Wednesday 30 January 2013

A Map of Gökçeada, Turkey



Card no 377 - Riutsi
A Map of Gökçeada, Turkey
Country: Finland
Place:  Jyväskylä
Received: 30th January 2013
Distance: 1,217 miles
Travelled for: 6 days

The Island of Imbros or İmroz officially changed its name to Gökçeada in 1970.  It is the largest island of Turkey and is located in the Aegean Sea, at the entrance of Saros Bay.  It is also the westernmost point of Turkey.  Gökçeada has an area of 108 sq miles and contains some wooded areas.  If you are wondering about the connection with Finland, the sender has a summer house there.

According to the 2011 census, the island-district of Gökçeada has a population of 8,210.  Its main industries are fishing, tourism, vineyards and wine production. 


The population is predominantly Turkish but there are still about 250 Greeks, most of them elderly. The island was primarily inhabited by ethnic Greeks from ancient times through to the middle of the twentieth century when many emigrated to Greece, Western Europe, the United States and Australia during a campaign of discrimination.

According to Greek mythology, the palace of Thetis, mother of Achilles, king of Phthia, was situated between Imbros and Samothrace. The stables of the winged horses of Poseidon were said to lie between Imbros and Tenedos.

3 comments:

  1. I like such maps :) They take me back for 6-7 years - to my school times. My mom is a geography teacher, so I liked geography since my childhood actually :) And at school we had such maps, but more detailed - and could see the fishes, animals, plants, natural resources an so on particularly for this or that country - it was really very interesting to look over the pictograms and imagine...

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  2. I wish I had had such maps when I was a child. I loved geography but pictograms would have been considered very frivolous at school in those days. My elder brother had an encyclopedia with maps like that though and I spent many happy hours with it.

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  3. My family was from this island but migrated to the USA. It was either this for the Greeks of this island or risk being raped or murdered. This is a beautiful island with a dark history.

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