from the region on southern coast of Black Sea, that now are mostly in Greece, being descendants of the Greeks relocated from Turkey in 1923:




As you can see (if you are informed about that), the sounds are similar with the music of Balkan peoples (Croatians and Romanians excluded):

Albanian Dance:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/europe/1937687-they-say-greece-mother-europe-good-3.html