Imvros

Imbros (; ; ), officially Gökçeada () since 29 July 1970,Alexis Alexandris, "The Identity Issue of The Minorities in Greece And Turkey", in Hirschon, Renée (ed.), ''Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey'', Berghahn Books, 2003
p. 120
/ref> is the largest island of Turkey, located in Çanakkale Province. It is located in the north-northeastern Aegean Sea, at the entrance of Saros Bay, and has the westernmost point of Turkey ( Cape İncirburnu). Imbros has an area of , and has some wooded areas."Gökçeada"
from Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

As of 2023, the island-district of Gökçeada has a population of 10,721. The main industries of Imbros are fishing and tourism. By the end of the 20th century, the island was predominantly inhabited by settlers from the Turkish mainland that mostly arrived after 1960, with the indigenous Greek population having declined to about 300 persons by the start of the 21st century.

Historically, the island was primarily inhabited by ethnic Greeks since the Iron Age until approximately the 1960s. The Greek Imbriot diaspora is thought to number around 15,000 globally and in Turkey, and has a strong special Imbrian identity. The 2010s saw a tentative revitalisation of the island's remaining Greek community.

History

In mythology

According to Greek mythology, the palace of Thetis, mother of Achilles, king of Phthia, was situated between Imbros and Samothrace.

The stables of the winged horses of Poseidon were said to lie between Imbros and Tenedos.

Homer wrote in the ''Iliad'':

In the depths of the sea on the cliff
Between Tenedos and craggy Imbros
There is a cave, wide gaping
Poseidon who made the earth tremble,
stopped the horses there.

Eëtion, a lord of or ruler over the island of Imbros, is also mentioned in the ''Iliad''. He buys Priam's captured son Lycaon and restores him to his father. Homer also writes that Hera and Hypnos leave Lemnos and Imbros making their way to Mount Ida. Homer mentions Imbros in the Iliad on other occasions as well.

Imbros is mentioned in the Homeric Hymn which was dedicated to Apollo.

Apollonius of Rhodes also mentions Imbros in the first book of his work Argonautica.

In antiquity

The original inhabitants of Imbros were Pelasgians, worshipped Cabeiri, and Hermes as a god of reproduction in ithyphallic form, whence his Carian epithet, 'Ιμβραμος, has been supposed to be derived. For ancient Greeks, the islands of Lemnos and Imbros were sacred to Hephaestus, god of metallurgy, and on ancient coins of Imbros an ithyphallic Hephaestus appears.

In classical antiquity, Imbros, like Lemnos, was an Athenian cleruchy, a colony whose settlers retained Athenian citizenship; although since the ''Imbrians'' appear on the Athenian tribute lists, there may have been a division with the native population. The original inhabitants of Imbros were Pelasgians, as mentioned by Herodotus in ''The Histories''.

In 511 or 512 BC the island was captured by the Persian general Otanes. But later, Miltiades conquered the island from Persia after the battle of Salamis; the colony was established about 450 BC, during the first Athenian empire, and was retained by Athens (with brief exceptions) for the next six centuries. Thucydides, in his ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' describes the colonization of Imbros, and at several places in his narrative mentions the contribution of Imbrians in support of Athens during various military actions. He also recounts the escape of an Athenian squadron to Imbros.
During the Social War (357–355 BC) the Chians, Rhodians and Byzantians attacked Imbros and Lemnos, which were allies of Athens. In the late second century A.D., the island may have become independent under Septimius Severus.

Strabo mentions that Cabeiri are most honored in Imbros and Lemnos.

Stephanus of Byzantium mentions that Imbros was sacred to Cabeiri and Hermes.

Imbrian Mysteries were one of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece (similar to the Eleusinian Mysteries). Unfortunately, very little is known about the Imbrian Mysteries.

It is said that Philonomus had sent to Amyclae in Laconia colonists from Imbros and Lemnos.

Philostratus in his "''Letter 70''" to the Imbrian Cleophon, states that being a Lemnian, he considers Imbros also as his homeland.

Byzantine era

Prior to the Fall of Constantinople, several larger islands south of Imbros were under Genoese rule, part of the territory historically held in the eastern Mediterranean by the independent Maritime Republic of Genoa (1005–1797, thus predating the East–West schism of 1054) a political development emanating from the former territory of the Western Roman Empire, by city-states such as Venice, Pisa and Amalfi.

