ALEXANDROS YPSILANTIS
(Alexander Ypsilantis)
The historical relationship between Greece and Turkey is as complicated as any. Ypsilantis was born in the Greek section of Istanbul, then the Turkish capital and became the military commander of the cultural Greeks in the Istanbul Turkish area in the battles between the two nations and cultures for control and dominance of the culturally Greek areas of the Ottoman Empire. So geographically he was a Turk, but always identified with Greece.
Alexandros Ypsilantis was a Greek nationalist politician who was member of a prominent Phanariot Greek family, a prince of the Danubian Principalities, a senior officer of the Imperial Russian cavalry during the Napoleonic Wars, and a leader of the Filiki Eteria, a secret organization that coordinated the beginning of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire.
