Evs Actually - European Voluntary Service in Greece

HISTORY

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Modern History

The modern Greek state
The Ottomans ruled Greece until the early 19th century. On March 25, 1821 (also the same day as the Greek Orthodox day of the Annunciation of the Theotokos), the Greeks rebelled and declared their independence, but did not achieve it until 1829. The big European powers saw the war of Greek independence, with its accounts of Turkish atrocities, in a romantic light (see, for example, the 1824 painting Massacre of Chios by Eugène Delacroix). Scores of non-Greeks volunteered to fight for the cause, including Lord Byron. At times the Ottomans seemed on the point of suppressing the Greek revolution but for the threatened direct military intervention of France, Britain or Russia. The Russian minister for foreign affairs, Ioannis Kapodistrias, himself a Greek, returned home as President of the new Republic following Greek independence. That republic disappeared when the European powers helped turn Greece into a monarchy; the first king, Otto came from Bavaria and the second, George I from Denmark.

The Cretan lawyer Eleutherios Venizelos became prime minister. He was the most influential Greek politician of the first half of the twentieth century. He worked hard for the reunification of Crete with Greece in the 1890s and was chosen in 1909 to direct a new civilian government, after the Goudi coup of the military officers.

Eleufterios Venizelos became leader of the Liberal Party, supported by the workers, merchants. The Liberal Party won the elections of 1910 and 1912 and brought Venizelos to the post of Prime Minister. He mostly worked on constitutional amendments, established social laws to ameliorate the worker’s rights, and expanded and reequipped the army.

Venizelos managed to stabilize the country.
The next major event of the period is the Balkans Wars of 1912. There were 3 huge political problems in this War: the Problem of Crete, the liberation of countries like Albania, still under the rule of Ottomans, and, finally, the disposition of Macedonia. Some Macedonians wanted their country to be united with Greece while others wanted an independent autonomous state. Other also wanted Macedonia to be united with Albania, Albania or Bulgaria. Athens actively supported Macedonia for its re-unification to Greece. The city of Thessaloniki had also developed a deep nationalist feeling. A pact between Serbia and Bulgaria was signed. Athens signed bilateral pacts with both neighbours and the three powers decided to cooperate military. They declared war to the Turks and in few weeks, the army took Thessaloniki and Ioannina.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, in a series of wars with the Ottomans, Greece sought to enlarge its boundaries to include the ethnic Greek population of the Ottoman Empire. (The Ionian Islands were returned by Britain upon the arrival of the new king from Denmark in 1863, and Thessaly was ceded by the Ottomans without a fight). As a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 Epirus, southern Macedonia, Crete and the Aegean Islands were annexed into Greece. Greece reached its present configuration in 1947.

World War I, the Greco-Turkish War, and the League of Nations
In World War I, Greece sided with the entente powers against Turkey and the other Central Powers. In the war's aftermath, the Great Powers awarded parts of Asia Minor to Greece, including the city of Smyrna (known as İzmir today) which had a Greek population of significant size. At that time, however, the Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, overthrew the Ottoman government, organised a military assault on the Greek troops, and defeated them. Immediately afterwards, over one million native Greeks of Turkey had to leave for Greece as a population exchange with hundreds of thousands of Muslims then living in the Greek state (see Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922).

In 1923, the League of Nations failed Greece during the "Corfu incident." Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was allowed to exercise undue influence in this territorial conflict between Greece and Albania. In 1925, Greece and Bulgaria faced off during the "incident at Petrich." Unlike Corfu, resolution of this conflict was a League of Nations' success.

World War II
Despite the country's numerically small and ill-equipped armed forces, Greece made a decisive contribution to the Allied efforts in World War II. At the start of the war Greece sided with the Allies and refused to give in to Italian demands. Italy invaded Greece on 28 October 1940, but Greek troops repelled the invaders after a bitter struggle (see Greco-Italian War). This marked the first Allied victory in the war.
Primarily to secure his strategic southern flank, German dictator Adolf Hitler reluctantly stepped in and launched the Battle of Greece. Troops from Germany, Bulgaria, and Italy successfully invaded Greece, overcoming Greek, British, Australian, and New Zealand units.

