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Western Thrace or West Thrace (, '' ytikíThráki'' ), also known as Greek Thrace or Aegean Thrace, is a
After the Roman conquest, Western Thrace further belonged to the Thracia, Roman province of Thracia founded in 46 AD. At the beginning of the 2nd AD century Roman emperor Trajan founded here, as a part of the provincial policy, two cities of Greek type (i.e. city-states), Traianoupolis and Plotinopolis. From this region passed the famous Via Egnatia, which ensured the communication between East and West, while its ramifications were connecting the Aegean world with Thracian hinterland (i.e. upper and middle valley of Evros river). From the coast also passed the sea route Troad–Macedonia, which the Apostle Paul had used in his journeys in Greece. During the great crisis of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, Western Thrace suffered from the frequent incursions of the barbarians until the reign of Diocletian, when it managed to prosper again thanks to its administrative reforms.
The region had been under the rule of the Byzantine Empire from the time of the division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western empires in the early fourth century AD. The Ottoman Empire conquered most of the region in the 14th century and ruled it until the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. During Ottoman rule, Thrace had a mixed population of Turkic peoples, Turks and Bulgarians, with a strong Greeks, Greek element in the cities and the Aegean Sea littoral. A smaller number of Pomaks, Jews, Armenians and Romani also lived in the region. At 1821, several parts of Western Thrace, such as Lavara, Maroneia, and Samothraki rebelled and participated in the Greek War of Independence.
During the Balkan Wars, First Balkan War, the Balkan League (Kingdom of Serbia, Serbia, Kingdom of Greece, Greece, Kingdom of Bulgaria, Bulgaria and Kingdom of Montenegro, Montenegro) fought against the Ottoman Empire and annexed most of its European territory, including Thrace. Western Thrace was occupied by Bulgarian troops who defeated the Ottoman army. On 15 November 1912, on the right bank of the river Maritsa, Maritza, Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps captured the Turkish corps of Yaver Paha, which defended Eastern Rhodopes and Western Thrace from invading Bulgarians.
The victors quickly fell into dispute on how to divide the newly conquered lands, resulting in the Balkan Wars, Second Balkan War. In August 1913, Bulgaria was defeated, but kept Western Thrace under the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest, 1913, Treaty of Bucharest.
In the following years, the Central Powers (German Empire, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire), with which Bulgaria had sided, lost World War I, and as a result, Bulgaria had to surrender Western Thrace under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Neuilly. Western Thrace was under temporary management of the Allies of World War I, Entente led by French General Charles Antoine Charpy. In late April 1920, as per the San Remo conference which gathered the leaders of the main allies of the Entente powers (except the US), Western Thrace was given to Greece.
Throughout the Balkan Wars and World War I, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey each forced respective minority populations in the Thrace region out of areas they controlled. A large population of Greek refugees, Greeks in Eastern Thrace, and Black Sea coastal and southern Bulgaria, was expelled south and west into Greek-controlled Thrace. Concurrently, a large population of Bulgarians was forced from the region into Bulgaria by Greek and Turkish actions. Turkish populations in the area were also targeted by Bulgarian and Greek forces and pushed eastward. As part of the Treaty of Neuilly and subsequent agreements, the status of the expelled populations was legitimized. This was followed by a further population exchange which radically changed the demographics of the region toward increased ethnic homogenization within the territories each respective country was ultimately awarded.
This was followed by the large-scale Exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, Greek-Turkish population exchanges of 1923 (Treaty of Lausanne), which finalized the reversal of Western and Eastern Thrace region's pre-Balkan War demography. The treaty granted the status of a minority to the Muslims in Western Thrace, in exchange for a similar status for the ethnic Greeks, Greek Greeks in Turkey, minority in Istanbul and the Aegean islands of Imbros and Tenedos.
After the Battle of Greece, German invasion (April 1941), the area was occupied by Bulgarian troops, as part of the triple Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II. During this period (1941–1944) the demographic distribution was further changed, with the The Holocaust in Bulgarian-occupied Greece, arrest of the region's approximately 4,500 Jews by the Bulgarian police and their deportation to death camps administered by Germany. None of them survived.
