Western Thrace

Geography

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). Topographically, Thrace alternates between mountain-enclosed basins of varying size and deeply cut river valleys. It is bounded by the Aegean Sea and more specifically the Thracian Sea to the south and by the Nestos and Evros rivers to the west and east respectively.

History

Archaic and Classical Era

Ancient Greeks extensively colonized the region, especially the coastal part, and built prosperous cities such as Sale, Maroneia and Abdera, which was home of Democritus, the 5th-century BC philosopher who developed an atomic particle theory, and of Protagoras, a leading sophist.

The first to take greater control of Thrace, in part or whole, was the Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BC. The region was incorporated into the Persian empire as the Satrapy of Skudra, after the Scythian campaign of Darius the Great. Thracian soldiers were used in Persian armies and are depicted in carvings of the Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam.

Persians' presence in Thrace lasted up until the rise of the Delian League led by the Athenian general Cimon in the aftermath of the battle of Plataea. Cities like Sale, Maroneia and Abdera became and remained as members of the Delian league until the Spartan victory at the end of the Peloponnesian War.

In the 4th century BC most of Thrace was conquered by Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. Notably, Thracian troops are known to have accompanied Alexander when he crossed the Hellespont which abuts Thrace, during his campaigns in the East.

Hellenistic era

Alexander's personal secretary and later Diadochi general, Eumenes was from Cardia. Most of Thrace became part of the kingdom of Lysimachus, when Alexander's empire was divided between his generals. Lysimachus founded his capital at Lysimachia and ruled as king up until his defeat from Seleucus I Nicator in 281 BC at the battle of Corupedium. Then the region was contested between Ptolemies, Seleucids, Antigonids, Attalids and Celts. During the Third Macedonian War, Cotys IV, the king of the Odrysian kingdom, allied to Perseus of Macedon against the Roman Republic and the kingdom of Pergamum.

Roman era

Claudius annexed the Sapaean kingdom and the Roman province of Thracia was founded in 46 AD (later the Diocese of Thrace). 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.

Byzantine era

The region was at the core of the Byzantine Empire, close to its capital Constantinople, which was located at the site of ancient Byzantium, from the time of the division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western empires in the early fourth century AD.

It was part of the theme of Thrace and then part of the theme of Macedonia, from where the Macedonian dynasty originated. The core area of the old theme of Macedonia was recorded as the "province of Adrianople and Didymoteichon" (provincia Adrianupoleos et Didimotichi).

Manuel Erotikos Komnenos was born in the theme of Thrace, who was the first fully documented ancestor of the Komnenos dynasty. The emperor of Nicaea, John III Doukas Vatatzes, was born c. 1192 in Didymoteicho, and was probably the son of the general Basil Vatatzes, who was killed in battle in 1194, and his wife, a cousin of the Emperors Isaac II Angelos and Alexios III Angelos. Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos was born on 18 June 1332 in Didymoteicho.

Ottoman era

The Ottoman Empire conquered most of the region in the late 14th century and ruled it until the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. During that period, Thrace had a mixed population of Greeks, Turks and Bulgarians, while a smaller number of Pomaks, Jews, Armenians and Romani also lived in the region.

At 1821, several parts of Thrace, such as Lavara, Maroneia, and Samothrace participated in the Greek War of Independence.

Balkan Wars and WWI

During the First Balkan War, the Balkan League (Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and 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 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 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. 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.

Greek refugees

A large population of Greeks from Eastern Thrace, Eastern Rumelia and Black Sea coastal areas, as well as Greeks from Anatolia, including Pontic Greeks and Cappadocian Greeks, was expelled into Greek-controlled Thrace. This was followed by the large-scale Greek-Turkish population exchanges of 1923, which finalized the reversal of Western and Eastern Thrace region's pre-Balkan War demography. 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.

The Treaty of Lausanne granted the status of a minority to the Muslims of Western Thrace. A similar status was also granted for the Greek minority in Istanbul and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos, which however were affected by the Expulsion of Greeks from Istanbul and the Istanbul pogrom.

WWII

After the German invasion (April 1941), the area was occupied by Bulgarian troops, as part of the triple Axis occupation of Greece, during World War II. Greek resistance emerged soon.

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. During this period (1941–1944) the demographic distribution was further changed, with the 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.

Present-day

The Democritus University of Thrace is based in Komotini and has also campuses in Xanthi, Alexandroupoli, Orestiada and Didymoteicho. 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 an entering point for illegal immigration into European Union territory; Greek security forces, working together with Frontex, are also extensively deployed in the Greco-Turkish land border.

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 (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, the natural border with Bulgaria, which are covered by dense forest.

Demographics

The approximate area of Western Thrace is 8,578 km² with a population of 371,208 according to the 2011 census. Greek Thrace is bordered by Bulgaria to the north, Turkey to the east, the Aegean Sea (Greece) to the south and Greek 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:

Religion

It is estimated that two-thirds (67%) of the population are Orthodox Christian Greeks, while about a third (33%) are Muslims who are an officially recognised minority of Greece.

According to the 1991 census, the Muslim minority numbered around 98,000 people or 29% of the population of Thrace, of which about half were Western Thrace Turks and the rest (35%) Pomaks and Muslim Romani people (15%). 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. 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 President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, acknowledged for the first time the multi-ethnic nature of the Western Thracian Muslim minority.

In the 2014 European elections in Greece, 42,533 people from Eastern Macedonia and Thrace voted for the Party of Friendship, Equality and Peace.

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:

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 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 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:

Archaeological sites

• 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".
• Maroneia, ancient theatre.
• Plotinopolis, in modern Didymoteicho.
• Didymoteicho Fortress
• Samothrace temple complex, in Samothrace island.
• Mosynopolis
• Anastasiopolis-Peritheorion
• Theotokos Kosmosoteira

Airport

• Alexandroupoli Airport