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
Dodecanese During World War II, Italy joined the Axis Powers, which used the Dodecanese as a naval staging area for their invasion of Crete in 1941. After the surrender of Italy in September 1943, the islands briefly became a battleground between the Germans and Allied forces, including the Italians. The Germans prevailed in the Dodecanese Campaign, and although they were driven out of mainland Greece in 1944, the Dodecanese remained occupied until the end of the war in 1945, during which time nearly the entire Jewish population of 6,000 was deported and killed. Only 1,200 of these Ladino-speaking Jews survived by