Italian colonists in the Dodecanese especially in Rhodes and Leros. The Kingdom of Italy occupied the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean sea during the Italian-Turkish war of 1911. In the 1919 Venizelos-Tittoni Agreement, Italy promised to cede the overwhelmingly Greek-inhabited islands, except Rhodes, to Greece, but this treaty was never implemented due to the Greek catastrophe in Asia Minor. With the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, the Dodecanese was formally annexed by Italy, as the "Possedimenti Italiani dell'Egeo". In the 1930s, Mussolini embarked on a program of Italianization, hoping to make the island of Rhodes a modern transportation hub that would serve as a focal
Dodecanese Greece. As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis reform, the prefecture was abolished, and its territory was divided into four regional units, within the South Aegean administrative region: The prefecture was subdivided into the following municipalities and communities. These have been reorganised at the 2011 Kallikratis reform as well. Until 1997, the Prefecture of the Dodecanese was subdivided into provinces: Local specialities of the Dodecanese include: Dodecanese The Dodecanese (, ; , "Dodekánisa" , literally "twelve islands") are a group of 15 larger plus 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor (Turkey),