Edirne in the context of "Edirne Province"

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 km (83,000 sq mi). In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn connects to the Black Sea, by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, respectively. The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea reaches a maximum depth of 2,639 m (8,658 ft) to the west of Karpathos. The Thracian Sea and the Sea of Crete are main subdivisions of the Aegean Sea.

The Aegean Islands can be divided into several island groups, including the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Sporades, the Saronic islands and the North Aegean Islands, as well as Crete and its surrounding islands. The Dodecanese, located to the southeast, includes the islands of Rhodes, Kos, and Patmos; the islands of Delos and Naxos are within the Cyclades to the south of the sea. Lesbos is part of the North Aegean Islands. Euboea, the second-largest island in Greece, is located in the Aegean, despite being administered as part of Central Greece. Nine out of twelve of the Administrative regions of Greece border the sea, along with the Turkish provinces of Edirne, Çanakkale, Balıkesir, İzmir, Aydın and Muğla to the east of the sea. Various Turkish islands in the sea are Imbros, Tenedos, Cunda Island, and the Foça Islands.

The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defeated it, in the process stripping the Ottomans of their European provinces, leaving only Eastern Thrace under Ottoman control. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against the other four combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the July crisis of 1914 and as a prelude to the First World War.

By the early 20th century, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia had achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large elements of their ethnic populations remained under Ottoman rule. Over the course of the Macedonian Struggle these states fought for influence between themselves and the Ottoman government within Ottoman Macedonia, during which their governments came under the control of nationalists. In 1912, these countries united to formed the Balkan League. The First Balkan War began on 8 October 1912, when the League member states attacked the Ottoman Empire, and ended eight months later with the signing on 30 May 1913 of the Treaty of London negotiated together with the Great Powers. The Great Powers - particularly Italy and Austria-Hungary -- included independence for Albania in the Treaty. The Second Balkan War began on 16 June 1913, when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its allotment of territory from Macedonia, attacked its former Balkan League allies. The combined forces of the Serbian and Greek armies, with their superior numbers repelled the Bulgarian offensive and counter-attacked by invading Bulgaria from the west and the south. Romania, having taken no part in the first conflict, had intact armies to strike with and invaded Bulgaria from the north in violation of a peace treaty between the two states. The Ottoman Empire also attacked Bulgaria and advanced in Thrace, regaining Adrianople. In the resulting Treaty of Bucharest, Bulgaria managed to retain most of the territories it had gained in the First Balkan War. However, it was forced to cede the ex-Ottoman south part of Dobruja province to Romania.

The Fall of Constantinople, also known as the Conquest of Constantinople, was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire. The city was captured on 29 May 1453 as part of the culmination of a 53-day siege which had begun on 6 April.

The attacking Ottoman Army, which significantly outnumbered Constantinople's defenders, was commanded by the 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II (later nicknamed "the Conqueror"), while the Byzantine army was led by Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos. After conquering the city, Mehmed II made Constantinople the new Ottoman capital, replacing Adrianople.

The Marmara region (Turkish: Marmara Bölgesi) is a geographical region of Turkey.

Located in East Thrace, it is bordered by Greece and the Aegean Sea to the west, Bulgaria and the Black Sea to the north, the Black Sea Region to the east, and the Aegean Region to the south. At the center of the region is the Sea of Marmara, which gives the region its name. The largest city in the region is Istanbul. Other big cities are Bursa, İzmit, Balıkesir, Tekirdağ, Çanakkale and Edirne.

Kırklareli Province (Turkish: Kırklareli ili) is a province in northwestern Turkey on the west coast of the Black Sea. The province neighbours Bulgaria to the north along a 180-kilometre (110 mi) long border. It borders the province of Edirne to the west and the province of Tekirdağ to the south and province of Istanbul to the southeast. Kırklareli is the capital city of the province. Its area is 6,459 km, and its population is 369,347 (2022). The province's and its central city's name means "the land of the forties" in Turkish and it may refer either to the forty Ottoman ghazis sent by the sultan Murad I to conquer the city for the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century or to the forty churches reported to be situated in the region before the Ottoman conquest, as attested by the former name of Kırklareli (Kırk Kilise in Turkish; Σαράντα Εκκλησιές). There is a memorial on a hilltop in Kırklareli city, called "Kırklar Anıtı" (the Memorial of the Forties in Turkish) to honor the Ottoman conquerors (For more on the name's origins, see Kırklareli). The province is bisected by the Yıldız (Istranca) mountain range. The north and northeastern parts of the province are among the least populated and under developed parts of Turkey. The districts to the south and west are more populated because the land is better suited for agriculture and industrial development. The north and eastern parts of the province are dominated by forests. Therefore, forestry is an important means of living in these areas. Fishing is done along the Black Sea coast.

