Kırklareli

Kırklareli is a city in the European part of Turkey, seat of Kırklareli Province and Kırklareli District in the Marmara region, with a 2022 population of 85,493. Byzantine Greeks called the settlement Saranta Ekklisies, meaning forty churches, rendered in Turkish as Kırk Kilise by the 14th century, and it took its present name on 20 December 1924 after the founding of the Turkish Republic; Ottoman forces conquered the area in 1363 under Sultan Murad I. The city's population changed significantly after the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913 and the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange, and it is now home to a community of roughly 500 Megleno-Romanians who settled there after 1923.