Talk:Eastern Thrace

Page building
Pages for this region are being overhauled in 2020 / 21 - Gelibolu and Eceabat are sorted to "Usable", see Talk:Eceabat.

Keşan has been built by including the little beach resorts along the Gulf of Saros - they're 30 km or so south, but Keşan is the only notable town and focus, and you have to travel that way to reach them. The question is how far should its page extend. I propose:
 * Include all the beach resorts west to Sultaniçe. That means Erikli-Mecidiye redirects, a spatchcock combi of two quite separate villages.
 * Enez on the (uncrossable) border feels to have its own character as a garrison town / wetland and retains its own page.
 * Ipsala is the service village near the highway border crossing. It should redirect to Keşan where a paragraph will summarise its charms.

There might be minor knock-on for organisation of the regional page. Views? Grahamsands (talk) 11:04, 29 January 2021 (UTC) - ✅ 1 Feb 2021

Place names: it seems right that the Turkish version of place names should be the primary page, with Westernised versions lacking diacriticals (awkward on W keyboards) re-directing, not vice versa. To that end I've reversed one redirect, so Demirkoy --> Demirköy. Grahamsands (talk) 20:42, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I've likewise reversed another, so Kiyikoy --> Kıyıköy. This has lost the page banner, don't know how to fix that. Grahamsands (talk) 17:16, 11 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I have undone the manual "reverse redirect" for Kıyıköy, and moved the page by deleting the (former) redirect. This preserves the page history, wikidata item, and the banner. I'm not keen to do the same for Demirköy, since it received at least one edit (addition of the banner by SHB2000) since the manual "reverse redirect", which could be lost in the process but please let me know if there is any other article you think needs to be moved to its redirected version. Vidimian (talk) 10:08, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Vidimian, many thanks for sorting that out. Reversing a re-direct is not an everyday manoeuvre but we have several more candidates, as pages have gone with western spelling. For instance Kirklareli --> Kırklareli: would you agree with that, and if so would you reverse that one while I look over your shoulder? Then the next one (maybe Gökçeada) I reverse while you look over my shoulder; does that sound like a plan? Grahamsands (talk) 09:22, 16 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Both done. Bring it on! Vidimian (talk) 10:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ooops, Gökçeada was your turn, I misread that part. Sorry. Vidimian (talk) 10:27, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's probably best I don't ask for how to reverse your reverse redirect so I can re-re-re something or other. Let's pick another target: Balikesir --> Balıkesir in South Marmara. Is this the sequence: in the destination page, I remove the #REDIRECT, I do not revoke / undo it. I fill with content from the source page. I blank out the source page then redirect it to destination. Is that the sequence? Grahamsands (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No. If you go that way, all page history is left behind in what would eventually turn into the redirect, and the new page (former redirect) would only attribute to you as the only contributor of that page.
 * I think you should be able to see a "move" tab somewhere; in the computer I am on now, it is just next to the search bar, on the top right of the screen (its place or availability might depend on the operation system you are using, etc, or whether you are on mobile; I am not sure). That moves the page along with its history and wikidata item (and thus the banner, if that is already fed into wikidata). However, if a redirect already exists in the target title, it might need to be deleted first, which may need admin status. (I don't have to manually delete anything in such cases; the page gets automatically moved 'over redirect', so I don't know the science behind it.) I can see that you have autopatroller status so I don't know whether that option will be available, so why don't you give a try? Vidimian (talk) 08:04, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Overwriting a redirect that just redirects to the current page can be overwritten by any autoconfirmed user, but only if it has no edit history. Otherwise, yes, it'd require an admin to do it. SHB2000 (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta.wikimedia) 08:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, great to know. So it should work in the case of Balikesir. Vidimian (talk) 08:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * FAIL "because Balıkesir page already exists" which is the entire point of moving it there. I tried both with the redirect absent and present. Grahamsands (talk) 17:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, did you try hitting the "move" button first, or manually removing the redirect/emptying the page? Vidimian (talk) 19:48, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * My first move was to manually remove the redirect. So I tried first moving with Sındırgı - SUCCESS, see if that looks as it should. Grahamsands (talk) 20:30, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Great. Everything looks in order, yes. Vidimian (talk) 21:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Iyi, çok güzel! Slight shift of thread but still on place-names:

A reality check please on the origin of the name "Saray". I've gone with the wikipedia version that it's for the palace of the exiled Giray khan. But if so, there ought to be drawings of it and a known archaeological site, and the town would have a different name before 1778, eg when Suleiman marched through. Could it have been a kervansaray, the place you stopped for the night, also referred to as "khan"? Grahamsands (talk) 13:45, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't know really. What's certain is that the Girays settled in the area (as evidenced by a large number of headstones in the yard of the Ayas Paşa Mosque), as well as a number of Tatars along with them (e.g., in the nearby village of Büyükyoncalı, locally known as Manika, which sometimes holds the "Thracian Tepreş (wp:tr) ").
 * So I researched a bit, and saw that the town was known as Saray-ı Vize in Ottoman times. That could mean the "palace of Vize", referring to a palace somewhere, but could equally be "Saray of Vize", perhaps a kind of a disambiguator, since Saray was a subdistrict (nahiye) of Vize, then. The Giray palace, if it existed at all, could be anywhere, including in the surrounding Tatar villages.
 * Then I found another clue in Nişanyan Map/Index Anatolicus, a project aiming at explaining etymology for any place name in Turkey. It claimed the name originally referred to a hunting lodge that was built by Murat I or Murat II, roughly three or four centuries prior to the arrival of the Girays. I'm not certain of the authencity of this account, though.
 * As far as I'm aware, the website of the Saray district government (kaymakamlık) gives no explanation to it, neither does that of the Tekirdağ governorship (valilik).
 * So all in all, I don't really know the backstory to the name. The connection with the Girays seems (seemed) plausible, and appealing, so to speak. And thanks to your delightful sense of humour, together with that picture of Şahin Giray staring at his too grand of a palace, the article's text in its current form reads perfectly, even if its historical background is skewed slightly. Vidimian (talk) 07:50, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Another clue: the website (Turkish) of Saray town council/municipality says the name originally referred to a hunting lodge built by Murat I, citing Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi. This overlaps with the claim of the Nişanyan Map project. Vidimian (talk) 10:18, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that makes much more sense so I've gone with that explanation, it gives the palace an extra 400 years in which to disappear. The other relics I can't find are the ancient aqueducts hereabouts, tho several accounts make throwaway references. Do you know of any worth stopping for a photograph? Grahamsands (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I'm afraid. Kültür Envanteri (an inventory of structures under protection) does not mention any either. However, Kurşunlugerme / Ballıgerme, about 45 km east off D-020, is not very distant. Vidimian (talk) 22:36, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not very distant but very exploded into itsy-bitsy pieces. I've added it to Istanbul / Western Suburbs, though some fragments probably landed in Thrace. Grahamsands (talk) 21:27, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Kurşunlugerme certainly seems to got damaged, but its superstructure looks sound, so luckily that wasn't a full on explosion. Ballıgerme, which actually seems to be a seperate site, fared worse it seems, lacking its actual span now, although the pictures in the website of Anastasian Wall Project, which should have been taken when the project members surveyed the area between 1995 and 2007 (I suppose), already show substantial damage (including the absence of the span) incurred prior to that time.
 * On a related note, is it possible that these were the aqueducts you were hearing about? Vidimian (talk) 09:25, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, they're part of the Valens system, which started west of Vize and coursed all the way to Constantinople. So there should be sections in several towns across Thrace, unless swept away by stone-robbing and field clearance. Grahamsands (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2021 (UTC)