The economy of Thrace in recent years has become less dependent on agriculture. A number of Greek-owned high-tech telecommunications companies have settled in the area. The A2 motorway (Greece), A2 motorway (Egnatia Odos) motorway which passes through Thrace has contributed to the further development of the region. Tourism is slowly becoming more and more important as the Aegean coast has a number of beaches, and there is also the potential for winter tourism activities in the Rhodope mountains, Rhodopi mountains, the natural border with Bulgaria, which are covered by dense forest.
It is estimated that two-thirds (67%) of the population are Orthodox Christian Greeks while about a third (33%) are part of the recognized Muslim minority of Greece.
Of the Muslim minority:
* Turks of Western Thrace, Turkish: ~35%
* Pomaks: ~35%
* Roma people: ~15%
* ethnic Greek Muslims: ~15%
Turkey, a signatory state of the Lausanne Treaty, initially claimed the whole of the Muslim minority to be strictly an ethnic Turks of Western Thrace, Turkish minority even though it actually consists of multiple ethnic groups. In his 7 December 2017 visit to Greece President of Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, acknowledged for the first time the multi-ethnic nature of the Western Thracian Muslim minority.
The last censuses which asked about ethnicity were held in the transitional period before the region became part of Greece. A number of estimates and censuses during the 1912-1920 period gave the following results about the ethnic distribution of the area that would become known as Western Thrace:https://polsci.academia.edu/VemundAarbakke → download THE MUSLIM MINORITY OF GREEK THRACE (pdf)
The Pomak population depending on the source was sometimes counted together with the Turks (Muslims) following the Ottoman system of classifying people according to religion, while in other occasions was specified separately. According to the Bulgarian view, they are considered "Bulgarian Muslims" and an integral part of the Bulgarian nation.
By the Bulgarian census in 1919, held on the request of the Entente, of the population of Western Thrace was 219,723 of whom: Turks 35.4% (77,726 Muslims), Bulgarians 46.3% (101,766 - 81,457 Christians and 20,309 Muslims), Greeks 14.8% (32,553 Christians), Jews 1.4% (3,066) Armenians 1.5% (2,369), others 0.,9% (1,243). The area ceded to the Entente also included Karaağaç, Edirne, Karaagach and its environs, which became part of Turkey after the Treaty of Lausanne.
Western Thrace was ceded to the Entente in December 1919, after which many Bulgarians left the region, while many Greeks moved in. The Government of the Entente (led by French general Sharpe) held its own census in 1920, according to which Western Thrace had a population of 204,700, of whom: Turks 36.5% (74,720 Muslims), Bulgarians 32.2% (65,927 = 54,079 Christians and 11,848 Muslims), Greeks 27.4% (56,114 Christians), Jews 1.5% (2,985) Armenians 0.9% (1,880), others 3,066. At the time this census was conducted, a part of the Greek population of Xanthi, who left massively the Xanthi district after the Balkan wars (1913), returned.
According to the Turkish researches the population of Western Thrace in 1923 was 191,699, of whom 129,120 (67%) were Turkish people, Turks/Muslims (also includes the Pomaks) and 33,910 (18%) were Greeks; the remaining 28,669 (15%) were mostly (Christian) Bulgarians, along with small numbers of Jews and Armenians (before the population exchange).
The population of the region, according to the official census of 1928 and 1951 conducted by the local authorities, per mother tongue, was as follows:
*Abdera, Thrace, Abdera, an ancient Greek coastal town in the regional unit of Xanthi, is the birthplace of the Greek philosophers Democritus, considered by some the father of the atomic theory, and Protagoras, who is credited with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of "virtue".
*Thrace and in particular the Rhodope mountains, its northern mountainous part, is home to one of the two surviving brown bear (species ''Ursus arctos'') populations in Greece (the other is in the Pindus mountains, in central Greece).
*The Greek-Turkish border is a major entering point of illegal immigrants from Asia (Syrians, Kurds, Demographics of Afghanistan, Afghans, Pakistanis) trying to enter Europe.
Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace
Combined Prefectural Authority of Drama, Kavala and XanthiCombined Prefectural Authority of Rhodope and Evros
Prefecture of XanthiThrakiki.grPrefecture of RhodopePrefecture of Evros
Democritus University of ThraceMunicipality of Feres
{{Authority control Western Thrace, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace
geographical
Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...
and historical
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...
region
In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...
of Greece
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
, between the Mesta River, Nestos and Maritsa, Evros rivers in the northeast of the country; East Thrace, which lies east of the river Evros, forms the European part of Turkey, and the area to the north, in Bulgaria, is known as Northern Thrace.
Inhabited since Paleolithic times, it has been under the politics, political, culture, cultural and linguistics, linguistic influence of the Greeks, Greek world since the classical antiquity, classical era; Greeks from the List of islands of Greece, Aegean islands extensively colonized the region (especially the coastal part) and built prosperous cities such as Abdera, Thrace, Abdera (home of Democritus, the 5th-century BC philosopher who developed an atomic particle theory, and of Protagoras, a leading sophists, sophist) and Sale (Thrace), Sale (near present-day Alexandroupolis). Under the Byzantine Empire, Western Thrace benefited from its position close to the imperial heartland and became a center of medieval Greek commerce and culture; later, under the Ottoman Empire, a number of Muslims settled there, marking the birth of the Muslim minority of Greece.
Topographically, Thrace alternates between mountain-enclosed basins of varying size and deeply cut river valleys. It is divided into the three regional units of Greece, regional units (former prefectures of Greece, prefectures): Xanthi (regional unit), Xanthi, Rhodope (regional unit), Rhodope and Evros (regional unit), Evros, which together with the Macedonia (Greece), Macedonian regional units of Drama (regional unit), Drama, Kavala (regional unit), Kavala and Thasos form the regions of Greece, region of East Macedonia and Thrace.
The IV Army Corps (Greece), Fourth Army Corps of the Hellenic Army has its headquarters in Xanthi; in recent years, the region has attracted international media attention after becoming a key entering point for illegal immigrants trying to enter European Union territory; Greek security forces, working together with Frontex, are also extensively deployed in the Greco-Turkish land border.
Demographics
The approximate area of Western Thrace is 8,578 Square kilometre, km2 with a population of 371,208 according to the 2011 Census in Greece, census. It is estimated that two-thirds (67%) of the population are Greek Orthodox Church, Orthodox Christians, Christian Greeks, while about a third (33%) are Muslim minority of Greece, Muslims who are an officially recognised minority of Greece. Of these, about a quarter Turks of Western Thrace, are of Turkish origin, while another quarter are Pomaks who mainly inhabit the mountainous parts of the region. The rest are Muslim Greeks or Romani. The Romani people, Romani of Thrace are also mainly Muslim, unlike their ethnic kin in other parts of the country who generally profess the Orthodox faith of the Greek majority. Thrace is bordered by Bulgaria to the north, Turkey to the east, the Aegean Sea (Greece) to the south and the Macedonia (Greece), Greek region of Macedonia to the west. Alexandroupolis is the largest city, with a municipal population of 72,959 according to the 2011 census. Below is a table of the five largest Thracian cities:History
After the Roman conquest, Western Thrace further belonged to the Thracia, Roman province of Thracia founded in 46 AD. At the beginning of the 2nd AD century Roman emperor Trajan founded here, as a part of the provincial policy, two cities of Greek type (i.e. city-states), Traianoupolis and Plotinopolis. From this region passed the famous Via Egnatia, which ensured the communication between East and West, while its ramifications were connecting the Aegean world with Thracian hinterland (i.e. upper and middle valley of Evros river). From the coast also passed the sea route Troad–Macedonia, which the Apostle Paul had used in his journeys in Greece. During the great crisis of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, Western Thrace suffered from the frequent incursions of the barbarians until the reign of Diocletian, when it managed to prosper again thanks to its administrative reforms.
