Kırklareli

i.The Thracian Plain and the Strandzha

Kırklareli sits in the northwestern corner of Türkiye, in the open Trakya (Eastern Thrace) plain, at the foot of the long forested ridge of the Istranca Mountains (Strandzha in Bulgarian) that mark the border with Bulgaria thirty kilometres to the north. The province is the northernmost of Türkiye's European territories: the small district of Demirköy in the Strandzha forests touches the Black Sea coast, while the western districts run along the Bulgarian border to the great Maritsa river (Meriç) that separates Türkiye from Greece. The country here is open, well-watered, and unusually green for Anatolian standards — wheat, sunflowers, hazelnuts, the small grape-growing villages of the lower Istranca foothills.

The province sits on what the Byzantine sources called the principal northern road to Constantinople — the short overland route across Eastern Thrace from the lower Danube basin to the Bosphorus — and it has been, since antiquity, the natural buffer between the Balkans and the Marmara world. The Britannica entry on the city notes that Kırklareli "developed chiefly because of its position on the shortest route over the mountains from the north to Istanbul."

ii.Ancient Thrace and Roman Province

Through antiquity the country was the heartland of the Odrysian Thracians — the largest of the Thracian kingdoms, whose dynastic centre lay at Bizye (modern Vize in eastern Kırklareli province). The kingdom flourished from the 5th century BCE through the 1st century CE, when it was absorbed by Rome under the emperor Claudius in 46 CE. Roman Bizye continued as a working provincial centre; the surviving Roman-period Vize Kalesi citadel and the small Bizye amphitheatre are the principal classical-period monuments.

iii.Byzantine "Forty Churches" and the Medieval Frontier

Under the Byzantines the main city of the country was the small fortified town the Greek sources call Saranta Ekklesies — "the Forty Churches" — for the unusual concentration of Christian foundations within and around its walls. The Turkish translation of this name, Kırk Kilise, attached to the city through the Ottoman centuries; the Republican government renamed it Kırklareli ("the place of the forties") in 1924 to remove the explicitly Christian element from the name. The medieval city was a working frontier post between the Byzantine empire and the various Bulgarian and Cuman states to the north.

iv.The Ottoman Conquest of 1363

The Ottoman crossing into Thrace in 1352 and the consolidation of the Marmara-Thrace coast through the 1350s opened the way for the conquest of the Forty Churches country. Forces under Murad I took Kırk Kilise in 1363, completing the Ottoman conquest of Eastern Thrace begun by Süleyman Paşa in 1354. The neighbouring districts of Lüleburgaz and Babaeski were taken at the same time and in the same year. Through the long Ottoman centuries the country was the inner Thracian hinterland of Edirne — the imperial second capital — and a steady agricultural and pastoral region of the Edirne Eyaleti.

v.The Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Külliyesi at Lüleburgaz

The most distinguished surviving Ottoman building of the province is the Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Külliyesi at Lüleburgaz — mosque, medrese, double-bath, han (caravanserai), and a long stone-vaulted bazaar — built between 1565 and 1569 for the great Bosnian-born grand vizier Sokollu Mehmet Paşa, who served as vizier under three sultans (Süleyman the Magnificent, Selim II, and Murad III) until his assassination in 1579. The complex was designed by Mimar Sinan as part of the grand-vizier's wider patronage programme along the Edirne–Istanbul road; it is one of the most complete surviving Sinan-school commercial complexes in Türkiye, and the most architecturally important monument of the province. The complex remains in working use as the central market quarter of modern Lüleburgaz.

vi.The Balkan Wars and the 1920–22 Occupations

Kırklareli's position on the shortest road from Bulgaria to Istanbul made it, in every modern Balkan conflict, an early target. During the First Balkan War the Bulgarian First Army crossed the frontier in October 1912 and reached Kırk Kilise within two days, capturing the town on 24 October 1912 after a confused engagement; the larger Battle of Lüleburgaz (28 October – 2 November 1912) — fought immediately to the south, with over 100,000 troops engaged — was the largest pitched battle in Europe between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the First World War. The Bulgarian victory at Lüleburgaz broke the Ottoman line of defence in Eastern Thrace and opened the road to the gates of Çatalca. The province was returned to Ottoman administration under the Second Balkan War settlement of 1913.

The First World War and its aftermath placed the province again under foreign occupation. The Treaty of Sèvres (1920) assigned Eastern Thrace — including Kırklareli — to Greece, and from July 1920 to November 1922 the country was administered by the First Hellenic Republic. The Turkish recovery came under the Armistice of Mudanya (11 October 1922); Greek forces withdrew across the Maritsa, and Lüleburgaz was reincorporated into Türkiye on 8 November 1922, observed annually as Lüleburgaz'ın Kurtuluşu. The central city of Kırk Kilise was returned simultaneously and given the new Turkish name Kırklareli in 1924.

vii.The Republic and the Modern Province

Republican Kırklareli has been a steady, small frontier province. Its economy through the 20th century was overwhelmingly agricultural — sunflower-and-wheat farming on the plain, dairy in the foothills, hazelnut on the Black Sea slopes — supplemented from the 1990s by light industry in the larger districts (food processing, textiles, metallurgy). Under the TÜİK 2024 address-based registration count the province population was 379,031, with modest year-on-year growth concentrated in the central districts. The metropolitan municipality covers eight districts: the central Merkez and Lüleburgaz (the larger of the two, about 145,000) carry most of the population; Babaeski, Vize, Pınarhisar, Demirköy, Pehlivanköy, and the small far-northern district of Kofçaz on the Bulgarian border complete the province. The province is the seat of Kırklareli Üniversitesi (founded 2007).

viii.What to See, in Order

The walking shape of historic Kırklareli is small. From the central Cumhuriyet Meydanı the route runs to the Hızırbey Camii (1383, the first Ottoman-period mosque in the city) and the small Karakaş Bey Camii, then through the small bazaar to the Kırklareli Müzesi with the regional Thracian and Roman collections. The wider provincial circuit reaches Lüleburgaz for the Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Külliyesi (Sinan, 1565–69), the most architecturally significant monument of the province; Vize for the surviving Roman-period Bizye Kalesi and small amphitheatre; Pınarhisar in the foothills; and Demirköy in the Strandzha forest country near the Black Sea coast (with the small late-Byzantine Aya Nikola Monastery just east, and the Iğneada longoz floodplain forests — among the few remaining longoz ecosystems in Europe).

The northwestern frontier of Trakya — Byzantine Forty Churches, the Sokollu complex on the Edirne road, and the small green plain between the Strandzha and the Marmara.

For the parallel western Marmara province to the south, see Tekirdağ; for the second Ottoman capital, see Edirne. For Türkiye's European geography in the wider sense, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.