the capture and occupation of the Dodecanese islands by German forces during World War II.

Italian colonists were settled in the Dodecanese Islands of the Aegean Sea in the 1930s by the Fascist Italian government of Benito Mussolini, Italy having been in occupation of the Islands since the Italian-Turkish War of 1911.

a community of ethnic Turks, indigenous Greek Muslims and Cretan Muslims living on the Dodecanese islands of Rhodes and Kos.