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| - Greece will mark 200 years since the start of its independence war with the Ottoman Empire on Thursday, with parades and ceremonies attended by foreign dignitaries, though the pandemic forced officials to scale back events. With celebrations planned all over Greece and among diaspora communities overseas, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday the "rebirth of Greece" was "a special moment for all Hellenism". Greece fought for nearly a decade for its independence from an empire that extended through the Balkans and modern-day Turkey to North Africa, coming out victorious thanks to military intervention by Britain, France and Russia. The three allies from the conflict are among the countries to have sent military hardware for Thursday's celebrations. Parades of tanks, artillery and overflying jets will mark the occasion in the capital Athens, alongside mounted troops in traditional costumes from the 1821 conflict. Among the foreign dignitaries attending are Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Britain's Prince Charles, with France represented by Defence Minister Florence Parly after President Emmanuel Macron pulled out over the pandemic. "As the wellspring of Western civilisation, Greece's spirit runs through our societies and our democracies," Charles said at a dinner at the presidential mansion on Wednesday. "Without her, our laws, our art, our way of life, would never have flourished as they have." Macron in an interview with Greek television on Wednesday referred to tensions between Greece and Turkey over their disputed maritime border. Hostilities flared last year when Ankara sent a research ship accompanied by a navy flotilla into waters near the Turkish coast that Greece asserts belongs to it -- a claim the EU supports. "We must always be on the side of our European allies when they are attacked in their sovereignty, when they are threatened in their independence, the respect of their borders," Macron said. A cannon on Lycabettus Hill overlooking Athens will fire a salute of 21 shots before the foreign visitors lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Greece's foremost military monument, the defence ministry said. Some 4,000 police, drones and snipers will be deployed in Athens, a police source said. Sympathy for the cause of Greece in 1821 sparked a movement in Europe and the United States known as Philhellenism, with proponents including former US president Thomas Jefferson, Russian author Alexander Pushkin and English poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Hundreds of Philhellene volunteers fought and died for Greece's liberation, with Byron among them. A joint effort by France, Russia and Britain eventually defeated a Turkish-Egyptian fleet in the pivotal 1827 Battle of Navarino, and further military reverses forced the Ottoman Empire to recognise Greece's sovereignty in 1830. but-jph/jxb/mjs/tgb/oho
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