Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace municipalities and regions, in this case the 60 municipalities of Central Macedonia and of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, and the two regions themselves. Covering an area of "Macedonia and Thrace" is the largest of the seven decentralized administrations by area, and with an overall population of it is also the second most populated one, following the Decentralized Administration of Attica. In the revised European NUTS nomenclature, the two regions of "Macedonia and Thrace" together with the two regions of the Decentralized Administration of Epirus and Western Macedonia form the first level NUTS region EL5 (Voreia Ellada). The Decentralized Administration is
Demographics of Turkey remain in Turkey following the 1923 population exchange, which involved the forcible resettlement of approximately 1.5 million Greeks from Anatolia and East Thrace and of half a million Turks from all of Greece except for Western Thrace. After years of persecution (e.g. the Varlık Vergisi (1942–1944) and the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955), emigration of ethnic Greeks from the Istanbul region greatly accelerated, reducing the 120,000-strong Greek minority to about 7,000 by 1978. The 2008 figures released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry places the current number of Turkish citizens of Greek descent at the 2,000–3,000 mark. According to Milliyet there are