Just 3 percent of Turkey sits in Europe, yet holds 12 percent of its people
East Thrace, the corner of Turkey on the European side of the Bosphorus, covers only about 23,764 square kilometres. But it holds roughly an eighth of the population, part of Istanbul, and the narrow straits that give the navies of five Black Sea countries their only route to the Mediterranean.
The region takes in the Turkish provinces of Edirne, Tekirdağ and Kırklareli plus the European parts of Çanakkale and Istanbul. Greece lies to the west, Bulgaria to the north, with the Black Sea washing its northeastern side and the Aegean its southwestern one. The Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus, a passage of about 361 kilometres, separate it from Anatolia, which makes up the other 97 percent of the country. Its southern tip is the Gallipoli peninsula.
Myth and history crowd this small space. The tragic lovers Hero and Leander belong to ancient Sestus, and legend credits Aeneas with founding Aenus. After Alexander the Great died, his general Lysimachus ruled Thrace from a capital named after himself. The Battle of Adrianople in 378 marked a turning point in Rome's decline, Çimpe Castle became the Ottomans' first European foothold in 1352, and Edirne served as the second Ottoman capital after Bursa. In the First World War, the Gallipoli campaign was fought on its peninsula.
East Thrace is the last remnant of Ottoman Rumelia, which once reached Hungary and Bosnia and was lost piece by piece from 1699, most of it in the First Balkan War of 1912. Its present borders were fixed by treaties in 1913 and 1915 and confirmed at Lausanne. Upheavals of that era drove Muslim refugees from across the Balkans into the region, and many residents today descend from Bosniaks, Pomaks, Crimean Tatars, Circassians and other groups.
The area is known for the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne and for Kırkpınar, an oil-wrestling tournament held near the city every year since 1360. The climate ranges from Mediterranean on the Aegean coast to oceanic along the Black Sea, and future high-speed rail lines are planned to link Turkish, Bulgarian and Greek networks through it.
Source: East Thrace
