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
East Thrace the distribution of ethnoreligious groups in the local "sanjaks" was as follows: The Muslim "millet" was recorded as Turkish, while the church members of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as Greek. In the past century modern East Thrace was the main component of the territory of the Adrianople Vilayet, which excluded the Constantinople Vilayet, but included West Thrace and parts of the Rhodopes and Sakar. A publication from December 21, 1912 in the Belgian magazine "Ons Volk Ontwaakt" (‘Our Nation Awakes’) estimated 1,006,500 inhabitants in the vilayet: East Thrace East Thrace or Eastern Thrace ( or simply "Trakya"; , "Anatoliki Thraki"; ,