On 20 May 1941 the Germans attempted to seize Crete in a massive attack by paratroops—with the aim of reducing the threat of a counter-offensive by Allied forces in Egypt&mdash but faced heavy resistance. The Greek campaign delayed German military plans against Russia and it is argued that German invasion of the Soviet Union started on the 22nd of June instead of the planed 20th of May. The heavy losses lead the Germans to launch no further large-scale air-invasions.
During the years of Occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany, thousands of Greeks died in direct combat, in concentration camps or of starvation. The occupiers murdered the greater part of the Jewish community despite efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church and many Christian Greeks to shelter Jews. The economy was devastated.

The Greek Civil War
The Greek Civil War (Greek: Eμφύλιος πόλεμος Emfilios polemos), was fought between 1944 and 1949 in Greece between the Governmental forces of Greece supported by the United Kingdom at first, and later by the USA, and the Democratic Army of Greece; the military branch of the Greek communist party. According to some analysts it represented the first example of a post-war West interference in the political situation of a foreign country. The victory of the British - and later US-supported government forces led to Greece's membership in NATO and helped to define the ideological balance of power in the Aegean for the entire Cold War.
The civil war consisted on one side of the armed forces of the postwar non-marxist Greek administrations, and on the other, communist-led forces, and key members of the former resistance organization (ELAS), the leadership of which was controlled by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

The first phase of the civil war occurred in 1942-1944. Marxist and non-marxist resistance groups fought each other in a fratricidal conflict to establish the leadership of the Greek resistance movement. In the second phase (1944) the ascendant communists, in military control of most of Greece, confronted the returning Greek government in exile, which had been formed under Western Allied auspices in Cairo and originally included six KKE-affiliated ministers. In the third phase (commonly called the "Third Round" by the Communists) (1946-1949), guerrilla forces controlled by KKE fought against the internationally recognized Greek Government which was formed after elections boycotted by KKE. Although the involvement of KKE in the uprisings was universally known, the party remained legal until 1948, continuing to coordinate attacks from its Athens offices until proscription.

The civil war left Greece with a legacy of political polarization; as a result, Greece also entered into alliance with the United States and joined NATO, while relationships with its Communist northern neighbours, both pro-Soviet and neutral, became strained.

Postwar recovery
In the 1950s and 1960s, Greece developed rapidly, initially with the help of the U.S. Marshall Plans' grants and loans, and later through growth in the tourism sector. In 1967, the Greek military seized power in a coup d'état, overthrew the centre right government of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and established the Greek military junta of 1967-1974 which became known as the Régime of the Colonels. The Central Intelligence Agency was involved in the coup and President Clinton later apologized for the interference. Also taking part in the 1967 coup was a secret army network called "LOK" set up by NATO as a "stay behind" guerrilla army. In 1973, the régime abolished the Greek monarchy. In 1974, dictator Papadopoulos denied help to the U.S. After a second coup that same year, Colonel Ioannides was appointed as the new head-of-state.

Many hold Ioannides responsible for the coup against President Makarios of Cyprus—the coup seen as the pretext for the first wave of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 (see Greco-Turkish relations). The Cyprus events and the outcry following a bloody suppression of Athens Polytechnic uprising in Athens led to the implosion of the military régime. An exiled politician, Konstantinos Karamanlis, returned from Paris as interim prime minister and later gained re-election for two further terms at the head of the conservative Nea Dimokratia party.

Restoration of democracy
In 1975, following a referendum to confirm the deposition of King Constantine II, a democratic republican constitution came into force. Another previously exiled politician, Andreas Papandreou also returned and founded the socialist PASOK party, which won the elections in 1981 and dominated the country's political course for almost two decades. Kostas Simitis was appointed Prime Minister in 1996 and again in April 2000. In 2004, it was the turn of the right wing Kostas Karamanlis to be elected.

Since the restoration of democracy, the stability and economic prosperity of Greece have grown remarkably. Greece joined the European Union in 1981 and adopted the euro as its currency in 2001. New infrastructure, funds from the EU and growing revenues from tourism, shipping, services, light industry and the telecommunications industry have brought Greeks an unprecedented standard of living. Tensions continue to exist between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and the delimitation of borders in the Aegean Sea but relations have considerably thawed following successive earthquakes—first in Turkey and then in Greece—and an outpouring of sympathy and generous assistance by ordinary Greeks and Turks.