Greeks in Anatolia

The OP quote is a comment from a blog post, so you don't necessarily need to take it wholesale. Greece might simply trying to expand into western Anatolia, not forming a neo-Byzantine Empire (which may be an ASB concept by the 20th century).

It's not an ASB concept - that's what they were actually trying to accomplish. It's the Megali Idea, which was definitively to revive the Byzantine Empire with Constantinople as the capital.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megali_idea

What borders on ASB is actually accomplishing it.
 
If they win the Graeco-Turkish war, they might get the demilitarised zone plus their earlier gains (and keep northern Epirus/southern Albania quietly), that means Nicea, Constantinople and all of Thrace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greekhistory.GIF

The christians of Anatolia greeted the Greeks as liberators, and there were quite a few of them, even after the genocide on the Armenians 1915-1918. The white Russians passed by Constantinople after being thrown out of southern Russia and the Ukraine - if the Greeks got land to offer, I am sure some of those fellow orthodox christians could stay. The white russians could probably provide the Black Sea navy (including the battleship Imperator Alexandr) as payment for land. There's also plenty of Armenians and Greeks in the rest of Anatolia to resettle. The Pontic Greeks, nowadays mostly assimilated and speaking Turkish, being forced to do so by Atatürk, for example, could add to the Greek population.

There is a lot of nonsense in here. The Pontic Greeks had to leave as part of the population exchange agreed to in the Treaty of Lausanne. They were not forced to assimilate and speak Turkish.

Note that a lot of Christian Ottomans DID speak Turkish as their native language - and all of them were shipped to Greece. Likewise, Muslims that spoke only Greek were shipped to Turkey.

Also, the Christians of Anatolia did NOT all view the Greeks as liberators. Many Greeks did, many of these were ambivalent, and the Armenians certainly did not. The Jews, of course, ran for their lives.
 
There wasn't any genocide in Ionia carried by Greeks in 1919-22. The actions the Europeans contemned were incidents of slain of Turks by greek troops provoced by prior slains of Greek civilians and soldiers by Turk irregulars. These actions are not justified, but they couldn't have been prevented, especially after the pogroms against the local Greeks during the Balkan Wars and WW I.
Venizelos had asigned Fotiades as High Commitioner in Smyrna and this man was very careful about the behaviour of Greece towards the local Turks. He was even accused of beeing pro-Turkish!
In any case the Greeks would form an overwhelming majority in the region, since all Greek of Anatolia (i.e. form the region of Antalya, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Pontus etc) would flow into the Greek-dominated areas. Note that in 1922-3, during the exchange of populations, even after many died during the war and the procedure of the exchange, 1,500,000 ethnic Greeks flew to Greece.

If Greece were able to maintain the yellow areas after the Graeco-Turkish war, it is almost sure that there would be another Graeco-Turkish war, probably in the mid-1930's. I can't see Greece loosing this war either, except if Italy joined Turkey. In that case the result is under question.

This is frankly a load of horseshit. The Greeks were not an overwhelming majority anywhere in the region at all, and there are plenty of population statistics from plenty of non-Ottoman sources to prove it, not that the Ottoman census had any political implications (the census office was run by Armenians).

British and American commissioners reporting after the war indicated that atrocities were widespread and systematic, not "merely a response to atrocities by the Turks" which were non-existent. Even the most hostile reporters at the time didn't note any anti-Greek pogroms in the Balkan Wars or WWI. However, the Muslim population of the areas taken by Greece in the Balkan Wars were totally liquidated.

This is really just crazy. The Greeks invaded Turkey, tried to annex half of it as part of a Greek national state, and you somehow paint the Turks as the bad guys? Wow.
 
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This is frankly a load of horseshit. The Greeks were not an overwhelming majority anywhere in the region at all, and there are plenty of population statistics from plenty of non-Ottoman sources to prove it, not that the Ottoman census had any political implications (the census office was run by Armenians).

British and American commissioners reporting after the war indicated that atrocities were widespread and systematic, not "merely a response to atrocities by the Turks" which were non-existent. Even the most hostile reporters at the time didn't note any anti-Greek pogroms in the Balkan Wars or WWI. However, the Muslim population of the areas taken by Greece in the Balkan Wars were totally liquidated.

This is really just crazy. The Greeks invaded Turkey, tried to annex half of it as part of a Greek national state, and you somehow paint the Turks as the bad guys? Wow.



Wow, wow, wow...

Wait up.
The killing of Pontic Greeks and the massacres performed by Turks during the withdrawal of the Greek Army from Anatolia have been well documented and are a fact.

The so called "liquidation of Muslims" in Greek territories however is something I do not understand. There is a Muslim minority living in Thrace nowadays, where did they all come from?
 

yourworstnightmare

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That there were terrible attrocities on both sides are undeniable facts. Can't stand this bullshit about trying to whitewash either side. They both behaved like murdering maniacs and that's how it was.
 
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