DODECANESE (twelve islands), in the Aegean sea are situated near the coast of Asia Minor and are a possession of Italy. The term first appears in the 9th century and was used in the middle ages for the Cyclades. Since the Italian occupation it has been applied to "the 13 southern Sporades," consisting of the 13 (not 12) islands of Rhodes, Cos, Kalymnos, Leros, Nisyl`os, Telos, Syme, Khalke, Astypalaia, Karpathos, Kasos, Patmos and Lipsos. The two first and the last were not included in the medi aeval "dodecanese," which, however, comprised Nikaria and Castellorizo. Turkish firmans from 1652 to 1835 conferred or con firmed their fiscal privileges, and local Greek authorities collected a lump annual sum as tribute to the Porte. These privileges, despite occasional infringements in 1869, 1886 and 1893, continued down to the Turkish Revolution. The Young Turks, in 1909, abolished them, but in 1912, when the islands ceased to belong to Turkey, this decision had not yet been carried out. In that year the Italians, then at war with Turkey and meeting with difficulties in Libya, occupied the 13 islands after a single battle at Psinthos in Rhodes, in which they were aided by the islanders, believing in the promises of General Ameglio and Admiral Presbitero, that "autonomy" would follow the abolition of Turkish rule. Indeed, an Insular Assembly met at Patmos, and proclaimed the "Auton omous State of the Aegean" with its own flag. The first Treaty of Lausanne, in Oct. 1912, pledged Italy to evacuate the islands as soon as the Turks had evacuated Libya.
Signor Giolitti, when Premier, sincerely repudiated the idea of "annexing territories of Greek nationality" and Sir Edward Grey, in 1913, declared that their fate "interested all the Great Powers." Nevertheless, the 8th article of the secret Treaty of London of 1915, which secured Italy's entrance into the World War, gave her full sovereignty over the islands. A convention was, however, made between M. Venizelos and Senator Tittoni (then Foreign Minister) on July 29, 1919, which was to have simultaneous effect with the subsequent Treaty of Sevres, and which ceded 12 of the islands to Greece, and provided that Rhodes, the thirteenth, should have "a wide local autonomy." A further treaty was signed on Aug. 1 o, 19 2o, by M. Venizelos and Count Bonin at Sevres. It confirmed the above, and added that Rhodes should, 15 years later, become Greek also if Great Britain should have ceded Cyprus to Greece, and a Rhodian plebiscite, held under the supervision of the League of Nations, should have decided for union. Meanwhile Italy pledged herself to give to the islands within two months a "wide local autonomy." In 1922, however, Senator Tittoni's successor, Count Sforza, de nounced these agreements on the ground that circumstances had changed, and the fall of M. Venizelos strengthened the deter mination of the Italians to remain, despite Lord Curzon's stiff cote of Oct. 15, 1922, intimating that the cession of Jubaland )y Great Britain to Italy was conditional upon the Italian settle ment of the question of the Dodecanese with Greece. This posi tion, however, was abandoned by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. Meanwhile the Treaty of Sevres formally assigned the Dodecanese to Italy, which by article 15 of the second Treaty of Lausanne not only obtained the recognition by Turkey of her full sov ereignty over "the 13 islands," but also the ratification of her occupation (during the World War) of Castellorizo.
The Metropolitan of Rhodes was expelled in 1921, and, after an exile of three years, was allowed to return and remain only on condition that he severed his connection with the Oecumenical Patriarch. The Italian plan was to create an autocephalous church for the Dodecanese on the mistaken precedent of Cyprus, which was ecclesiastically autocephalous many centuries before the British occupation. The death of the Patriarch, however, pre vented the execution of this arrangement, which would have been uncanonical without his consent and contrary to the example of Protestant England in the Ionian Islands and of Catholic Austria in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Another regulation in 1925 com pelled all inhabitants of the Dodecanese to take Italian national ity, although, with the exceptions of the Muslims and Jews in Rhodes, they are all practically of Greek race. The fortification of Leros as a naval base and the establishment of a university at Rhodes point to the permanence of the Italian occupation, which is the chief obstacle to Graeco-Italian friendship. The islands, with the exception of the sponge-fishing industry of Kalymnos and Syme, have small economic value, and the pro hibition of sponge-fishing off the north coast of Africa by the Italians in 1916, since withdrawn, not only injured the islands economically but also diminished their population, now only about 8o,000, by emigration. Besides, however, the strategic im portance of Leros in view of possible Italian expansion in Asia Minor, Astypalaia has two harbours.