Imbros

GOKCEADA until July 29, 1970 İmroz (Greek Ίμβρος Imbros / Imbros, German also: Imbros ) is an Aegean island in the Turkish province of Çanakkale. Capital of the island is the town GOKCEADA which is the main town of the same name with the island in terms of area identical district simultaneously.

Geography

The island is strategically located at the entrance of the Dardanelles in the Thracian Sea, 16 km west of the Gallipoli peninsula and about 30 km northwest of Troy. It is 13 km wide and 30 km long. The island had 7,475 inhabitants in 2008.

Geology

Gokceada lies on the Anatolian plate directly on the northern edge of the plate boundary to the Eurasian plate.

Climate

The island has a Mediterranean climate with warm dry summers and wet mild winters. Rain falls from May to August in exceptional cases. In general, cold weather and rain in the first half of September are expected.

Flora and Fauna

GOKCEADA is particularly rich in crops. There are wide olive groves and pine trees larger stocks.

Education

On the island there are 3 elementary schools, in which a total of 823 students are taught. In the middle schools 605 pupils are taught. 106 teachers are employed in schools on the island. In addition, there are three high schools and vocational high school. On GOKCEADA a library with 11,081 books of 3 employees is operated. The literacy rate is 95 percent.

After nearly 50 years, a private Greek primary school was re-opened in September 2013. The school was founded in 1951 and closed in 1964 at the request of the owner. However, the school will begin the school year with four students on GOKCEADA due to lack of Greek-speaking elementary school students.

History and Politics

The island on which is the oldest known place of worship of Hermes has been inhabited since ancient times. During the time of the Roman Empire it belonged to the province of Thrace - at that time still under its Greek name Imbros. In the Middle Ages it belonged to the Byzantine Empire, in the Renaissance ( before the fall of Constantinople in 1453 ) to the Ottoman Empire. As part of the province of Eastern Thrace, the then Imbros with the neighboring island of Bozcaada 1919-1923 belonged briefly to Greece. After the Greco- Turkish War it was separated again in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 by Greece and, like Bozcaada demilitarized. The Treaty of Lausanne, Greece and Turkey agreed on a mutual exchange of populations, one of the exceptions to this forced resettlement concerned the Greeks Gökçeadas.

Article 14 of the EC Treaty, the Greeks of the islands an autonomous status was granted. So GOKCEADA should indeed be under Turkish sovereignty, however, be managed by an independent management which should also conduct policing the island independently. However, it never came about. Due to the tightening of the Cyprus conflict occurred in 1964 rather to reprisals against the Greek population (eg closure of all Greek schools ), so that the proportion of the Greek population has declined to a few hundred inhabitants. In recent years, a recovery has been, as many emigrated islanders renovate their property and at least spend the summer there. In March 2013, the competent authorities gave approval to again operate a Greek school on the island.

Sons and daughters of the island

• Bartholomew I ( * February 29, 1940 ) Patriarch of Constantinople Opel, Metropolitan of Chalcedon
• Nikolaos P. Andriotis (1906-1976), Greek linguist and Neogräzist
• Critobulus of Imbros ( 1400 /10 - after 1468 ), Byzantine historian