Turkey more than long and wide, with a roughly rectangular shape. It lies between latitudes 35° and 43° N, and longitudes 25° and 45° E. Turkey's land area, including lakes, occupies , of which are in Southwest Asia and in Europe. Turkey is the world's 37th-largest country in terms of area. The country is encircled by seas on three sides: the Aegean Sea to the west, the Black Sea to the north and the Mediterranean to the south. Turkey also contains the Sea of Marmara in the northwest. The European section of Turkey, eastern Thrace () is located at the easternmost
Turks of Western Thrace usually insisted that the basis of identification of a minority is religious and not ethnic (or national). Thus Greek officials refer to the Muslim minority in Greece as Greek Muslims, who were based mainly in Western Thrace. Muslim communities also lived in Greek Macedonia, Epirus, and Crete (see Cretan Turks) and were the descendants of Ottoman-era Greek converts to Islam who joined the Turkish Millet (Ottoman Empire). However, these particular communities were relocated from Greece to Turkey following the Population exchange signed between the two countries in 1922-23, with only the Greek Muslims of Western Thrace exempted from it. Successive