East Thrace East Thrace East Thrace or Eastern Thrace ( or simply "Trakya"; , "Anatoliki Thraki"; , "Iztochna Trakiya"), also known as Turkish Thrace or European Turkey, is the part of the modern Republic of Turkey that is geographically part of Southeast Europe. It accounts for 3% of Turkey's land area but comprises 14% of Turkey's total population. The rest of the country is located on the Anatolian peninsula, geographically in Western Asia. East Thrace is of historic importance as it is next to a major sea-based trade corridor. It is currently also of specific geostrategic importance because the sea corridor, that
Anatolian peoples Anatolian peoples Anatolians were Indo-European peoples of the Near East identified by their use of the Anatolian languages. These peoples were among the oldest Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups, one of the most archaic, because Anatolians were the first or among the first branches of Indo-European peoples to separate from the initial Proto-Indo-European community that gave origin to the individual Indo-European peoples. Together with the Proto-Tocharians, who migrated eastward, the Anatolian peoples constituted the first known waves of Indo-European emigrants out of the Eurasian steppe. It is likely that they reached the Near East from the north, via the Balkans or the