Ankara’s objections to a historic map presented by General Dimitrios Choupis, chief of the Armed Forces, to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew during his recent visit to Istanbul, drew a sharp response from Greece on Friday, which described the gift as “purely symbolic.”
“Complaints about a map from this specific historical period by sources within the Turkish Defense Ministry – a country that in 2025 still invokes the Blue Homeland map – border on the absurd,” sources from the Greek Defense Ministry added, referring to Ankara’s expansionist foreign policy doctrine.
The map given by General Choupis was a copy of the “Thraciae Veteris Typus” (Latin for “Map of Ancient Thrace”), a historical map created by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius and first published in 1585 as part of his renowned atlas, “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum” (“Theatre of the World”). The map depicts the ancient region of Thrace, which historically covers parts of modern-day northeastern Greece, European Turkey, and Bulgaria.
Unnamed Turkish Defense Ministry officials criticized the gesture as an attempt to “politicize the past,” dismissing it as “nostalgic consolations” and urging Greek officials to “understand and accept the facts.”
