Geography of Turkey part of Turkey accounts for 95% of the country's area. It is also known as Asia Minor, Asiatic Turkey or the Anatolian Plateau. The term Anatolia is most frequently used in specific reference to the large, semiarid central plateau, which is rimmed by hills and mountains that in many places limit access to the fertile, densely settled coastal regions. The European portion of Turkey, known as Thrace (), encompasses roughly 3% of the total area but is home to more than 10% of the total population. Istanbul, the largest city of Thrace and Turkey, has a population of 11,372,613. Thrace
Turks of Western Thrace the actual Ottoman-era Greek Muslims of Macedonia had been included among those 'Turks' expatriated to Turkey in 1924. including the Vallahades. In contrast, the Western Thrace Turks are completely distinct from those referred to as Greek Muslims and were exempt from the terms of the population exchange. A number of estimates and censuses during the 1912-1920 period gave the following results about the ethnic distribution of the area that would become known as Western Thrace: The Pomak population depending on the source was sometimes counted together with the Turks according to the Ottoman system of classifying people depending on religion,