At the beginning of the 13th century, when the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath temporarily disrupted Venice's relations with the Byzantine Empire, Genoa expanded its influence north of Imbros, into the Black Sea and Crimea.

Ruy González de Clavijo, ambassador to Henry III of Castile to the court of Timur, travelled through the Aegean during his 1403-1406 Embassy to Samarkand, noted the island as being under the rule of the Byzantines.

Ottoman era (1455-1466, 1470-1912)

Shortly following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine forces in Imbros left the island, and the population became Ottoman subjects. The island was not conquered by force, but rather through istimalet policy. Michael Critoboulos, a leading Imvrian, and subsequently a chronicler of Mehmet II, organised and facilitated the peaceful surrender of the island to the Ottomans. In return for taxes and loyalty, the island was given a degree of relative autonomy, with administration under a local person. In 1479, the island came under definitive Ottoman rule. The Ottomans, through issuing kanunname and installing local Muslim rulers, attempted to integrate the entirely Orthodox Greek population. Feryal Tansuğ judges that it is difficult to determine the degree to which the islanders recognised Ottoman rule. After the island became Ottoman soil in 1455 it was administered by Ottomans and Venetians at various times. During this period, and particularly during the reign of Kanuni Sultan Süleyman (1520–1566), the island became a foundation within the Ottoman Empire. Relations between the Ottomans and Venetians occasionally led to hostilities – for example, in June 1717 during the Turkish-Venetian War (1714-1718), a tough but ultimately fairly indecisive naval battle between a Venetian fleet, under Lodovico Flangini, and an Ottoman fleet, was fought near Imbros in the Aegean Sea. Nevertheless, the island's residents continued to live in relative peace and prosperity until the 20th century. The population lived modest lives in subsistence economies and were not involved in upheavals, for instance, the Greek War of Independence (1821-1832).

"Although Greek bandits attacked ..and landed in Imvros and Lemnos in order to take sustenance support, the islanders did not help them so that Ottoman troops drove back the rebellions."

Only in 1864 with the promulgation of the new Vilâyet Law was the administrative status of the island in regard to the central government defined. Two administrative districts were formed—the Kazâ/Jurisdiction of İmroz and Bozcaada of the Sanjak/District of Lemnos, a subdivision of the larger province of Eyalet/Administrative Division of the Islands of the Aegean Sea. Prominent Ottoman politician, Ismail Qemal Bej Vlora, who spent about a year during the mid-1870s superintending the workings of a lignite mine upon the island, remarked that:

"The sole authority in the place was the müdür (a sort of mayor appointed by the Government hose attributions included tax collection, executing the court sentences, and at times mediation of disputes and pacification of the locals, who was a charming Albanian, and more like the father of this island family than a representative of government. There were four or five gendarmes recruited from among the Greeks of the country, who did not even know where their arms were, so little did they ever find need of using them —and it is doubtful if they would have known how to if the occasion had arisen...We passed whole weeks without communication with the outside world. No telegrams came, nor couriers, nor newspapers, nor anything else to disturb our hermit's life amid this beautiful scenery and among a population that is perhaps the quietest and simplest in the world. There are no pleasures there except the songs of young Greeks and the country dances."

In 1912 during the First Balkan War, the Greek Navy invaded the island. The island had an absolute Greek majority population of 8,506 people then. After the signing of the Treaty of Athens in 1913, all of the Aegean islands except Bozcaada and Gökçeada were ceded to Greece.

First World War

In 1915, Imbros played an important role as a staging post for the allied Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, prior to and during the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula. A field hospital, airfield and administrative and stores buildings were constructed on the island. In particular, many ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) soldiers were based at Imbros during the Gallipoli campaign, and the island was used as an air and naval base by ANZAC, British, and French forces against Turkey. The headquarters of General Ian Hamilton were on Imbros.

On 20 January 1918, a naval action (see Battle of Imbros (1918)) took place in the Aegean near the island when an Ottoman squadron engaged a flotilla of the British Royal Navy.

Patrick Shaw-Stewart wrote his famous poem "Achilles in the Trench", one of the best-known war poems of the First World War, while he was on Imbros. He seemed to enjoy speaking ancient Greek to the inhabitants of Imbros. In one of his letters he wrote: "here I am, living in a Greek village and talking the language of Demosthenes to the inhabitants (who are really quite clever at taking my meaning)."

