Who should Smyrna/Ionia have been given to after WWI?

Who should Smyrna/Ionia have been given to after WWI?


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Hierosolyma

Banned
Bulgaria isn't an option here (not contiguous, never tried to claim it), but Italy is, since they tried to colonize Southwestern Asia Minor in OTL.
 
İzmir is a bit difficult to judge because the city itself was plurality- (majority-?)Greek during WW1, but this was an extremely recent development (the 1880s Ottoman census shows a Turkish plurality) and the overall vilayet was majority-Turkish. Overall I think it's better off in Turkish hands since a hostile countryside would be terrible for İzmir's economy, but it's a messy situation all around and the OTL expulsion of the Christian majority there was a definite tragedy.
 
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Hierosolyma

Banned
İzmir is a bit difficult to judge because the city itself was probably plurality-Greek during WW1, but this was an extremely recent development (the 1880s Ottoman census shows a Turkish plurality) and the overall sancak was majority-Turkish. Overall I think it's better off in Turkish hands since a hostile countryside would be terrible for İzmir's economy, but it's a messy situation all around and the OTL expulsion of the Christian majority there was a definite tragedy.

Smyrna could be propped up with imports from mainland Greece.

Either way, it's not remotely fair that Turkey got all of the disputed territories (Eastern Thrace, Ionia, Constantinople) after WWI, and Greece got none of them.
 
But in terms of the vilayets in question in 1914, İstanbul vilayet was majority Turkish, Edirne vilayet was majority Turkish, Aydin vilayet was majority Turkish.

Will only note that the number of refugees that came to Greece from Eastern Thrace and Smyrna specifically in 1922, not counting other areas, was higher than the number of Greeks that the Ottomans statistics claimed to exist in the first place, despite the casualties incurred in the meantime by the persecutions in 1914-18 and during the final expulsion of the Greeks in 1922. Which is to say said statistics are to be taken with a grain or pound of salt when counting the Greek and Armenian population of the empire. For example in the case of the Armenians from a total Armenian population of about 1.91 million in 1914 in the empire is decreased to 1.16. At which point we get into Armenian genocide denial arguments, so will stop here before we invite a flamewar.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Smyrna could be propped up with imports from mainland Greece.

Either way, it's not remotely fair that Turkey got all of the disputed territories (Eastern Thrace, Ionia, Constantinople) after WWI, and Greece got none of them.

"Fair"? What is that even supposed to mean. What makes it fair that Greece got the better share of Aegean islands, or Crete, or western Thrace... why not hand over Salonika to Macedon? Would you be ok with that? Maybe if Greece wasn't such a belligerent self inflated ego of a country they could have gotten more in a settlement.

Greece was not some king in the mountain waiting to restore the glory of a Byzantines. That is such a tired old trope. Should Finland be handed over to Sweden? Should spain get Naples? Should England get Normandy? This is just a crock.

No one is entitled to anything simply by the fact your ancestors, who by the way long since adapted to life in the Empire, once ruled it. Nothing makes the greeks better than the turks, and nothing gives the right to the greeks to rule over a turkish majority or visa versa.
 
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Smyrna is unsustainable, the best border from Greek perspective is the entire Anatolia coast to to Turkey and the Greeks take Thrace, Cyprus and the islands, it's the best long-term borders and would create pretty similar amounts of displaced people on both sides if population exchanges happen.
 
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