Western Thrace Western Thrace Western Thrace or West Thrace (, "[Dytikí] Thráki" / Turkish: Batı Trakya; , "Zapadna Trakiya" or Беломорска Тракия, "Belomorska Trakiya") is a geographic and historical region of Greece, between the Nestos and Evros rivers in the northeast of the country; East Thrace, which lies east of the river Evros, forms the European part of Turkey, and the area to the north, in Bulgaria, is known as Northern Thrace. Inhabited since paleolithic times, it has been under the political, cultural and linguistic influence of the Greek world since the classical era; Greeks from the Aegean islands extensively colonized the
Turks of Western Thrace was a measure to avert the possibility of the Greek region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace becoming a "second Cyprus" sometime in the future or of being ceded to Turkey on the basis of the ethnic origin of its Muslim inhabitants. Greek courts have also outlawed the use of the word 'Turkish' to describe the Turkish community. In 1988, the Greek Supreme Court affirmed a 1986 decision of the Court of Appeals of Thrace in which the "Union of Turkish Associations of Western Thrace" was ordered closed. The court held that the use of the word 'Turkish' referred to citizens