Turks of the Dodecanese Turks of the Dodecanese The Turks of the Dodecanese are a community of 2,000 Turkish-speaking people and ethnic Turks living on the Dodecanese islands of Rhodes () and Kos () who were not affected by the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, since the islands were under the rule of the Kingdom of Italy at the time (from 1912). All inhabitants of the islands became Greek citizens after 1947 when the islands became part of Greece. As a result of this incorporation into Greece and due to the situation following the Cyprus conflict and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus
Dodecanese civilian governor, Count , as "Viceroy of the Dodecanese". As the name was associated with Greek irredentism, from 1924 Mussolini's Fascist regime tried to abolish its use by referring to them as the "Italian Islands of the Aegean", but this name never acquired any wider currency outside Italian administrative usage. The islands joined Greece in 1947 following as the "Governorate-General of the Dodecanese" (Γενική Διοίκησις Δωδεκανήσου), since 1955 the "Dodecanese Prefecture" (Νομός Δωδεκανήσου). The Dodecanese have been inhabited since prehistoric times. In the Neopalatial period on Crete, the islands were heavily Minoanized (contact beginning in the second millennium BC). Following