Imbros (; ; ), officially Gökçeada () since 29 July 1970,Alexis Alexandris, "The Identity Issue of The Minorities in Greece And Turkey", in Hirschon, Renée (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey, Berghahn Books, 2003, p. 120"Hüzün Adası: İmroz" , Yeniçağ, 12 July 2007 is the largest island of Turkey, located in Çanakkale Province. It is located in the north-northeastern Aegean Sea, at the entrance of Saros Bay, and has the westernmost point of Turkey (Cape İncirburnu). Imbros has an area of , and has some wooded areas."Gökçeada" , from Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
As of 2023, the island-district of Gökçeada has a population of 10,721. The main industries of Imbros are fishing and tourism. By the end of the 20th century, the island was predominantly inhabited by settlers from the Turkish mainland that mostly arrived after 1960, with the indigenous Greek population having declined to about 300 persons by the start of the 21st century.
Historically, the island was primarily inhabited by ethnic Greeks since the Iron Age until approximately the 1960s, when many were forced to emigrate to Greece as well as to Western Europe, the United States and Australia, due to a campaign of discrimination and ethnic cleansing sponsored by the governments of İsmet İnönü.Hurriyet Daily News. "Greeks look to revive identity on Gökçeada", 22 August 2011. Mohammadi, A., Ehteshami, A. "Iran and Eurasia" Garnet&Ithaca Press, 2000, 221 pages. p. 192 The Greek Imbriot diaspora is thought to number around 15,000 globally and in Turkey, and has a strong special Imbrian identity. The 2010s saw a tentative revitalisation of the island's remaining Greek community.
History
In mythology
According to Greek mythology, the palace of Thetis, mother of Achilles, king of Phthia, was situated between Imbros and Samothrace.
The stables of the winged horses of Poseidon were said to lie between Imbros and Tenedos.
Homer wrote in the Iliad:
In the depths of the sea on the cliff Between Tenedos and craggy Imbros There is a cave, wide gaping Poseidon who made the earth tremble, stopped the horses there.Homer, The Iliad Book XIII.
Eëtion, a lord of or ruler over the island of Imbros, is also mentioned in the Iliad. He buys Priam's captured son Lycaon and restores him to his father.Homer, The Iliad, Book XXI. Homer also writes that Hera and Hypnos leave Lemnos and Imbros making their way to Mount Ida.Homer, The Iliad, Book XIV. Homer mentions Imbros in the Iliad on other occasions as well.
Imbros is mentioned in the Homeric Hymn which was dedicated to Apollo.Homeric Hymn 3 to Delian Apollon
Apollonius of Rhodes also mentions Imbros in the first book of his work Argonautica.Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Book 1.
In antiquity The original inhabitants of Imbros were Pelasgians who worshipped the Cabeiri and Hermes as a god of reproduction in ithyphallic form, whence his Carian epithet, 'Ιμβραμος, is assumed to be derived from. For the ancient Greeks, the islands of Lemnos and Imbros were sacred to Hephaestus, god of metallurgy, and an ithyphallic Hephaestus appears on the ancient coins of Imbros. The Imbriots also worshipped an ithyphallic deity called Orthanes, whose cult was adopted by the Athenians when they conquered the island, though he never became as important in Athens as he was in Imbros.
In classical antiquity, Imbros, like Lemnos, was an Athenian cleruchy, a colony whose settlers retained Athenian citizenship; although, since the Imbrians appear on the Athenian tribute lists, there may have been a division with the native population. The original inhabitants of Imbros were Pelasgians, as mentioned by Herodotus in The Histories.Herodotus, The Histories, Book V.
In 511 or 512 BC the island was captured by the Persian general Otanes. Miltiades conquered the island from Persia after the Battle of Salamis; the colony was established about 450 BC, during the first Athenian empire, and was retained by Athens (with brief exceptions) for the next six centuries. Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War describes the colonization of Imbros,Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VII. and at several places in his narrative mentions the contribution of Imbrians in support of Athens during various military actions.Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Books III, IV, and V. He also recounts the escape of an Athenian squadron to Imbros.Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VIII. During the Social War (357–355 BC) the Chians, Rhodians and Byzantines attacked Imbros and Lemnos, which were allies of Athens. In the late second century AD, the island may have become independent under Septimius Severus.Oxford Classical Dictionary: "Imbros"
Strabo mentions that the Cabeiri were most honored in Imbros and Lemnos.Strabo, Geography.
Stephanus of Byzantium mentions that Imbros was sacred to the Cabeiri and Hermes.Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica, § I331.14
The Imbrian Mysteries were one of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece (similar to the Eleusinian Mysteries), but very little is known about them.
It is said that Philonomus had sent to Amyclae in Laconia colonists from Imbros and Lemnos.
Philostratus in his Letter 70 to the Imbrian Cleophon, states that being a Lemnian, he considers Imbros also as his homeland.
