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Imbros or İmroz, officially changed to Gökçeada since 29 July 1970,^[1][2] (older name in Turkish: İmroz; Greek: Ίμβρος Imvros), is the largest island of Turkey and the seat of Gökçeada District of Çanakkale Province. It is located in the Aegean Sea, at the entrance of Saros Bay and is also the westernmost point of Turkey (Cape İncirburnu). Imbros has an area of 279 km² (108 sq mi) and contains some wooded areas.^[3]

According to the 2014 census, the island-district of Gökçeada has a population of 8,644.^[4][5] The main industries of Imbros are fishing and tourism. The population is predominantly Turkish but there are still about 300 Greeks on Imbros, most of them elderly, but including some families with children.^[6] The island was primarily inhabited by ethnic Greeks^[1] from ancient times through to approximately the 1960s, when many emigrated to Greece, western Europe, the United States and Australia, due to a campaign of state-sponsored discrimination.^[1][6][7][8] The Greek Imbriot diaspora is thought to number some 15,000.

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.

Homer, in The Iliad wrote:

In the depths of the sea on the cliff

Between Tenedos and craggy Imbros

There is a cave, wide gaping

Poseidon who made the earth tremble,

stopped the horses there.^[9]

Eëtion, a lord of or ruler over the island of Imbros is also mentioned in the Iliad. He buys Priam's captured son Lycaon and restores him to his father

For ancient Greeks, the islands of Lemnos and Imbros were sacred to Hephaestus, god of metallurgy, and on ancient coins of Imbros an ithyphallic Hephaestus appears. In classical antiquity, Imbros, like Lemnos, was an Athenian cleruchy, a colony whose settlers retained Athenian citizenship; although since the Imbrians appear on the Athenian tribute lists, there may have been a division with the native population. The original inhabitants of Imbros were Pelasgians, as mentioned by Herodotus in The Histories.^[11] Miltiadesconquered the island from Persia after the battle of Salamis; the colony was established about 450 BC, during the first Athenian empire, and was retained by Athens (with brief exceptions) for the next six centuries. Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian Wardescribes the colonization of Imbros,^[12] and at several places in his narrative mentions the contribution of Imbrians in support of Athens during various military actions.^[13] He also recounts the escape of an Athenian squadron to Imbros.^[14] In the late 2nd century A.D., the island may have become independent under Septimius Severus

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