East Thrace the Turkish Straits) and the Sea of Marmara, a route of about 361 km. The southernmost part of Eastern Thrace is called the Gallipoli peninsula. European Turkey is bordered on the west by Greece for 212 km and on the north by Bulgaria for 269 km, with the Aegean Sea to the south-west and the Black Sea to the north-east. East Thrace was the setting for several important events in history and legend. The mass killings and displacement of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913 and the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey ethnically cleansed the Orthodox populations. Prior to that
Albanian-speakers of Western Thrace while Muslims were categorised alongside Turks. Among this population, Orthodox Albanians in Eastern Thrace resided in partly homogeneous communities, either villages or neighborhoods, and were mainly descendants of immigrants from the Korça region. At the conclusion of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, Greece and Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne, which included a population exchange between the two countries. The treaty used religion as the indicator of national affiliation, thus including populations without ethnic provisions, even Albanians, in the population exchange. Under this treaty the Muslims of Greece were exchanged with the Christians of Turkey, with an exception of the