Aeneas Tacticus reports that an Imbrian commander, Athenodorus, during the 4th century BC, was stationed in the vicinity with his forces when Charidemus of Oreos seized Ilium. Upon receiving news of the event, Athenodorus advanced to assist the city. He marched by night, deliberately avoiding roads on which ambushes had been established, and instead proceeded along alternative routes. He arrived at the gates of Ilium, where considerable confusion prevailed as troops were entering the city. Some of his men succeeded in entering undetected alongside the other forces. However, as events unfolded, certain soldiers were identified through the use of watchwords, and some were subsequently expelled or killed at the gates.Aeneas Tacticus, Poliorketika, 24
Byzantine era
The Notitiae Episcopatuum lists the Province of Hellas, also known as Achaia, as being under a proconsul and comprising seventy-nine cities and islands. Among the places named is Imbros.Pseudo-Epiphanius, Notitia Episcopatuum, 5.10
Prior to the Fall of Constantinople, several larger islands south of Imbros were under Genoese rule, part of the territory historically held in the eastern Mediterranean by the independent Maritime Republic of Genoa (1005–1797, thus predating the East–West schism of 1054) a political development emanating from the former territory of the Western Roman Empire, by city-states such as Venice, Pisa and Amalfi.
At the beginning of the 13th century, when the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath temporarily disrupted Venice's relations with the Byzantine Empire, Genoa expanded its influence north of Imbros, into the Black Sea and Crimea.
Ruy González de Clavijo, ambassador to Henry III of Castile to the court of Timur, travelled through the Aegean during his 1403-1406 Embassy to Samarkand, noted the island as being under the rule of the Byzantines.
Ottoman era (1455-1466, 1470-1912) Shortly following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine forces in Imbros left the island, and the population became Ottoman subjects. The island was not conquered by force, but rather through istimalet policy. Michael Critoboulos, a leading Imvrian, and subsequently a chronicler of Mehmet II, organised and facilitated the peaceful surrender of the island to the Ottomans. In return for taxes and loyalty, the island was given a degree of relative autonomy, with administration under a local person. In 1479, the island came under definitive Ottoman rule. The Ottomans, through issuing kanunname and installing local Muslim rulers, attempted to integrate the entirely Orthodox Greek population. Feryal Tansuğ judges that it is difficult to determine the degree to which the islanders recognised Ottoman rule. After the island became Ottoman soil in 1455 it was administered by Ottomans and Venetians at various times. During this period, and particularly during the reign of Kanuni Sultan Süleyman (1520–1566), the island became a foundation within the Ottoman Empire. Relations between the Ottomans and Venetians occasionally led to hostilities – for example, in June 1717 during the Turkish-Venetian War (1714-1718), a tough but ultimately fairly indecisive naval battle between a Venetian fleet, under Lodovico Flangini, and an Ottoman fleet, was fought near Imbros in the Aegean Sea. Nevertheless, the island's residents continued to live in relative peace and prosperity until the 20th century. The population lived modest lives in subsistence economies and were not involved in upheavals, for instance, the Greek War of Independence (1821-1832). "Although Greek bandits attacked [...] and landed in Imvros and Lemnos in order to take sustenance support, the islanders did not help them so that Ottoman troops drove back the rebellions."Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA), Hattı Hümayun (HAT) 862/38465, 3 Rebiülahir 1236 (8 January 1821); BOA, HAT 750/35418, 1 Zilhicce 1236 (30 August 1821); HAT 663/32280, 1 Zilhicce 1236 (30 August 1821); Feridun Emecen, "Limni," İslam Ansiklopedisi, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, vol. 27, p. 191.
Only in 1864 with the promulgation of the new Vilâyet Law was the administrative status of the island in regard to the central government defined. Two administrative districts were formed—the Kazâ/Jurisdiction of İmroz and Bozcaada of the Sanjak/District of Lemnos, a subdivision of the larger province of Eyalet/Administrative Division of the Islands of the Aegean Sea. Prominent Ottoman politician, Ismail Qemal Bej Vlora, who spent about a year during the mid-1870s superintending the workings of a lignite mine upon the island, remarked that:"The sole authority in the place was the müdür (a sort of mayor appointed by the Government [whose attributions included tax collection, executing the court sentences, and at times mediation of disputes and pacification of the locals]), who was a charming Albanian, and more like the father of this island family than a representative of government. There were four or five gendarmes recruited from among the Greeks of the country, who did not even know where their arms were, so little did they ever find need of using them —and it is doubtful if they would have known how to if the occasion had arisen...We passed whole weeks without communication with the outside world. No telegrams came, nor couriers, nor newspapers, nor anything else to disturb our hermit's life amid this beautiful scenery and among a population that is perhaps the quietest and simplest in the world. There are no pleasures there except the songs of young Greeks and the country dances."
In 1912 during the First Balkan War, the Greek Navy invaded the island. The island had an absolute Greek majority population of 8,506 people then.Ίμβρος και Τένεδος, δύο ξεχασμένα ελληνικά νησιά (1910–1930), p.23 After the signing of the Treaty of Athens in 1913, all of the Aegean islands except Bozcaada and Gökçeada were ceded to Greece.
The oldest and only surviving Ottoman-era mosque on Gökçeada is the Gökçeada Merkez Camii (also known as the Hamidiye Mosque), located in the Çınarlı Neighborhood of the island's central town. Historical archives indicate it was originally built around 1876–1878 during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, and later substantially renovated in 1907
First World War