Between Turkey and Greece

Between November 1912 and September 1923, Imbros, together with Tenedos, were under the administration of the Greek navy. Both islands were overwhelmingly ethnically Greek, and in the case of Imbros the population was entirely Greek.

Negotiations to end the Balkan war started in December 1912 in London and the issue of the Aegean islands was one persistent problem. The issue divided the great powers with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy supporting the Ottoman position for return of all the Aegean islands and Britain and France supporting the Greek position for Greek control of all the Aegean islands. With Italy controlling key islands in the region, major power negotiations deadlocked in London and later in Bucharest. Romania threatened military action with the Greeks against the Ottomans in order to force negotiations in Athens in November 1913. Eventually, Greece and the United Kingdom pressured the Germans to support an agreement where the Ottomans would retain Tenedos, Kastelorizo and Imbros and the Greeks would control the other Aegean islands. The Greeks accepted the plan while the Ottoman Empire rejected the ceding of the other Aegean islands. This agreement would not hold, but the outbreak of World War I and the Turkish War of Independence put the issue to the side.

During World War I Gallipoli Campaign, the British used the island as a supply base and built a 600-metre-long airstrip for military operations.

In 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres with the defeated Ottoman Empire granted the island to Greece. The Ottoman government, which signed but did not ratify the treaty, was overthrown by the new Turkish nationalist Government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, based in Ankara. After the Greco-Turkish War ended in Greek defeat in Anatolia, and the fall of Lloyd George and his Middle Eastern policies, the western powers agreed to the Treaty of Lausanne with the new Turkish Republic, in 1923. This treaty made the island part of Turkey; but it guaranteed a special autonomous administrative status for Imbros and Tenedos to accommodate the Greeks, and excluded them from the population exchange that took place between Greece and Turkey, due to their presence there as a majority. Article 14 of the treaty provided specific guarantees safeguarding the rights of minorities in both the nations.

Additional population settlements from Anatolia occurred in 1973, 1984 and 2000. The state provided special credit opportunities and agricultural aid in kind to those who would decide to settle in the island. New settlements were created and existing settlements were renamed with Turkish names. The island itself was officially renamed to Gökçeada in 1970.

In 1991, Turkish authorities ended the military status on the island.

In November 2019, a team of archaeologists led by Burçin Erdogan unearthed an approximately 8,000-year-old T-shaped obelisk in the Uğurlu-Zeytinlik mound. The monument made of two parts connected by seven-meter long walls reminds standing stones in Göbekli Tepe archeological site.

Geography

Geology

Imbros is mainly of volcanic origin and the highest mountain of the island İlyas Dağ, is an extinct cone-shaped stratovolcano.

Earthquakes

Imbros is situated directly south of the North Anatolian Fault, lying within the Anatolian Plate very close to the boundary between the Aegean Sea and Eurasian Plates. This fault zone, which runs from northeastern Anatolia to the northern Aegean Sea, has been responsible for several deadly earthquakes, including in Istanbul, Izmit and Imbros among others, and is a major threat to the island.

On the days of 20–21 August 1859, Imbros experienced some pre-earthquake tremors. The most catastrophic earthquake hit the island at 04:00 on the morning of the August 21, followed by a series of aftershocks—which were recorded to have had lasted until at least January 1860—the most severe of which were recorded at 16:15, 16:25, and 16:35 of the same day. The damage from these tremors was quite significant, as is evident in the descriptions provided from the newspaper, ''Αμάλθεια'' (''Amalthea''), and ''Schmidt''. The publication, ''Αμάλθεια'' stated that:

"All the houses in the villages of ''Παναγία'', ''Γλυκύ'', ''Αγρίδια'' and ''Σχοινούδι'' of ''Ίμβρος'' collapsed or suffered cracks from the main earthquake and the three strong aftershocks that followed. The inhabitants remained on the streets and in the fields, without daring to approach the ruins, to get their furniture. Crying and mourning were heard everywhere. The first earthquake knocked down tiles and all the chimneys of the houses. After that the inhabitants left their homes. During the second earthquake, all the houses suffered cracks. The third earthquake caused the collapse of all houses, windmills, watermills, bakeries, and cafes, while churches were severely damaged, but did not collapse. The number of houses that fell was 1400. In various areas, cracks were observed in the ground, from which salt water gushed out, with fine sand. Massive rocks fell from the mountains. The villages of Αγίου Θεοδώρου suffered minor damage. Besides, in Samothrace, these earthquakes were also felt, but no damage was recorded. The same in Τένεδος. In Λήμνος on the contrary, some damage was caused, but it is not known how much. In Λήμνος, however, new sources appeared. In ''Ίμβρος'', the earthquakes continued until the 23rd of the month, but none of the residents were killed."

