How long was Greece enslaved by Turkey?
400 years
For nearly 400 years after 1453, when the Ottoman Turks invaded Constantinople, finishing off the Byzantine Empire, Greece was among the countries that languished under their regime. Ottoman repressions finally led to the Greek war of independence in 1821, resulting, after nine years, in a hard-won Greek victory.
Is Turkey part of ancient Greece?
Ancient Greek civilization was concentrated in what is today Greece and along the western coast of Turkey. However, ancient Greek colonists established cities all around the Mediterranean and along the coast of the Black Sea.
Why do Greeks smash plates?
Smashing plates has been used to signal the end and the beginning, to ward off evil spirits and to express abundance. In symbolic ritual, a plate is smashed at the graveside of the departed following a Greek Orthodox funeral. Smashing the plate is also considered an act of mourning.
Why does Turkey want to occupy the Greek islands?
Although Turkey knows that the islands are legally and historically Greek, Turkish authorities want to occupy and Turkify them, presumably to further the campaign of annihilating the Greeks, as they did in Anatolia from 1914 to 1923 and after. Any attack against Greece should be treated as an attack against the West.
Why is Turkey so fixated on the Aegean islands?
Turkish politicians all seem to have their own motivations for their obsession with the islands: Traditional Turkish expansionism, Turkification of Hellenic lands, neo-Ottomanism and Islam’s flagship of conquest — jihad.
Is it bad to claim a Greek island as a Turkish island?
Claiming a Greek island that a 2 or 5\% of it’s population is Turks and then getting them is foreign occupation, and in today’s world it’s considered a very bad thing regardless of the countries involved. Even if the population is more than 50\% (kind of like Crimea) again, it’s really bad.
What does Erdoğan mean when he says the islands belong to Greece?
“We will tell our nation about [this],” Erdoğan said. What this statement means is that Erdogan accepts that the islands legally belong to Greece. Yet, at the same time, he calls the Greek possession of the territory “an invasion” — apparently because the islands were once within the borders of the Ottoman Empire — and he now wants them back.