The Near East[a] is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the historical Fertile Crescent, and later the Levant region. It comprises Turkey (both Anatolia and East Thrace), and Egypt (mostly located in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula being in Asia). Despite having varying definitions within different academic circles, the term was originally applied to the maximum extent of the Ottoman Empire.According to the National Geographic Society, the terms Near East and Middle East denote the same territories and are "generally accepted as comprising the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Syria, and Turkey".[1] In 1997, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defined the region similarly, but also included Afghanistan.[2] According to the New York Times, the region is "now commonly referred to as West Asia."[3]At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire included all of the Balkans, north to the southern edge of the Great Hungarian Plain. But by 1914, the empire had lost all of its territories except Constantinople and Eastern Thrace to the rise of nationalist Balkan states, which saw the independence of the Kingdom of Greece, Kingdom of Serbia, the Danubian Principalities, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Up until 1912, the Ottomans retained a band of territory including Albania, Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet, which were lost in the two Balkan Wars of 1912–13. [Wikipedia]
