Türkiye ve Oniki Ada 1912-1947

When the tension between Turkey and the riparian countries in the East Mediterranean, especially Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, has been increasing rapidly, the Dodecanese Islands, the closest archipelago to Turkey in the Aegean Sea, has become the centre of the related debates once again. Although it has been more than a century since the de facto Ottoman sovereignty on the Islands ended, Turkey’s current government and nationalist circles recently began to express claims on the Dodecanese Islands. One of the arguments of these circles has been that the Dodecanese Islands were taken unfairly from Turkey’s hands. In another argument, Turkey’s second president Ismet Inonu has been put on the target for not accepting the German government’s offer to leave the Islands to Turkey during the Second World War.