''Schmidt'' writes that he derives his information about the earthquake mainly from a letter he received in January 1860, after the mediation of ''Professor'' ''Μητσόπουλου'', from the deacon ''Βαρνάβα'' ''Κουτλουμουσιανό''—an eyewitness to the earthquake. In this letter, it is mentioned that:

"It seems that there were no human losses, but in all areas of the island the destruction was great, as many houses and churches were destroyed. Some springs have disappeared, while others have appeared in areas that were previously dry. There were also cracks in the ground, from which mud with a strong sulphur odour came. The earthquake preceded a violent thunder from the north-east."

On 24 May 2014, Imbros was shaken by a strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 M_W. 30 people were injured and numerous old houses were damaged, some of them irreparably. A major earthquake is expected to occur along this fault line in the near future. Minor noticeable earthquakes are common.

Climate

The island has a Mediterranean climate with warm and dry summers, and wet and cool winters. Although summer is the driest season, some rainfall does occur in summer. Snow and ground frost are not uncommon in winter.

Town

; Çınarlı : Çınarlı (also known as "Gökçeada" or "Merkez" meaning "center") is the only town on Imbros, known as ''Panaghia Balomeni'' (Παναγία Μπαλωμένη) in Greek; there is a small airport nearby.

Villages

Most of the settlements on Imbros were given Turkish names in 1926.
; Bademli köyü : Older Greek name is ''Gliky'' (Γλυκύ). It is located to the northeast of the island, between Çınarlı town and Kaleköy/Kastro.
; Dereköy : Older Greek name is ''Schoinoudi'' (Σχοινούδι). It is located at the center of the west side of island. Due to the emigration of the Greek population (largely to Australia and the USA; some to Greece and Istanbul before the 1970s), Dereköy is largely empty today. However, many people return on every 15 August for the festival of the Virgin Mary.
; Eşelek / Karaca köyü : It is located at the southeast of the island. It is an agricultural area that produces fruit and vegetables.
; Kaleköy : Older name is ''Kastro'' (Κάστρο) (Latin and Greek for castle). Located on the north-eastern coast of island, there is an antique castle near the village. Kaleköy also has a small port which was constructed by the French Navy during the occupation of the island in the First World War, and is now used for fishing-boats and yachts.
; Şahinkaya köyü : It is located near Dereköy.
; Şirinköy : It is located in the southwest of island.
; Tepeköy : Older Greek name is ''Agridia'' (Αγρίδια). It is located in the north of the island, and is home to the largest Greek population among all villages. İlyas Dağ, an extinct volcano located to the south of the village, has an elevation of , which makes it the highest point of the island.
; Uğurlu köyü : It is located in the west of the island.
; Yeni Bademli köyü : It is located at the center-northeast of the island, near Bademli. It has many motels and ''pensions.''
; Yenimahalle : Older Greek name is ''Evlampion'' (Ευλάμπιον). It is located near the town of Çınarlı on the road to Kuzulimanı port.
; Zeytinliköy : Older Greek name is ''Agios Theodoros'' (Άγιος Θεόδωρος). Demetrios Archontonis, known as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, was born there on 29 February 1940. The village has beautiful historic Greek houses and gets its Turkish name from the surrounding olive groves (''Zeytinli köy'' meaning "Olive-ville" in Turkish.) The village is very popular among tourists during high season.
; Others : Yeni Bademli köyü, Eşelek / Karaca köyü, Şahinkaya köyü, Şirinköy and Uğurlu köyü were established after 1970.

Cittaslow

Gökçeada is one of the eight " cittaslows" of Turkey and is the second in being accepted as one, after Seferihisar.

Places to see

* Aydıncık/Kefaloz (Kefalos) beach: Best location for windsurfing
* Kapıkaya (Stenos) beach:
* Kaşkaval peninsula / (Kaskaval): Scuba diving
* Kuzulimanı (Haghios Kyrikas): Ferryport with 24-hour ferries to Gelibolu– Kabatepe port and Çanakkale

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