history of Greece

…Serbia, while in the south Greece was given the greater part of Çamëria, a part of the old region of Epirus centred on the Thíamis River. Many observers doubted whether the new state would be viable with about one-half of Albanian lands and population left outside its borders, especially since…

9, 1934), mutual-defense agreement between Greece, Turkey, Romania, and Yugoslavia, intended to guarantee the signatories’ territorial integrity and political independence against attack by another Balkan state (i.e., Bulgaria or Albania). The agreement provided for a Permanent Council, composed of the members’ foreign ministers, that would coordinate legislation and foster economic…

(1912–13), alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro, which fought the First Balkan War against Turkey (1912–13). Ostensibly created to limit increasing Austrian power in the Balkans, the league was actually formed at the instigation of Russia in order to expel the Turks from the Balkans. The league members declared…

…quickly by Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. The Young Turks ended the conflict with Italy, ceding Libya, but failed to contain the Balkan armies. In May 1913 the great powers imposed a settlement; Macedonia was partitioned among the Balkan states, Crete was granted to Greece, and Albania was given its independence.…

Greece and Serbia, however, laid claim to portions of Macedonia that Bulgarians regarded as rightfully theirs. It was the great mistake of Bulgarian diplomacy to organize a war against the Ottoman Empire without first clearly resolving these competing claims.

…with its Balkan neighbours, particularly Greece, and expanded its economic and cultural relations with most Western states. Relations with Yugoslavia remained strained, however, over the persistence of the Macedonian question. In 1979 Bulgaria proposed a treaty with Yugoslavia that would guarantee the inviolability of the borders established after World War…

…representatives of the governments of Greece and Turkey, was not widely accepted by the citizens of the new republic. The Greek Cypriots, whose struggle against the British had been for enosis (union with Greece) and not for independence, regretted the failure to achieve this national aspiration. As a result, it…

…British to transfer Cyprus to Greece. The Greek Cypriots’ demand for enosis (union with Greece) was opposed by Turkish Cypriots, constituting a major division in the island’s politics; a string of almost annual petitions demanding enosis were matched by counterpetitions and demonstrations from the Turkish Cypriots. Britain had made an…

Also, an acrimonious dispute with Greece over the name of the republic frustrated Macedonia’s quest for international recognition, thereby deterring foreign investment and delaying economic reform. By 2018 that dispute was resolved, with Macedonia officially becoming the Republic of North Macedonia.

… and portions of Bulgaria and Greece and to the republic itself, the boundaries of which have been defined since 1913. In the following discussion, the name Macedonia is used generally to describe the larger region prior to 1913 and the area of the present-day republic thereafter.

…Yugoslavia and ethnic Macedonians in Greece, thousands of Macedonians fled Greece both during and after the Greek Civil War of 1946–49.

Initially, the Macedonian Question involved Greece, Bulgaria, and, to a lesser extent, Serbia in a conflict over which state would be able to impose its own national identity on the ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse population of the region traditionally called Macedonia. In that way, each state attempted to gain…

Greece, Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) on the other. The treaty was signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, after a seven-month conference.

…the European provinces, notably in Greece, Serbia, and the principalities, were frustrated. The Greek revolt was the product of the economic prosperity of the Napoleonic Wars and exposure to western European ideas and was a reaction against Ottoman centralization. The revolt was the result of the opposition of peasants and…

…on the Maritsa River, and Greece returned the islands of Gökçeada (Imbros) and Bozcaada (Tenedos). A compulsory exchange of populations was arranged, as a result of which an estimated 1,300,000 Greeks left Turkey and 400,000 Turks were repatriated. The question of the city of Mosul was left to the League…

…set out to drive the Greeks from Anatolia and Thrace and to subdue the new Armenian state.

In July 1974 the Greek government supported the leaders of a coup that overthrew the Cypriot president, Makarios III, and proclaimed the union of Cyprus with Greece. Failing to persuade either Britain or the United States to take effective action, Turkey acted unilaterally and occupied the northern part of…

France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom) that operated as a forum for the coordination of matters of European security and defense. It contributed to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and

…aid to the governments of Greece, threatened by communist insurrection, and Turkey, under pressure from Soviet expansion in the Mediterranean area. As the United States and the Soviet Union struggled to reach a balance of power during the Cold War that followed World War II, Great Britain announced that it…

This would leave both Greece, where a communist-inspired civil war was raging, and Turkey to the mercies of the Soviet Union. Truman now came into his own as a national leader, asking Congress to appropriate aid to Greece and Turkey and asserting, in effect, that henceforth the United States…

Greece and Turkey, in the Cold War conditions of 1947, were strategically vital and highly vulnerable Western outposts on the southern flank of the U.S.S.R. and its satellite states. Turkey was especially exposed. In Greece, the mainly communist National Liberation Front (EAM) had failed in…

…Salonika pending resolution of the Greek political struggle. The Allies continued to back Prime Minister Eleuthérios Venizélos, who, because King Constantine still favored the Central Powers, had fled Athens in September 1916 and set up a provisional government under Allied protection at Salonika. Finally, the Anglo-French forces deposed Constantine in…

…minister from 1910, Venizélos wanted Greece to participate in the Allies’ Dardanelles enterprise against Turkey in 1915, but his arguments were overruled by the general staff. The Allies occupied Lemnos and Lesbos regardless of Greece’s neutrality. Constantine dismissed Venizélos from office twice in 1915, but Venizélos still commanded a majority…

…Venizélos in November 1916 brought Greece into the war on the side of the Triple Entente. It became possible to open a new front against the Bulgarian-German forces in Macedonia, with the Serbian army playing a key part alongside British, French, and Greek units. After two weeks of hard fighting…

…that he decided to attack Greece through Albania in 1940 without informing the Germans. The result was an extensive and ignominious defeat, and the Germans were forced unwillingly to extricate him from its consequences. The 1941 campaign to support the German invasion of the Soviet Union also failed disastrously and…

…prepare the long-desired attack on Greece for two weeks hence. He would declare his independence from Hitler and consummate his “parallel war.” On October 28, 1940, seven Italian divisions crossed the Albanian border into Greece, provoking Hitler’s adjutant to record: “Führer enraged…this is revenge for Norway and France.” In fact,…

…in October, when Mussolini attacked Greece from Albania in a disastrous campaign that obliged the Germans, in 1941, to rescue the Italian forces and take over Greece themselves. The Germans also had to lend support in the hard-fought campaigns of North Africa, where eventually the decisive second battle of El-Alamein…

…war of his own against Greece.

…1942), which operated in occupied Greece during World War II. Fighting against the Germans and the Italians as well as against other guerrilla bands, particularly EDES, EAM-ELAS became the most powerful guerrilla band in the country. It also established an effective administrative apparatus, through which it ruled liberated areas.

…Germans, and the two major Greek movements, one nationalist and one communist, were unable to cooperate militarily against the Germans. A similar division emerged in Poland, where the Soviet Union backed the communist resistance movement and allowed the Polish nationalist underground, the Home Army, to be destroyed by the Germans…