Editing History of Crete (section)

===Cretan State===
{{Main|Cretan State}}
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[[File:Flag of Cretan State.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Cretan State (1898–1908)]]
After the expulsion of Ottoman forces in November 1898, the autonomous Cretan State (Official Greek name: {{lang|el|Κρητική Πολιτεία}}), headed by Prince George of Greece and Denmark, was founded under Ottoman [[suzerainty]] in December 1898.

Prince George was replaced by [[Alexandros Zaimis]] in 1906, and in 1908, taking advantage of domestic turmoil in Turkey as well as the timing of Zaimis's vacation away from the island, the Cretan deputies declared union with Greece.<ref>Ion, Theodore P., "The Cretan Question," ''The American Journal of International Law'', April, 1910, pp. 276–284</ref>  But this act was not recognized internationally until 1913 after the [[Balkan Wars]] when, by the [[Treaty of London (1913)|Treaty of London]], Sultan [[Mehmed V]] relinquished his formal rights to the island.

In December, the Greek flag was raised at the Firkas fortress in Chania, with [[Eleftherios Venizelos]] and [[Constantine I of Greece|King Constantine]] in attendance, and Crete was unified with mainland Greece. The [[Cretan Turks]] minority of Crete initially remained on the island but was later relocated to Turkey under the [[Population exchange between Greece and Turkey|general population exchange]] agreed upon in the 1923 [[Treaty of Lausanne (1923)|Treaty of Lausanne]] between Turkey and Greece.

One of the most important figures to emerge from the end of Ottoman Crete was the liberal politician [[Eleftherios Venizelos]], probably the most important statesman of modern Greece.{{according to whom?|date=July 2024}} Venizelos was an Athens-trained lawyer who was active in liberal circles in Chania, then the Cretan capital. After autonomy, he was first a minister in the government of Prince George and then his most formidable opponent.

In 1910 Venizelos transferred his career to Athens, quickly became the dominant figure on the political scene and in 1912, after careful preparations for a military alliance against the Ottoman Empire with Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, allowed Cretan deputies to take their place in the Greek Parliament. This was treated as grounds for war by Ottoman Empire but the Balkan allies won a series of sweeping victories in the hostilities that followed  (see [[Balkan Wars]]).  Ottoman Empire was effectively defeated in the ensuing war and were forced out of the Balkans and Thrace by the Alliance, except for the borders which Turkey continues to hold to this day.