Greece–Turkey border

It mostly follows the river Evros. At some places the border does not follow the main course of the river, mainly because the river has been straightened.

It is the external border of the European Union. In 2012, a high border fence was erected along the land border where it is not separated by the river, because of the European migrant crisis.[1] In addition there is a sea border which sometimes goes through straits of a few kilometres width.

Territorial Expansion of Greece from 1832–1947

After the Greek War of Independence ended in 1829, the Greek state covered a fraction of its present territory. The first Greco-Ottoman border was the Aspropotamos–Spercheios line, followed in 1832 by the Arta–Volos line, which remained in effect until the annexation of Thessaly in 1881. The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 led to an extension of Greece northward, but at the same time, due to the advances of Serbia and Bulgaria, Greece ceased sharing a land border with the Ottoman Empire. This changed again in 1919–20, when Greece gained Western Thrace, Eastern Thrace, and the Smyrna Zone.

Following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, the present course of the border was established in 1923 by the Treaty of Lausanne, which also left the so-called "Karaağaç Triangle" (Greek: Τρίγωνο του Καραγάτς), a suburb of the city of Edirne, Turkey, as a Turkish exclave on the western side of the river. This territory was ceded during the Lausanne negotiations in exchange for Turkey abandoning its claim for war reparations on Greece.

The Greek-Turkish border, as defined by Lausanne, is effectively a reaffirmation of the Bulgarian-Turkish border set out by the Treaty of Constantinople (1913) ten years earlier, but this time with Greece as party, as Bulgaria had ceded Western Thrace to Greece in the Treaty of Neuilly after World War I.

There are three border crossings:

• Kastanies – Karaağaç (road, on land)
• Pythio – Uzunköprü (railway, river bridge)
• Kipoi – İbriktepe (road, river bridge)

• Greece–Turkey relations