Kos Kos Kos or Cos (; ) is a Greek island, part of the Dodecanese island chain in the southeastern Aegean Sea, off the Anatolian coast of Turkey. Kos is the third largest island of the Dodecanese by area, after Rhodes and Karpathos; it has a population of 33,388 (2011 census), making it the second most populous of the Dodecanese, after Rhodes. The island measures , and is from the coast of the ancient region of Caria in Turkey. Administratively, Kos constitutes a municipality within the Kos regional unit, which is part of the South Aegean region. The principal town of
Greece in the Balkan Wars promises of the Young Turks caused much enthusiasm both inside the Empire and in the Balkan states, but they gradually adopted a policy of forced "Ottomanisation", which, coupled with the parallel rise of Albanian nationalism, threatened the interests of the other Balkan states. Italy too, in search of a colonial empire, took advantage of the turmoil in the Ottoman Empire, attacking Libya and seizing the Dodecanese islands during the Italo-Turkish War. The Italians promised to cede the Greek-inhabited Dodecanese islands to Greece, but in the end kept them. This aroused indignation in Greece. Coupled with Bulgarian aspirations for Macedonia and