Greece Travel Guía

The Ottoman ones directed Greece until the early XIXth century. On March 25, 1821, the Greeks rebelled and declared its independence, but they did not achieve it until 1829. The European big authorities saw the war of Greek independence, with its accounts of Turkish atrocities, in a romantic light. Heaps of not Greeks offered to fight for the cause, including to Lord Byron.

Occasionally Ottoman seemed on the point of suppressing the Greek revolution but for the military direct threatened intervention of France, England or Russia. The Russian Foreign Secretary, Ioannis Kapodistrias, himself a Greek returned to house like President of the new Republic after Greek independence. That republic disappeared when the helped European authorities converten in Greece in a monarchy; the first king, Otto came from Bavaria and the second, Jorge I of Denmark. During the 19th 20th and early centuries, in a series of wars with the Ottoman ones, Greece there tried to extend its borders to include the Greek ethnic population of the Ottoman Empire. Ionian Islands were returned by England on the arrival of the new king of Denmark in 1863, and Thessaly was transferred by the Ottoman ones without a struggle. As a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 Epirus, Macedonia of the south, Crete and the Islands egeas were annexed in Greece. Greece reached its present configuration in 1947.

In 1936 General Metaxas was designated like the prime minister by the king and quickly it established a fascist dictatorship. In spite of the armed forces numerically small and badly equipped of the country, Greece did a decisive contribution to the efforts Allied in the second World war. In the beginning of the war Greece put itself of the side of to the Allied Forces and pushed back to yield before Italian demands. Italy invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, but Greek troops pushed the invaders back after a bitter struggle. In the first world war, Greek troops fought on the Allied side and occupied Thrace. After the war, the prime minister Venizelos ordered forces to 'liberate' the Turkish territory of Smyrna (current Izmir), which a Greek big population had. The army was resisted by the Atatürk troops and several Greek residents were killed. This drove to a brutal change of inhabitants between two countries in 1923, the increase of population of result (1,300,000 Christian refugees). The stretching of the already weak economy of Greece. Spilled quarters of shanties of urban centers, between the urban refugee inhabitants were formed and about 1936 the Communist Party had the popular extensive support.

This marked the first victory Allied with the war. Hitler then unwillingly intervened, principally to assure its strategic flank of the south: the troops of Germany, Bulgaria and Italy satisfactorily invaded Greece, conquering the Greek, Briton, Australian and units of New Zealand. Nevertheless, when the Germans tried to seize Crete in a massive attack for parachutists with the target to reduce the threat of a counter-offensive by forces Allied in Egypt, the civil Cretans and Allied Forces, it offered the violent resistance. The Greek campaign delayed military German projects against Russia and it is argued that the German invasion of the fatal begun Soviet Union close to the winter. Throughout the years of Occupation of Greece for Germany Nazi, thousands of Greeks died in direct combat, in camps of concentration or of famine. The inhabitants murdered the biggest part of the Jewish community in spite of efforts for the Greek orthodox Church and very much Christian Greeks to shelter Jews. The economy was devastated. After the liberation, Greece experienced a the same way bitter civil war between communist rebels and forces of government (that included republicans, liberals, monarchists and conservatives); this lasted until 1949.

In the year 1950 and year 1960, Greece progressed punctually, at first with the help of the subsidies of the American Marshall Plan and loans, and later for the growth in the tourism sector. In 1967, the Greek military men dominated the control in a revolution, it demolished the government of right of center of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and established the military Greek meeting of 1967-1974 that there did to himself acquaintance as the Régime of the Colonels. The Central Agency of Information was involved in the blow and the president Clinton later apologized for the interference. In 1973, the régime suppressed the Greek monarchy. In 1974, the dictator Papadopoulos denied the help to the USA and it is rumored that consequently the USA, for the Kissinger efforts, initiated the second blow. Colonel Ioannides was designated like the new head of state. Very much grip Ioannides responsible for the blow against President Makarios de Chipre the blow seen like the pretext for the first wave (wave) of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The events of the Cyprus and the outcry after a bloody suppression of Athens the Polytechnical raising in Athens drove to the implosion of the military men régime. An exiled charismatic politician, Konstantinos Karamanlis, returned of Paris as intermediate prime minister and reelection later gained for two remote terms at the head of the conservative party Nea Dimokratia.

In 1975, after a referendum to corroborate the deposition of King Constantine II, a republican democratic constitution came into force. More political one earlier exile, Andreas Papandreou also came again and created the socialist party PASOK, which gained the elections in 1981 and dominated the political course of the country during almost two decades. From the restoration of democracy, the stability and the economic prosperity of Greece significantly they have grown. Greece joined the European Union in 1981 and assumed the Euro as its currency in 2001. The new infrastructure, funds of the European Union and increasing income of the tourism, the transport, services, light industry and the industry of telecommunications has brought a standard of living without precedents to Greeks. The tense relations keep on existing between Greece and Turkey on Cyprus and the borders delimitation in Aegean Sea but the relations enough have been thawed after successive earthquakes, firstly in Turkey and then in Greece and a relief of compassion and the generous help for ordinary and Turkish Greeks.