NewsTracker Answers for week of Nov. 02, 2020

Q: An earthquake Friday in the Aegean Sea just north of the Greek island of Samos caused two deaths in Greece and more than 100 deaths in Turkey. Where is the Aegean – between Greece and Turkey – in the larger Mediterranean Sea?

Circle the area on this map

Q: The earthquake provided a temporary respite from a long feud between the governments of Turkey and Greece over many issues, including contested sovereignty in the Aegean. Most of the islands in the Aegean Sea belong to . . .

A. Greece

B. Turkey

A. Greece controls the vast majority of the Aegean Islands including many like Samos that lie very close to Turkey’s mainland coast. The two NATO allies have come close to hostilities twice in disputes over territorial waters, national airspace and exclusive economic zones.

Q: A falling wall killed two teenagers on Samos, while most of the deaths were in the Turkish city of Izmir on the coast of the Aegean. Up until the 1930s, the 3,000-year-old city was commonly called by what Greek name?

A. Athens

B. Byzantium

C. Smyrna

D. Sparta

C. Over the weekend, rescue workers continued searching through the rubble in Izmir, a city of nearly 3 million. Like Smyrna, Athens, Byzantium and Sparta were ancient city states. Athens is now the capital of Greece. Byzantium is now Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city. Modern Sparta was rebuilt on the ancient site in Greece.

Q: Collisions of the Earth’s tectonic plates cause the earthquakes that killed thousands in the history of Greece and Turkey. Most of Turkey sits on a tectonic plate and peninsula both named what?

A. Anatolian

B. Balkan

C. Crimean

D. Peloponnese

A. The much smaller Anatolian and Aegean tectonic plates are caught in the center of the larger Eurasian, African and Arabian plates. As these plates push under or over each other over millions of years they trigger earthquakes and volcanoes.

Q: At different times in history Greeks or Turks have ruled the Anatolian, Balkan, Crimean and Peloponnese peninsulas. The Ottoman Turks were the last to rule all of these areas. When was the Ottoman Empire finally defeated?

A. Crimean War

B. World War I

C. World War II

D. Cold War

B. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ottomans ruled much of Southeastern, Central and Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa. The Greeks rebelled against Turkish rule in the 1800s and regained control of the Aegean Islands in World War I when the Ottomans were defeated and modern Turkey was created.