The region had been under the rule of the Byzantine Empire from the time of the division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western empires in the early fourth century AD. The Ottoman Empire conquered most of the region in the 14th century and ruled it until the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. During Ottoman rule, Thrace had a mixed population of Turkic peoples, Turks and Bulgarians, with a strong Greeks, Greek element in the cities and the Aegean Sea littoral. A smaller number of Pomaks, Jews, Armenians and Romani also lived in the region. At 1821, several parts of Western Thrace, such as Lavara, Maroneia, and Samothraki rebelled and participated in the Greek War of Independence.
During the Balkan Wars, First Balkan War, the Balkan League (Kingdom of Serbia, Serbia, Kingdom of Greece, Greece, Kingdom of Bulgaria, Bulgaria and Kingdom of Montenegro, Montenegro) fought against the Ottoman Empire and annexed most of its European territory, including Thrace. Western Thrace was occupied by Bulgarian troops who defeated the Ottoman army. On 15 November 1912, on the right bank of the river Maritsa, Maritza, Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps captured the Turkish corps of Yaver Paha, which defended Eastern Rhodopes and Western Thrace from invading Bulgarians.
The victors quickly fell into dispute on how to divide the newly conquered lands, resulting in the Balkan Wars, Second Balkan War. In August 1913, Bulgaria was defeated, but kept Western Thrace under the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest, 1913, Treaty of Bucharest.
In the following years, the Central Powers (German Empire, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire), with which Bulgaria had sided, lost World War I, and as a result, Bulgaria had to surrender Western Thrace under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Neuilly. Western Thrace was under temporary management of the Allies of World War I, Entente led by French General Charles Antoine Charpy. In late April 1920, as per the San Remo conference which gathered the leaders of the main allies of the Entente powers (except the US), Western Thrace was given to Greece.
Throughout the Balkan Wars and World War I, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey each forced respective minority populations in the Thrace region out of areas they controlled. A large population of Greek refugees, Greeks in Eastern Thrace, and Black Sea coastal and southern Bulgaria, was expelled south and west into Greek-controlled Thrace. Concurrently, a large population of Bulgarians was forced from the region into Bulgaria by Greek and Turkish actions. Turkish populations in the area were also targeted by Bulgarian and Greek forces and pushed eastward. As part of the Treaty of Neuilly and subsequent agreements, the status of the expelled populations was legitimized. This was followed by a further population exchange which radically changed the demographics of the region toward increased ethnic homogenization within the territories each respective country was ultimately awarded.
This was followed by the large-scale Exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, Greek-Turkish population exchanges of 1923 (Treaty of Lausanne), which finalized the reversal of Western and Eastern Thrace region's pre-Balkan War demography. The treaty granted the status of a minority to the Muslims in Western Thrace, in exchange for a similar status for the ethnic Greeks, Greek Greeks in Turkey, minority in Istanbul and the Aegean islands of Imbros and Tenedos.
After the Battle of Greece, German invasion (April 1941), the area was occupied by Bulgarian troops, as part of the triple Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II. During this period (1941–1944) the demographic distribution was further changed, with the The Holocaust in Bulgarian-occupied Greece, arrest of the region's approximately 4,500 Jews by the Bulgarian police and their deportation to death camps administered by Germany. None of them survived.
Economy
The economy of Thrace in recent years has become less dependent on agriculture. A number of Greek-owned high-tech telecommunications companies have settled in the area. The A2 motorway (Greece), A2 motorway (Egnatia Odos) motorway which passes through Thrace has contributed to the further development of the region. Tourism is slowly becoming more and more important as the Aegean coast has a number of beaches, and there is also the potential for winter tourism activities in the Rhodope mountains, Rhodopi mountains, the natural border with Bulgaria, which are covered by dense forest.
Religion
It is estimated that two-thirds (67%) of the population are Orthodox Christian Greeks while about a third (33%) are part of the recognized Muslim minority of Greece.
