The Aegean Sea is a branch of the Mediterranean extending northward between Greece and Turkey. It covers an area of about 214,000 sq km (82,625 sq mi) and is studded with islands. Its southern entrance is partially blocked by the islands of Crete and Rhodes. The Aegean extends about 640 km (400 mi) from Crete northward to the coast of Thrace, and its width ranges from 195 to 400 km (120 to 250 mi).
The coast of the Aegean is mountainous, and only in Macedonia and Thrace in the north are there extensive coastal plains. Few large rivers discharge into the sea. In the north, the Vardar (Axios), Struma (Strimon), and Maritsa (Evros) enter from the Balkan Peninsula, and the Menderes enters from Anatolia. Most others are small, and in many the flow is seasonal. The narrow waterway known as the Dardanelles enters the Aegean from the northeast and carries the discharge from the Black Sea. It gives access through the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus to the ports of the Black Sea and the Danube.
The Aegean Basin consists of a submerged block of the Earth’s crust, across which long belts of folded rocks extend from the mountains of Greece to the mountains of Turkey. On the seafloor these belts form submarine ridges, separated by deep basins. The ridges, clearly traceable on the seafloor, are the foundation of most of the Aegean islands. In the north the islands of Limnos and Imroz lie between the Khalkidhiki Peninsula in Greece and northwestern Turkey. To the south, the Sporades group, Psara, and Chios (Khios), form another such island chain. From Attica and the island of Euboea (Evvoia), the Cyclades (Kikladhes) stretch southeastward toward the promontories of southwest Anatolia. Last, Crete, Rhodes, Kithera, and Karpathos stretch from southern Greece toward the Taurus Mountains of Turkey and enclose the Aegean Sea on the south. Recently, volcanoes have been active in the more southerly islands. The greatest depth, about 2,010 m (6,600 ft), is north of Crete.
Several important ports ring the Aegean littoral, among them Piraeus and Salonika in Greece and Izmir (Smyrna) in Turkey. Bulgaria has long sought access to the sea and held the port of Kavalla at various times from 1912 to 1944.
In the Aegean no ship can be out of sight of land for long. In classical times, this encouraged navigation and facilitated movement between its shores; the sea was a link between the Greek cities that lay around it. Thus, a cultural unity within the Aegean Basin lasted with few interruptions from the 2d millennium BC until the Turkish conquest of Anatolia in the 11th century. The Turks never destroyed the Greek character of the Aegean Sea, and not until the exchange of population of the 1920s were Greek settlements eliminated along the Turkish shore. Most of the islands remain politically and culturally Greek.
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