Dodecanese campaign lies in the south-eastern Aegean Sea, and had been under Italian control since the Italo-Turkish War in 1911. During Italian rule, the strategically well-placed islands became a focus of Italian colonial ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rhodes, the largest of the islands, was a major military and aerial base. The island of Leros, with its excellent deep-water port of Lakki (Portolago), was transformed into a heavily fortified aeronautical base, "the Corregidor of the Mediterranean", as Benito Mussolini, the Italian leader, boasted. An early British attempt to contest Italian control of the Dodecanese, codenamed Operation Abstention, was thwarted in February 1941,
Refugees of the Greek Civil War up for the refugees, Buljkes. Most of these refugees were ELAS members and the so-called "Greek Commune" was established. Although many were Greeks, it is known that a large proportion of the "Greeks" were in fact Slav Macedonians. The first group of refugees to come to Buljkes was from Kumanovo on May 25, 1945. The group included 1454 refugees, mainly partisans. By June 1945 another group of 2,702 refugees had been transferred to Vojvodina. In the spring of 1946 a group of refugees from Greek Macedonia numbering around 250 people had left the camp. Many more had left the commune