Of the Muslim minority:
* Turks of Western Thrace, Turkish: ~35%
* Pomaks: ~35%
* Roma people: ~15%
* ethnic Greek Muslims: ~15%
Turkey, a signatory state of the Lausanne Treaty, initially claimed the whole of the Muslim minority to be strictly an ethnic Turks of Western Thrace, Turkish minority even though it actually consists of multiple ethnic groups. In his 7 December 2017 visit to Greece President of Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, acknowledged for the first time the multi-ethnic nature of the Western Thracian Muslim minority.
Jews and the Holocaust
Before World War 2, Western Thrace was home to a Sephardic Jews, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Jewish population. After Greece was occupied by Axis powers, Axis forces, around 4,075 Jews living in Western Thrace and Macedonia were sent to Treblinka extermination camp and were murdered.Historical demographics
The last censuses which asked about ethnicity were held in the transitional period before the region became part of Greece. A number of estimates and censuses during the 1912-1920 period gave the following results about the ethnic distribution of the area that would become known as Western Thrace:https://polsci.academia.edu/VemundAarbakke → download THE MUSLIM MINORITY OF GREEK THRACE (pdf)
The Pomak population depending on the source was sometimes counted together with the Turks (Muslims) following the Ottoman system of classifying people according to religion, while in other occasions was specified separately. According to the Bulgarian view, they are considered "Bulgarian Muslims" and an integral part of the Bulgarian nation.
By the Bulgarian census in 1919, held on the request of the Entente, of the population of Western Thrace was 219,723 of whom: Turks 35.4% (77,726 Muslims), Bulgarians 46.3% (101,766 - 81,457 Christians and 20,309 Muslims), Greeks 14.8% (32,553 Christians), Jews 1.4% (3,066) Armenians 1.5% (2,369), others 0.,9% (1,243). The area ceded to the Entente also included Karaağaç, Edirne, Karaagach and its environs, which became part of Turkey after the Treaty of Lausanne.
Western Thrace was ceded to the Entente in December 1919, after which many Bulgarians left the region, while many Greeks moved in. The Government of the Entente (led by French general Sharpe) held its own census in 1920, according to which Western Thrace had a population of 204,700, of whom: Turks 36.5% (74,720 Muslims), Bulgarians 32.2% (65,927 = 54,079 Christians and 11,848 Muslims), Greeks 27.4% (56,114 Christians), Jews 1.5% (2,985) Armenians 0.9% (1,880), others 3,066. At the time this census was conducted, a part of the Greek population of Xanthi, who left massively the Xanthi district after the Balkan wars (1913), returned.
According to the Turkish researches the population of Western Thrace in 1923 was 191,699, of whom 129,120 (67%) were Turkish people, Turks/Muslims (also includes the Pomaks) and 33,910 (18%) were Greeks; the remaining 28,669 (15%) were mostly (Christian) Bulgarians, along with small numbers of Jews and Armenians (before the population exchange).
The population of the region, according to the official census of 1928 and 1951 conducted by the local authorities, per mother tongue, was as follows:
Miscellaneous
*Abdera, Thrace, Abdera, an ancient Greek coastal town in the regional unit of Xanthi, is the birthplace of the Greek philosophers Democritus, considered by some the father of the atomic theory, and Protagoras, who is credited with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of "virtue".
*Thrace and in particular the Rhodope mountains, its northern mountainous part, is home to one of the two surviving brown bear (species ''Ursus arctos'') populations in Greece (the other is in the Pindus mountains, in central Greece).
*The Greek-Turkish border is a major entering point of illegal immigrants from Asia (Syrians, Kurds, Demographics of Afghanistan, Afghans, Pakistanis) trying to enter Europe.
See also
* Northern Thrace * Eastern Thrace * Thrace * Thracians * List of Thracian Greeks * Turks of Western Thrace * Pomaks * Muslim minority of Greece * Provisional Government of Western Thrace * Kardzhali Province * Eastern Macedonia and Thrace * Democritus University of Thrace * The Holocaust in Bulgarian-occupied GreeceReferences
Bibliography
* * *.External links
Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace
Combined Prefectural Authority of Drama, Kavala and Xanthi
Prefecture of Xanthi
Democritus University of Thrace
{{Authority control Western Thrace, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace