WI:The Greeks focused on Eastern Thrace in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922

Status
Not open for further replies.

Prefrence

Banned
WI:The Greeks focused on Eastern Thrace in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922?

Instead of invading Asia Minor, WI the Greek Army focus soley on holding Eastern Thrace and Constantinople? Could both be added the the Greek Kingdom or would the Turks previal as OTL?

Would the Capital be moved to Constantinople?

After the War would there be a population exchange?

How would this affect the rest of history?
 
I'm not sure if the capital had been shifted to Ankara at this time, but I presume that if the Greeks had taken Constantinople, Ataturk's forces would be more supported. if the government was still in Constantinople though, it could have been good, as they could behead the Turkish war machine. I think they couldn't take Constantinople due to the huge effort the Turks put into fortifying them against the Greeks.
 
The 2 million Greeks living on the coast of Asia minor would have been massacred and genocide would had occured much earlier then 1922 had the Greek Army taken Constantinople which was an open City under semi allied administration. The Greek Army wanted to but the allies prevented it. With allies like that who needs enemies?
 
Wasn't Constantinople occupied by a coalition of Allied troops anyways? I don't think they would hand over Constantinople anyways. The best result I can see the Greeks having is keeping all of Eastern Thrace save for Constantinople.
 
The 2 million Greeks living on the coast of Asia minor would have been massacred and genocide would had occured much earlier then 1922 had the Greek Army taken Constantinople which was an open City under semi allied administration. The Greek Army wanted to but the allies prevented it. With allies like that who needs enemies?

If that was a genocide then the Germans were victims of a genocide in 1945. It was agreed upon population transfer. No less murderous for the unfortunates on the receiving end of such policy, but it was not the Holocaust.
 
gmavrom, there weren't 2 million Greeks in Asia Minor and no Greek genocide took place, other than that your condemnation of the British and French for not allowing the Greeks to ethnically cleanse Istanbul as they invariably did any bit of territory acquired with Turkish inhabitants...


Snake, not to mention the several hundred thousand Turks ethnically cleansed under that same agreement, an agreement imposed on Turkey by the Allies. Oh, plus the much larger number of Turks ethnically cleansed by Greece during the Balkan Wars.
 
gmavrom, there weren't 2 million Greeks in Asia Minor and no Greek genocide took place, other than that your condemnation of the British and French for not allowing the Greeks to ethnically cleanse Istanbul as they invariably did any bit of territory acquired with Turkish inhabitants...


Snake, not to mention the several hundred thousand Turks ethnically cleansed under that same agreement, an agreement imposed on Turkey by the Allies. Oh, plus the much larger number of Turks ethnically cleansed by Greece during the Balkan Wars.

Grimm

In general agreement but from what I've read the forced population transfer and the fact it was far worse for the Greeks, was imposed by the Attatuk government. They were the ones who insisted on a religious rather than a cultural definition of Greek and Turkish and that just about the entire population of each minority got moved. It was only determined bargaining by the allies that allowed the Greek minority to stay in Constantinople when it was handed over to the Turks.

Steve
 
Perhaps if Greece had grasped the historic opportunity
and joined the Entente as early as 1915, when the Gallipoli campaing was being launched, the plans of re-capturing The City could have worked.
 
Perhaps if Greece had grasped the historic opportunity
and joined the Entente as early as 1915, when the Gallipoli campaing was being launched, the plans of re-capturing The City could have worked.

The Greeks would probably get their asses handed to them for no gain.
 
The Greeks would probably get their asses handed to them for no gain.

You may be right.

Politically Greece was not internally united enough to enter the war on the side of the Allies in 1915
Militarily there is quite a distance to cover from Kavala to Constantinople (approximately 500 KM) having to cross Bulgarian as well as Ottoman territory.
Economically, Greeks is not in a position to wage a protracted war.

On the pro side:
Diplomatic agreements can be made that Greece will be rewarded with the City as reward for joining the war on the side of the Entente. This may rally enough Greeks behind joining the Entente cause.
Militarily, the Entente will support a Greek advance towards Constantinople which is bound to distract the Ottoman defence of the Gallipoli peninsula.
Greece may have negotiated for economic and financial support form the Entente in order to sustain the war.

If I were a Greek living in 1915, I may have gone for it;)
 
You may be right.

Politically Greece was not internally united enough to enter the war on the side of the Allies in 1915
Militarily there is quite a distance to cover from Kavala to Constantinople (approximately 500 KM) having to cross Bulgarian as well as Ottoman territory.
Economically, Greeks is not in a position to wage a protracted war.

On the pro side:
Diplomatic agreements can be made that Greece will be rewarded with the City as reward for joining the war on the side of the Entente. This may rally enough Greeks behind joining the Entente cause.
Militarily, the Entente will support a Greek advance towards Constantinople which is bound to distract the Ottoman defence of the Gallipoli peninsula.
Greece may have negotiated for economic and financial support form the Entente in order to sustain the war.

If I were a Greek living in 1915, I may have gone for it;)

The issue is that the Ottomans had a large part of their population and industry in Eastern Thrace so you can bet there would be at least a few divisions to defend it with much better logistics than they had on any front OTL you could be looking at a bloody stalemate or even a capitulation.
 
The issue is that the Ottomans had a large part of their population and industry in Eastern Thrace so you can bet there would be at least a few divisions to defend it with much better logistics than they had on any front OTL you could be looking at a bloody stalemate or even a capitulation.

I don’ t think I can can argue with that;
and a well informed Greek in 1915 too must have realised that the Greeks didn’t have a realistic chance of taking The City by military means alone.

The prospects of getting the City by diplomatic means may have looked better to him.
The military, economic and social resources of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 were stretched already: by defending Gallipoli against the Entente; fighting a mountain war with the Russians in Eastern Anatolia; ethnic unrest in Armenia; reversal of fortunes at the Suez Canal; stirrings in Arabia and in Mesopotamia.

This well informed Greek could expect that the Ottoman Empire would not be able to hold and would collapse, after which the victorious Entente, of which Greece would be a part, would redefine its borders.
If Greece had negotiated the return of the Constantinople to Greece as the prize of its siding with the Entente, it would win it through diplomacy rather than through military means.
 
The British plan during the war was to give Russia Constantinople, and the idea after the Revolution was either give it to an American mandate to keep the U.S. Involved in Allied affairs, or to compensate France with it while the British could keep Syria. The Entente didn't want a Greek Constantinople as far as I've read.

Plus the Ottomans were quite good at beating back the Allies at many points. So the only real writing on the wall for the Empire's collapse was after the war concluded.

Source: A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin
 
Last edited:
So neither by diplomatic ( I assume that the clauses of the Constantinople Agreement were secret?) nor by military means were the Greeks going to get Constantinople in 1915.

I do not see conditions for getting The City improve during the following years up till 1919-1922 as shown in earlier posts.
 
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top