 Turkish forces eventually defeated the Greeks and with Italian aid, recovered the lost territory, including Smyrna.When the Italian Fascists gained power in 1922, they persecuted the Greek-speakers in Italy.In 1923, the new Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini used the murder of an Italian general on the Greco-Albanian border as a pretext to bombard and temporarily occupy Corfu, due to Corfu's strategic position at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea.