Dodecanese Islands
The Dodecanese, the Twelve Islands, lie down the western coast of Asia Minor like a cable linking Samos to Rhodes. The Turks always referred to them as ‘The Privileged Islands’, since they en¬joyed special privileges and tax exemptions granted them in the sixteenth century by Suleiman the Magnificent. These privileges they retained until 1908, when the twelve islands so designated united in protest against their removal. Italy took advantage of this during her war with Turkey in 1911-12 and ended by occupying them, though with a promise they would eventually be returned to Greece. This promise was conveniently forgotten at the Treaty of Sevres after the First World War, when they were awarded to Italy for her share in the Allied victory, and they were not formally united with Greece until 1948 after Italy had been on the losing side in the Second World War. Although the term Dodecanese was not publicly applied to them until 1908, Theophanes, a Byzantine chronicler writing between AD 758 and 818, refers to them in his Chronography as the ‘Dodeka Nisoi’. For literalists there is a problem in the name. Which are now considered to be the twelve? In the chapters which follow we have listed fifteen which were claimed by the Italians in 1912 and awarded to Greece in 1948. Fourteen of these (the exception is Pserimos) have an independent local government. No matter: the name is convenient and euphonious, and all these islands have something about them which distinguishes them from their neighbours in the Kyklades.