Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, occupies the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe, with nine regions and thousands of islands along its Mediterranean coastline, and Athens as its capital and largest city. Greek independence followed a protracted conflict against Ottoman rule that began in 1821, with the modern state recognized under the London Protocol of 1830 as the First Hellenic Republic; after military occupation during the Second World War and subsequent civil strife, Greece transitioned to democracy in 1974 and established the current parliamentary republic. It operates as a unitary parliamentary republic under President Konstantinos Tasoulas and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, with a population of about 10.4 million across 131,957 square kilometers, and joined the European Union in 1981 as its tenth member state. Greece is regarded as foundational to Western civilization, credited with originating democracy, philosophy, literature and the Olympic Games, and it holds 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
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