| Type | Bilateral treaty |
|---|---|
| Signed | 4 December 1897 |
| Location | Constantinople, Ottoman Empire |
| Original signatories | |
| Ratifiers |
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The Treaty of Constantinople was a treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Greece signed on 4 December 1897 following the Greco-Turkish War (1897).
The island of Crete was a part of the Ottoman Empire, but had a predominantly Christian, Greek-speaking population, which had rebelled several times to achieve union with Greece. During one such revolt, on 2 February 1897 Greek troops landed in Crete to annex the island. This led to the outbreak of the so-called 30 Days' War between the Ottoman Empire and Greece. It was fought mainly in Thessaly and Epirus. In Thessaly, the superior Ottoman army commanded by Edhem Pasha defeated the Greeks and captured much territory. Greece sued for peace and the Great Powers of Europe intervened to force the Ottoman government to return the majority of the lands occupied during the war, and to grant autonomy for Crete.
Peace talks began on 21 October 1897 and the treaty was signed on 4 December 1897. The terms were: [1]
Although the Ottoman army was victorious in the field, the Ottoman Empire did not benefit from the victory. The suzerainty over Crete proved to be completely ineffective and Crete unilaterally declared union with Greece in 1908. This was formalized after the Balkan Wars, with the island joining Greece on 1 December 1913. In the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the Muslim population of the island was transferred to Turkey.
The Balkan Wars consisted of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan Peninsula in 1912 and 1913. Four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against all four original combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the Balkan crisis of 1914 and thus served as a "prelude to the First World War".
The history of modern Greece covers the history of Greece from the recognition of its autonomy from the Ottoman Empire by the Great Powers in 1828, after the Greek War of Independence, to the present day.
The Treaty of Lausanne was a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–23 and signed in the Palais de Rumine, Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially settled the conflict that had originally existed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied French Republic, British Empire, Kingdom of Italy, Empire of Japan, Kingdom of Greece, and the Kingdom of Romania since the onset of World War I. The original text of the treaty is in French. It was the result of a second attempt at peace after the failed and unratified Treaty of Sèvres, which aimed to divide Ottoman lands. The earlier treaty had been signed in 1920, but later rejected by the Turkish national movement who fought against its terms. As a result of Greco-Turkish War, İzmir was retrieved and Armistice of Mudanya was signed in October 1922. It provided for the Greek-Turkish population exchange and allowed unrestricted civilian passage through the Turkish Straits.
The Treaty of Passarowitz or Treaty of Požarevac was the peace treaty signed in Požarevac, a town in the Ottoman Empire, on 21 July 1718 between the Ottoman Empire on one side and Austria of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Republic of Venice on the other.
Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos was a Greek statesman and a prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. He is noted for his contribution to the expansion of Greece and promotion of liberal-democratic policies. As leader of the Liberal Party, he was elected eight times as Prime Minister of Greece, serving from 1910 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1933. Venizelos had such profound influence on the internal and external affairs of Greece that he is credited with being "The Maker of Modern Greece", and is still widely known as the "Ethnarch".
The Megali Idea is an irredentist concept that expresses the goal of reviving the Byzantine Empire, by establishing a Greek state, which would include the large Greek populations that were still under Ottoman rule after the end of the Greek War of Independence (1821–1828) and all the regions that traditionally belonged to Greeks since ancient times.
Enosis is the movement of various Greek communities that live outside Greece for incorporation of the regions that they inhabit into the Greek state. The idea is related to the Megali Idea, an irredentist concept of a Greek state that dominated Greek politics following the creation of modern Greece in 1830. The Megali Idea called for the annexation of all ethnic Greek lands, parts of which had participated in the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s but were unsuccessful and so remained under foreign rule.
The Greco-Turkish War of 1897 or the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897, also called the Thirty Days' War and known in Greece as the Black '97 or the Unfortunate War, was a war fought between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Its immediate cause involved the status of the Ottoman province of Crete, whose Greek-majority population had long desired union with Greece. Despite the Ottoman victory on the field, an autonomous Cretan State under Ottoman suzerainty was established the following year, with Prince George of Greece and Denmark as its first High Commissioner.
The Conference of Lausanne was a conference held in Lausanne, Switzerland, during 1922 and 1923. Its purpose was the negotiation of a treaty to replace the Treaty of Sèvres, which, under the new government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was no longer recognized by Turkey.
The Cretan Turks, Muslim-Cretans or Cretan Muslims were the Muslim inhabitants of the Greek island of Crete and now their descendants, who settled principally in Turkey, the Dodecanese Islands under Italian administration, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Libya, and Egypt, as well as in the larger Turkish diaspora.
The partition of the Ottoman Empire was a geopolitical event that occurred after World War I and the occupation of Constantinople by British, French and Italian troops in November 1918. The partitioning was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I, notably the Sykes-Picot Agreement, after the Ottoman Empire had joined the Ottoman–German Alliance. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states. The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.
The Pact of Halepa or Halepa Charter was an agreement made in 1878 between the Ottoman Empire and the representatives of the Cretan Revolutionary Committee, which secured wide-ranging autonomy for the island of Crete. It was named after the place where it was signed, Halepa.
The Cretan State was established in 1898, following the intervention by the Great Powers on the island of Crete. In 1897, the Cretan Revolt led the Ottoman Empire to declare war on Greece, which led United Kingdom, France, Italy and Russia to intervene on the grounds that the Ottoman Empire could no longer maintain control. It was the prelude to the island's final annexation to the Kingdom of Greece, which occurred de facto in 1908 and de jure in 1913 after the First Balkan War.
The participation of Greece in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 is one of the most important episodes in modern Greek history, as it allowed the Greek state to almost double its size and achieve most of its present territorial size. It also served as a catalyst of political developments, as it brought to prominence two personalities, whose relationship would dominate the next decade and have long-lasting repercussions for Greece: the Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, and the Army's commander-in-chief, the Crown Prince and later King, Constantine I.
This is the territorial evolution of the Ottoman Empire during a timespan of seven centuries.
The Treaty of Athens between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Greece, signed on 14 November 1913, formally ended hostilities between them after the two Balkan Wars and ceded Macedonia—including the major city of Thessaloniki— most of Epirus, and many Aegean islands to Greece.
The island of Crete was declared an Ottoman province (eyalet) in 1646, after the Ottomans managed to conquer the western part of the island as part of the Cretan War, but the Venetians maintained their hold on the capital Candia until 1669, when Francesco Morosini surrendered the keys of the town. The offshore island fortresses of Souda, Grambousa, and Spinalonga would remain under Venetian rule until 1715, when they too were captured by the Ottomans.
The International Squadron was a naval squadron formed by a number of Great Powers in early 1897, just before the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, to intervene in a native Greek rebellion on Crete against rule by the Ottoman Empire. Warships from Austria-Hungary, France, the German Empire, Italy, the Russian Empire, and the United Kingdom made up the squadron, which operated in Cretan waters from February 1897 to December 1898.
The Convention of Constantinople was signed between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire on 2 July 1881, resulting in the cession of the region of Thessaly and a part of southern Epirus to Greece.
The borders of Greece from the Protocol of London from March 22, 1829 until the accession of the Dodecanese were changed nine times and its territorial extensions were seven.
