Thrace Thrace Thrace (; Modern , "Thráki"; , "Trakiya"; ) is a geographical and historical area in Southeast Europe, now split between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, which is bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south and the Black Sea to the east. It comprises southeastern Bulgaria (Northern Thrace), northeastern Greece (Western Thrace) and the European part of Turkey (East Thrace). In antiquity, it was also referred to as "Europe", prior to the extension of the term to describe the whole continent. The name "Thrace" comes from the Thracians, an ancient Indo-European people inhabiting Southeast
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"; ,