Cyrenaica In a wider sense, still in use, Cyrenaica includes all of the eastern part of Libya, including the Kufra District. Cyrenaica borders on Tripolitania in the northwest and on Fezzan in the southwest. The region that used to be Cyrenaica officially until 1963 has formed several shabiyat, the administrative divisions of Libya, since 1995. The 2011 Libyan Civil War started in Cyrenaica, which came largely under the control of the National Transitional Council (headquartered in Benghazi) for most of the war. In 2012, the National Transitional Council declared Cyrenaica to be an autonomous region of Libya. Geologically, Cyrenaica rests on
Cappadocian Greeks Turks, the Cappadocian countryside remained largely Greek populated, with a smaller Armenian population even after the Ottoman conquest. During the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murad III (1574 to 1595) the region of Cappadocia became largely Turkified in culture and language through a gradual process of acculturation, as a result many Greeks of Cappadocia had accepted the Turkish vernacular and later became known as ‘Karamanlides’. This name derives from the region of Cappadocia which was called Karaman by the Turks in honor of the Turkish chieftain Karamanoglu, though the Cappadocian Greeks continued to call the region ‘"Laranda"’, its ancient Greek name.