One hundred years after the Asia Minor Campaign, the local and international environment and the geopolitical balances that caused and shaped this decisive juncture of Hellenism, continues to remind annoyingly some current realities
Photo: ANA-MPA
KOSTAS STEFANIDIS
19 June 2022
WHEN WE TALKED ABOUT THE ASIA MINOR CAMPAIGN, we usually focus our attention on the period from May 1919 to September 1922. Those of us who had a grandfather who took part, and I am one of them, or grew up in families with a refugee past, perhaps we can recall some details. Our political narrative and educational system has never examined the general political and geostrategic environment that led to the National Catastrophe, nor has it adequately analysed the social and economic consequences of the arrival of the refugees from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace.
One hundred years later, the local and international environment and the geopolitical balances that caused and shaped this decisive juncture of Hellenism, continues to remind annoyingly of some current realities. It began, evolved and ended without ever having a unified and coherent military, political and national plan. It was based mainly on fragmentary and emotional decisions. Without a specific goal, without a single political and military leadership and without meaningful allies, the final outcome was rather predetermined.
The antechamber of the Asia Minor Campaign was the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the First World War 1914-1918, which dissolved the Ottoman Empire and raised the issue of its successors and state interests in its territories.
The Balkan Wars doubled the territories and population of the Greek state, consolidated the belief of the Greeks in the power of Greek weapons and their faith in the Great Idea of Venizelos and King Constantine.
The First World War, on the other hand, brought the two into a head-on collision, divided the Nation, but brought it to the camp of the victors, where the Greeks judged that their great expectations in the defeated Ottoman Empire were their national rights beyond any doubt.
In 1915, Venizelos considered that the interest of the state, the future of Hellenism and the emerging international alliances, forced Greece to emerge in the still ambivalent First World War on the side of England, France and Russia, which were fighting against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, to which the Ottoman Empire had acceded. King Constantine, who had studied in Germany and was related to Kaiser William, believed that the exact same national interests dictated strict neutrality in Greece.
While a World War rages around Greece, the frontal rift between the two powerful men causes a constitutional crisis and divides their followers. Disagreeing with Constantine’s foreign policy, Venizelos resigned in February 1915, only to win a month after the next elections and become prime minister again. The King, in turn, will dissolve parliament later that year and call new elections, in which the Liberal party will not participate.
In the same year, French and English troops occupied Lemnos and Thessaloniki. The royal government withdraws the Fifth Army Corps except for a Division limited to surveillance duties. Immediately afterwards the Anglo-French occupied Corfu. In May of ’16 the royal government surrenders fort Roupel to the Bulgarians and to a platoon of Germans who later captured the entire Fourth Army Corps of Kavala. His men are taken to the Gairlic capture camp in Germany. The Bulgarians enter Kavala.
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The French commander-in-chief Saraille declares Thessaloniki in a state of siege. The Venizelist Committee of National Defence will call for successive protest rallies against Constantine. In August 1916 the committee declares the National Defence Movement to which Venizelos responds, who will form the government of the Triumvirate under himself, Admiral Kountouriotis and General Daglis. The Aegean islands also join the movement. The interim government will only be recognized de facto by its allies.
Greece is now divided into two: the “state of Athens” and the “state of Thessaloniki”, which forms National Defence Divisions and sends them to the Macedonian Front. In November a French fleet sails to Faliro, bombards Athens targeting the palaces and disembarks contingents against which the Greeks open fire. This is followed by a pogrom against the Venizelists with many victims. In early 1917 the French imposed a complete blockade, landed an army in Piraeus, occupied the Isthmus of Corinth and in May dethroned Constantine and appointed his son Alexander as successor. Venizelos arrives in June of the same year in Piraeus on a French cruiser and a few days later he is sworn in as Prime Minister.
Greece is once again becoming a unitary state but the army and the people remain divided into two mutually hated portions of Venizelists and royals.
– The Venizelists purge the state from the “royal miasms”. Political, military and state officials are exiled to Corsica. Others are confined at home, including two former Prime Ministers and six former ministers.
– 1,600 permanent officers are demobilized and another 700 are suspended. This removes 40% of the permanent members of the army. 300 permanent officers of the Hellenic Navy are demobilized: 30% of the total. The Royal Gendarmerie is dissolved and the faithful Cretan Gendarmerie takes over.
After the electoral defeat of Venizelos in 1920, most of the demobilized officers returned, but in the war-torn army, problems of yearbook and war experience were created. They cause sabotaging infighting at the forefront of the front, with their remaining combat-worthy experienced Venizelist colleagues and allies. Throughout the Campaign, only one in four officers were graduates of the Hellenic Army Academy. The rest came from the ranks of permanent non-commissioned officers, who won their gallons on the battlefield, such as Nikolaos Plastiras and Georgios Kondylis.
In 1914 the population of Greece was about 4.7 million. divided equally in Old Greece and the New Countries. By 1918, about 135,000 Muslims had voluntarily fled Macedonia. With the exchange of populations, the rest of them left. Due to the wars of 1912-1918 and the persecutions, hundreds of thousands of Greeks had been moved or persecuted in Macedonia, Thrace, Rumelia and the coasts of western Asia Minor. In 1918, 140,000 had gradually returned to Macedonia and another 131,000 to the whole of Thrace. Thus, before the start of the Asia Minor Campaign, Greece was already facing an acute refugee problem. In the lists of refugees to be treated in 1915 alone, 117,484 destitute people were registered.
The divided country was obliged to cover with new loans the particularly increased defence expenditure in defence of the liberated countries that armed the Bulgarians claimed in Macedonia, in the Aegean islands the Ottomans and in Epirus the Italians on behalf of the Albanians. The loans of that period exceeded 1 billion drachmas. The rest was covered by heavy taxes that overburdened the weaker working-class families, whose men had been enlisted for years, those who were not killed or disabled.
The richer classes had been treasured by the wars but refused to participate proportionally in the enormous weight of the Homeland. The public debt was growing and at the same time the public deficit was increasing. In the last four years prices have quadrupled.
Greece emerged from the war heavily indebted, with its currency on the verge of destruction, its basic economic structure without qualitative changes, an antiquated and unfair tax system, with large areas destroyed, an acute refugee problem, with polarization of political forces that foreshadowed calamities, without any bright sign on the horizon except for the expected satisfaction of its territorial claims at the negotiating table.
This dispiriting reality was the true antechamber of the Asia Minor Campaign, which was the last card of Greece to end the case of Asia Minor by military means: the persecution of the Kemalist army and its complete crushing.
The arrival of refugees in Greece after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey were for Greek society traumatic and unprecedented events. 1.5 million Greeks of Anatolia were forced to leave their homelands and move to Greece.
Seen as foreigners from the locals, the refugees inspired feelings of fear, hatred and loathing. The sight of impoverishment, the stowage in ships and ports and then in refugee camps, acted as a repellent for the “natives”.
About 90% of the refugees settled in Macedonia and Thrace. From the first moment, Venizelistism played a big role in their integration into Greek society and contributed to the gradual acquisition of homes, fields, care and equal political rights. Despite the injustices and hardships, the refugees were integrated and given the opportunity to make a new start, within the secure borders of the Greek state, which now had ethnic and religious homogeneity. Coming from places with a cosmopolitan culture and a long tradition, the refugees grafted the new homeland with their culture, their music, gastronomy, fashion, education, but also with its perceptions and cultural values enriched the hitherto closed Greek society.
A Look at History 