Western Thrace Western Thrace Western Thrace or West Thrace (, "[Dytikí] Thráki" / Turkish: Batı Trakya; , "Zapadna Trakiya" or Беломорска Тракия, "Belomorska Trakiya") is a geographic and historical region of Greece, between the Nestos and Evros rivers in the northeast of the country; East Thrace, which lies east of the river Evros, forms the European part of Turkey, and the area to the north, in Bulgaria, is known as Northern Thrace. Inhabited since paleolithic times, it has been under the political, cultural and linguistic influence of the Greek world since the classical era; Greeks from the Aegean islands extensively colonized the
Turks of Western Thrace regions where the majority of Muslim Turks lived. The Turkish community has a strong presence in the Komotini () and Xanthi () departments of East Macedonia and Thrace, while it is scarcely present in the Evros prefecture, the closest to the international boundary with Turkey. According to estimates, Muslims as a whole, represented 36-38% of the Rhodopi Department population, 12-24% in the Xanthi Department and less than 5% in the Evros Department. According to Ethnologue, in 1976 the Turkish language was spoken by 128,000 people in Greece, the majority of whom are located in the Western Thrace portion of the