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The New Frontier in Thrace

By Lawrence Martin
September 1923
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By the Treaty of Lausanne Greece cedes to Turkey the disputed district of Karagach, west of the Maritsa River, with a population of 16,700 people, most of them refugees from Western Thrace. The Turks thus get the Karagach railway station which serves Adrianople. The new frontier is shown by a broken line on the two accompanying maps.

Turkish control over this link of the railway running down to the Aegean is of less consequence to the Greeks themselves--since it will interfere only with a small local traffic--than it is to the Bulgarians. The latter now find the free outlet to the sea for which they are clamoring blocked by Turkey as well as by Greece.

Karagach was retained by the Turks in the final treaty of peace made with Bulgaria in 1913 following the Balkan Wars. The Bulgarians demanded and obtained it in 1915 before they would enter the war on the side of the Central Powers. Since 1918 it has been an object of dispute. Its cession at Lausanne, against which the Bulgarians have protested vigorously, was a shrewd move on the part of Venizelos for it deflects Bulgarian grievances and pressure in no small measure from the Greeks to the Turks.

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