The Maritsa, known in Greek as the Hebros and in Turkish as the Meriç, is a river that runs through the Balkans in Southeast Europe. With a length of 480 km (300 mi), it is the longest river that runs solely in the interior of the Balkan peninsula, and one of the largest in Europe by discharge. It flows through Bulgaria in its upper and middle reaches, while its lower course forms part of the border between Greece and Turkey. Its drainage area is about 53,000 km (20,000 sq mi), of which 66.2% is in Bulgaria, 27.5% in Turkey, and 6.3% in Greece. It is the main river of the historical region of Thrace, most of which lies in its drainage basin.

It has its origin in the Rila Mountains in Western Bulgaria, its source being the Marichini Lakes. The Maritsa flows east-southeast between the Balkan and Rhodope Mountains, past Plovdiv and Dimitrovgrad in Bulgaria to Edirne in Turkey. East of Svilengrad, Bulgaria, the river flows eastwards, forming the border between Bulgaria (on the north bank) and Greece (on the south bank), and then between Turkey and Greece. At Edirne, the river meets its two chief tributaries Tundzha and Arda, and flows through Turkish territory on both banks. It then turns towards the south and forms the border between Greece on the west bank and Turkey on the east bank all the way to the Aegean Sea, which it enters near Enez, forming a river delta. The upper Maritsa valley is a principal east–west route in Bulgaria. The unnavigable river is used for hydroelectric power generation and for irrigation.

The Despotate of Epirus (Medieval Greek: Δεσποτᾶτον τῆς Ἠπείρου) was one of the Greek rump states of the Byzantine Empire established in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 by a branch of the Angelos dynasty. It claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire during the subsequent struggle for Constantinople, along with the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond; its rulers briefly proclaiming themselves as Emperors in 1227–1242 (during which it is most often called the Empire of Thessalonica). The term "Despotate of Epirus" is, like "Byzantine Empire" itself, a modern historiographic convention and not a name in use at the time.

The Despotate was centred on the region of Epirus, encompassing also Albania and the western portion of Greek Macedonia and also included Thessaly and western Greece as far south as Nafpaktos. Through a policy of aggressive expansion under Theodore Komnenos Doukas the Despotate of Epirus also briefly came to incorporate central Macedonia, with the establishment of the Empire of Thessalonica in 1224, and Thrace as far east as Didymoteicho and Adrianople, and was on the verge of recapturing Constantinople and restoring the Byzantine Empire before the Battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230 where he was defeated by the Bulgarian Empire. After that, the Epirote state contracted to its core in Epirus and Thessaly, and was forced into vassalage to other regional powers. It nevertheless managed to retain its autonomy until being conquered by the restored Palaiologan Byzantine Empire in ca. 1337. In the 1410s, Carlo I Tocco, Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos, managed to reunite the core of the Epirote state, but his successors gradually lost it to the advancing Ottoman Empire, with the last stronghold, Vonitsa, falling to the Ottomans in 1479.

The Second Balkan War (29 June – 10 August 1913) was a conflict fought between the Kingdom of Bulgaria and its former Balkan League allies, Serbia and Greece, who were later joined by Romania and the Ottoman Empire. The war began when Bulgaria, unhappy with the division of territory after the First Balkan War, launched attacks on Serbian and Greek forces, who repelled the offensive and pushed into Bulgarian territory. With most of Bulgaria’s army committed in the south, Romania intervened from the north. The Ottoman Empire also took advantage of the situation to recover territories lost the previous year.

As Bulgaria suffered military setbacks on multiple fronts and Romanian forces advanced towards its capital, Sofia, it requested an armistice. The war ended with the Treaty of Bucharest, which compelled Bulgaria to cede significant territory: Southern Dobruja to Romania, parts of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Adrianople (Edirne) to the Ottoman Empire under the separate Treaty of Constantinople.