Kırklareli

Kırklareli is the capital of Kırklareli Province in Eastern Thrace, on the European part of Turkey. It is also the name of the district of the same name.

It is not clearly known when the city was founded, nor under what name. The Byzantine Greeks called it Saranta Ekklisiès (Σαράντα Εκκλησιές, meaning forty churches). In the 14th century this was translated toTurkish and called "Kırk Kilise". Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, sanjaks became cities and on December 20, 1924, Kırk Kilise's name was changed to Kırklareli, meaning The Place of the Forties. The denomination Kırklareli was already used years before 1924, for example in the contemporary literature concerning the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The Bulgarian name of the town is Lozengrad (Лозенград) which means Vineyard Town. 

Ongoing archeological excavations in the city support the claim that the area was the location of one of the first organized settlements on the European continent, with artifacts from the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.

The settlement and its surrounding areas were conquered by the Persians in 513–512 BC, during the reign of King Darius I.

In 914 during the Bulgarian invasion in Adrianopol led by Simeon I, the settlement was captured by the Bulgarians and was under Bulgarian rule until 1003 when it was lost against the Byzantines.

The Ottoman Turks took the city and its region from the Byzantines in 1363, during the reign of Sultan Murad I.

The city was damaged during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829).

According to the 1878 record "Ethnography of the Wilayahs Adrianopol, Monastir and Thessaloniki" Kırk Kilise was inhabited by 6,700 Bulgarians, 2,850 Greeks, and 2,700 belonging to other ethnic groups.^[3]

According to the official Ottoman census of 1906–1907 (published in "The Ottoman Population 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics" by Kemal H. Karpat), the ethnic-religious breakdown in the Sanjak of Kırk Kilise was: 22,022 Muslims; 14,154 Greek Orthodox; 1,599 Bulgarian Orthodox; and 789 Jews.^[4]

During the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Kırk Kilise was occupied by Bulgaria, and then by Greece in the aftermath of World War I (1914–1918) resulting in mass immigration of Bulgarian population (there were a large number of journalists who reported on the actions at Kırk Kilise). Following the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922) the city was retaken by the Turks on November 10, 1922. According to the 1923 population exchange agreement between Greece and Turkey, the Greeks of the city were exchanged for the Muslims (Turks, Pomaks, Karadjaovalides and Albanians) living in Greece. Most of the inhabitants of the city are Turks who formerly lived in Thessaloniki until the First Balkan War of 1912. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which defines Turkey's western border in Thrace also defined the western boundaries of the Kırklareli Province.

In 1923 most of the 3700 inhabitants of Notia, the only Muslim village of the Megleno-Romanians in northern Greece, settled in the Edirne area (mainly in Kırklareli) and became known as Karadjovalides^[5] after the Turkish name of Moglena.^[6]

The number of these megleno-vlach families settled in Kırklareli were more than 110, while those settled in small villages around were 400: in total nearly 2000 Megleno-Romanians. Actually they number only 500, concentrated in Kırklareli and culturally assimilated to the Turks (most of them speak mainly the Turkish language, but are still bilingual at home.)

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