The windmills of Eastern Thrace Region

Since ancient times, windmills used for grinding and processing grain have also served various other functions, such as managing soil and water drainage. Today, windmills are a form of rural economic and cultural heritage that not only capture the wind's energy to fuel land-based production but also stand as monumental figures of rural architecture with nostalgic and thus touristic landscape appeal. Within the scope of this thesis, it is aimed to investigate windmills in both rural and urban settlements of Turkish Thrace in the context of architectural and landscape architectural history as well as industrial archaeology, and to shed light on their forgotten legacy. In this thesis, the existence of windmills is addressed within the framework of the principle of causality and based on archaeological and scientific sources. Subsequently, the study examines how these mills arrived in the Turkish Thrace (Eastern Thrace) region, how long they remained in use, and for what reasons they eventually disappeared. In certain parts of the Thrace region, place names such as "Mill Hill (Değirmenlik Tepesi)," "Mill Street (Değirmen Sokak)," or "Beside the Mill (Dirmen Yanı)" offer clues that these areas were once sites of (wind) mills. When variations in wind energy according to geographic features are examined, it becomes evident that many various windmill typologies once existed. In our country, the windmill heritage is predominantly of the Mediterranean type. In the Eastern Thrace region, however, it has not been possible for windmills to survive with their functions intact into the present day; in fact, in some areas, they have been completely erased through winding up efforts, leaving no tangible trace behind. This study aims to elucidate the historical heritage of windmills in the Thrace region that have not survived to the present day, through spatial analyses of their appearances as recorded in historical archival documents. In doing so, it seeks both to delve into a forgotten architectural and landscape heritage in the region, and to explore the use of wind power in agricultural production in pre-industrial Turkish Thrace within the broader context of architectural history.