East Thrace the Turkish Straits) and the Sea of Marmara, a route of about 361 km. The southernmost part of Eastern Thrace is called the Gallipoli peninsula. European Turkey is bordered on the west by Greece for 212 km and on the north by Bulgaria for 269 km, with the Aegean Sea to the south-west and the Black Sea to the north-east. East Thrace was the setting for several important events in history and legend. The mass killings and displacement of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913 and the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey ethnically cleansed the Orthodox populations. Prior to that
Turks of Western Thrace the actual Ottoman-era Greek Muslims of Macedonia had been included among those 'Turks' expatriated to Turkey in 1924. including the Vallahades. In contrast, the Western Thrace Turks are completely distinct from those referred to as Greek Muslims and were exempt from the terms of the population exchange. 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 according to the Ottoman system of classifying people depending on religion,