The government of Greece dismissed recent criticism from Turkey on Friday over a historic map presented as a gift to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew by General Dimitrios Choupis, Chief of the Hellenic National Defense General Staff, saying the gift was “purely symbolic.”
Turkey’s response to map of Thrace
According to Greek Defense Ministry sources, “Complaints about a map from this specific historical period by sources within the Turkish Defense Ministry—a country that in 2025 still invokes the Blue Homeland map—border the absurd.”
In response to complaints from officials of Turkey, the same sources noted that the historic map of Thrace presented by General Choupis of Greece to the Ecumenical Patriarch was selected because it depicts the latter’s homeland of Imbros.
The map that angered officials of Turkey was a copy of the “Thraciae Veteris Typus” (Latin for “Map of Ancient Thrace”). It was created by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius and was first published in 1585 as part of his famous atlas “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum” (“Theater of the World”). It depicts the ancient region of Thrace, which historically covers parts of modern northeastern Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey, including the Dardanelles Straits, the Propontis, the Bosphorus, and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos.
General Choupis of Greece offered the map to Bartholomew during his visit to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, Turkey on the sidelines of the 18th Summit of the Chiefs of Armed Forces of the Balkan Countries.
According to Turkish media, the gift provoked a reaction from Turkey’s Defense Ministry, with anonymous sources criticizing the gesture as an attempt to “instrumentalize the past,” dismissing it as “nostalgic consolations” and calling on Greek officials to “understand and accept the facts.”
The history of Thrace, where both Greece and Turkey share parts of its influence
Thrace is a province of Greece rooted in thousands of years of history. Located in southeastern Europe, it is a historically and culturally significant region with a fascinating history that spans millennia. Today, three different countries share parts of this ancient area’s influence: Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
The Thracians were well-known in ancient times for their military strength. Because of their excellent physical abilities, many men from Thrace worked as mercenaries in the armies of ancient Greece and Rome.
The significant cultural blending between the southern part of the Greek peninsula and the southeastern part of Europe resulted in the gradual Hellenization of many sections of Thrace, especially in the south of the region.
At the same time, the Macedonian Empire, led by King Philip II and later his son, Alexander the Great, took easy control of Thrace in the fourth century BC. After Alexander the Great passed away, the region became a battleground for his successors and a hotspot for Greek dominance.
In the first century AD, the emerging superpower of the known world, Rome, captured Thrace and incorporated it into its expanding empire as the province of Thracia. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Thrace became part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The fact that region was in such a strategic location so close to Constantinople made it a popular target for invading troops, including Goths, Huns, and Slavs.
The region eventually came under Ottoman administration, which lasted for about five centuries. During that time, substantial demographic changes occurred within Thrace, including the settlement of many Turkish populations and the conversion of certain natives from Christianity to Islam, for mere reasons of survival.
Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic, state borders in Thrace changed significantly. The modern partition of Thrace dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A number of conflicts took place during this time, and subsequent treaties defined the borders many times.
In 1920, following the end of World War I, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed between the Allied Powers, who had won the war and the Ottoman Empire. This monumental treaty for Athens granted Greece control over most of what is today Eastern Thrace, excluding the zone of the Straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) along with Constantinople (Istanbul).
Today, Thrace is a region where three countries meet, two of them full member-states of the European Union. Each one of these maintains its unique cultural history while sharing a similar historical inheritance of the broader region of Thrace.
Today, northern Thrace is part of southern Bulgaria and the EU, as is Western Thrace in the northeastern part of Greece. Eastern Thrace is Turkey’s only European region west of the large metropolitan center of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople).
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