Turkey Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world. Various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty thousand years ago, and is known to have been in the
Geography of Turkey of the sizable Greek-speaking community of western Turkey were forced to resettle in Greece, while the majority of the Turkish-speaking residents of Thrace who were not forced out during the Balkan wars were removed to Turkey. The boundary with Bulgaria was confirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). Since 1991 the more than boundary with the former Soviet Union, which was defined in the 1921 Treaty of Moscow (1921) and Treaty of Kars, has formed Turkey's borders with the independent countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The boundary with Iran was confirmed by the Treaty of Kasr-ı Şirin in 1639.