Flag of Greece Byzantine double-headed eagle (see below), the cross, depictions of saints and various mottoes. The Christian Greek sipahi cavalry employed by the Ottoman Sultan were allowed to use their own, clearly Christian flag, when within Epirus and the Peloponnese. It featured the classic blue cross on a white field with the picture of St. George slaying the dragon, and was used from 1431 until 1639, when this privilege was greatly limited by the Sultan. Similar flags were used by other local leaders. The closest to a Greek "national" flag during Ottoman rule was the so-called "Graeco-Ottoman flag" (Γραικοθωμανική παντιέρα), a civil
Flag of Macedonia (Greece) is unclear when the flag was adopted, but it was most likely in use by the late 1980s after the archaeological discovery of the star by Manolis Andronikos in Vergina. The similarity of the first flag of the Republic of Macedonia in 1992 after it seceded from Yugoslavia, which had the same design but on a red background with proportions 1:2, caused controversy in Greece, which was already using that symbol for its own province of Macedonia, and the Republic of Macedonia changed its flag to the current design. Flag of Macedonia (Greece) The flag of Macedonia () represents a