The 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.
The approximate area of Western Thrace is 8,578 km2 with a population of 371,208 according to the 2011 census.[1] It is estimated that two-thirds (67%) of the population are OrthodoxChristianGreeks, while about a third (33%) are Muslims who are an officially recognised minority of Greece. Of these, about a quarter 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 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 Greek region of Macedonia to the west. Alexandroupolis is the largest city, with a municipal population of 72,959 according to the 2011 census.[1] Below is a table of the five largest Thracian cities:[1]
Ruins of the ancient city of AbderaThe ancient theatre of MaroneiaRoman mosaics in Plotinopolis, modern Didymoteicho
After the Roman conquest, Western Thrace further belonged to the 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.[4]
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 Turks and Bulgarians, with a strong 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.
Greek administration stamp in Western Thrace, 1920
The victors quickly fell into dispute on how to divide the newly conquered lands, resulting in the Second Balkan War. In August 1913, Bulgaria was defeated, but kept Western Thrace under the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest.
In the following years, the Central Powers (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.[5] Western Thrace was under temporary management of the 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 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.
The economy of Thrace in recent years[when?] has become less dependent on agriculture. A number of Greek-owned high-tech telecommunications companies have settled in the area. The 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 Rhodopi mountains[citation needed], the natural border with Bulgaria, which are covered by dense forest.
It's 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.[1]
Turkey, a signatory state of the Lausanne Treaty, initially claimed the whole of the Muslim minority to be strictly an ethnic Turkish minority even though it actually consists of multiple ethnic groups. In his 7 December 2017 visit to Greece Turkish PresidentRecep Tayyip Erdoğan, acknowledged for the first time the multi-ethnic nature of the Western Thracian Muslim minority.[8][9][10][11]
Jews and the Holocaust
Before World War 2 Western Thrace was home to a Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish population. After Greece was occupied by Axis forces, around 4,075 Jews living in Western Thrace and Macedonia were sent to Treblinka extermination camp and were murdered.[12]
The last censuses which asked about ethnicity were held in the transitional period before the region became part of Greece.[citation needed] 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:[13]
General Distribution of Population in Western Thrace (1912–1920)
Census/Estimate
Muslims
Pomaks
Bulgarians
Greeks
Others
Total
1912 estimate
120,000
-
40,000
60,000
4,000
224,000
1919 Bulgarian
79,539
17,369
87,941
28,647
10,922
224,418
1919 Bulgarian
77,726
20,309
81,457
32,553
8,435
220,480
1920 French
74,730
11,848
54,092
56,114
7,906
204,690
1920 Greek
93,273
-
25,677
74,416
6,038
201,404
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.[13]
By the Bulgarian census in 1919, held on the request of the Entente,[14] of the population of Western Thrace[15] 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 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,[16][full citation needed] 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.[13]
Census in 1920 conducted by the Entente Powers in Western Thrace.[13]
According to the Turkish researches[17] the population of Western Thrace in 1923 was 191,699, of whom 129,120 (67%) were 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).
General Distribution of Population in Western Thrace in 1923, prior to the Greek-Turkish population exchange, according to Turkish claims (based on of 1913)[18]
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:[20]
Population in Western Thrace per mother tongue, 1928 (official census)
Abdera, an ancient Greek coastal town in the regional unit of Xanthi, is the birthplace of the Greek philosophersDemocritus, 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).
^(eds.), Bruno De Wever ... (2006). Local government in occupied Europe : (1939 - 1945). Gent: Academia Press. p. 206. ISBN978-90-382-0892-3. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)
.svg)
.svg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
