Thrace Basin Thrace Basin The European side of Turkey is called the Thrace Basin. It is the largest and thickest Cenozoic sedimentary basin in Turkey. The basin is triangular shaped, trends WNW-ESE and was formed by extension in late Middle Eocene to latest Oligocene times. This gas prone basin is located northwest of Istanbul, Turkey. About 9,000 meters of Eocene-Miocene marine clastics and continental sediments were deposited. Several basement faults were reactivated and underwent strike-slip motion in late Miocene times where the famous North Anatolian Fault bounds the southern part of the basin. The Cenozoic sedimentary succession, overlying Paleozoic to Mesozoic metamorphic
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