Greek–Turkish relations January 1822, and after the Battle of Navarino in 1827, the establishment of a Greek state was recognized in the London Protocol of 1828. The first borders of the Greek state consisted of the Greek mainland south of a line from Arta to Volos plus Euboea and the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea. The rest of the Greek-speaking lands, including Crete, Cyprus and the rest of the Aegean islands, Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace, remained under Ottoman rule. More than a million Greeks also lived in what is now Turkey, mainly in the Aegean region of Asia Minor, especially
Transmission of the Greek Classics of scholarship in the Mediterranean region, many were translated into Syriac, Arabic, and Persian during the Middle Ages and the original Greek versions were often lost. As the Arab caliphates absorbed Greek/Roman knowledge, the medieval Islamic world gradually became the dominant intellectual center in the Mediterranean region. Subsequent efforts at Latin translations of Arab scholarship, including the Greek classics, began what would later be known as the "Renaissance" in the West. With increasing Western presence in the East due to the Crusades, and the gradual collapse of the Byzantine Empire during the later Middle Ages, many Byzantine Greek scholars fled