Gökçeada and Bozcaada

Gökçeada and Bozcaada are two islands in the Aegean Sea which are part of the province of Çanakkale in Turkey. Before the First World War they were mainly inhabited by Greeks and were called Imbros and Ténedos. Because of their strategic position near the Dardanelles, the western powers, particularly Britain, insisted at the end of the Balkan Wars in 1913 that the islands should be retained by the Ottoman Empire when the other Aegean islands were ceded to Greece. In 1920 the Treaty of Sevres following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire granted the islands to Greece. But following the defeat of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War, the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 returned them to Turkey. Gökçeada has a population of about 8,000 and much smaller Bozcaada has a population of about 2,700. The main industries of the islands are fishing and tourism. The population is mostly Turkish but there are still about 1,000 Greeks on Gökçeada and about 100 on Bozcaada.