Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits of who should control the strategically vital link between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. In 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne had demilitarised the Dardanelles and opened the Straits to unrestricted civilian and military traffic, under the supervision of the International Straits Commission of the League of Nations. By the late 1930s, the strategic situation in the Mediterranean had altered with the rise of Fascist Italy, which controlled the Greek-inhabited Dodecanese islands off the west coast of Turkey and had constructed fortifications on Rhodes, Leros and Kos. The Turks feared that Italy would seek to exploit access to the Straits
Cypriot Greek varieties, along with the dialects of the Dodecanese and Chios (with which it shares several phonological phenomena). Though Cypriot Greek tends to be regarded as a dialect by its speakers, it is unintelligible to speakers of Standard Modern Greek without adequate prior exposure. Greek-speaking Cypriots are diglossic in the vernacular Cypriot Greek (the "low" variety) and Standard Modern Greek (the "high" variety). Cypriot Greek is itself a dialect continuum with an emerging koine. argue that diglossia has given way to a "post-diglossic [dialectal] continuum [...] a quasi-continuous spread of overlapping varieties". Studies of the phonology of Cypriot Greek are few