WI Greeks do not advance into Anatolia
- Thread starter mishery
- Start date
Max Sinister
Banned
Today, the Turkish population is several times higher than the Greek, but they've grown faster too. Don't know how it was than. Maybe the Greeks would do better too with a different military leader - their commander seems to have been incompetent and even mad. Unfortunately his name slipped from my memory...
Max Sinister said:
I'm not sure , but I think that the Greek population was higher than the Turkish one around Smyrna. But after the war , in 1923 , there was a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. 1 million Greeks from Turkey went to Greece and 400,000 Turks living in Greece went to Turkey.
Keenir
Banned
mishery said:
my understanding of the War of Independence is that the Founding Fathers of modern Turkey wanted a nation with easily-defendable/defenseable(sp) borders...would a lack of the Smyrnian region be just as easily defended as in OTL?
also, this isn't 1802: now that the Greek state has a foothold in Asia Minor again, what's to stop them from making another land-grab, say, five years later?
lastly...what happens to Istanbul? do the politicians of Greece add their voices to the pressure for the Ayasofya(sp) (Hagia Sophia) to be re-made back into a church?
(in OTL, Ataturk was considering that option)
ps: as for the changing of Greek commanders during the invasion, well, that's what happens when your king is bitten by his pet monkey.
Max Sinister
Banned
@Andrei: No, I meant the whole countries. That's why I suppose that the Turks had more men. OTOH the Greeks hadn't to fight all the time since they entered the war in 1917, and maybe got weapons from the Western Allies.
The main reasons behind the invasion was the expectation that Turkey would completely collapse. It was a stupid idea, but the events of the 1st Balkan war were still quite recent.
Overall, I do not think it would have made any difference. And possibly the Afyon line was more defensible than what might have been scratched up around Smyrna. OTOH, Greece could not stay forever on a war-standing, and the defense of Smyrna beach-head would have been too costly.
Overall, I do not think it would have made any difference. And possibly the Afyon line was more defensible than what might have been scratched up around Smyrna. OTOH, Greece could not stay forever on a war-standing, and the defense of Smyrna beach-head would have been too costly.
Max Sinister said:
I suppose Turkey had a larger population than Greece in the 1920's , but the Greeks had slightly more soldiers than the Turks in 1922 , when the last battle of the war took place.
The Greeks lost the Allies' support when pro-British prime minister Venizelos was replaced , and the king , who had been pro-German during WWI , assumed command of the Greek forces in Anatolia ( the king also appointed incompetent commanders which were monarchist ).
Notwithstanding the Venizelos replacement, the Allies would not have accepted to intervene directly to support Greece. They went already beyond and above any formal neutrality by providing supplies (and - if I remember right - Allied navies protected the embarcation of Greek troops at the fall of Smyrna). Can you expect more than that? In 1922, after having fought the Great War, and with the Russian bugbear making threatning noises?
It was agreed at the treaty of Sevres that a refferendum would be held in the Smyrna area , 5 years after the treaty , to determine it's status. If the Greeks hadn't attacked and Smyrna had voted for Greece , then they could have kept the area , and a Turkish attack would have made Turkey the aggresor.
If the Greeks hadn't advanced into Anatolia they could have repelled the Turkish attacks ( if the Turks would still have attacked ) , because the morale of the army would have been higher and the army would have been easier to supply.
In OTL , the Greek army had to deal with a hostile population when they advanced , and morale was low.
If the Greeks hadn't advanced into Anatolia they could have repelled the Turkish attacks ( if the Turks would still have attacked ) , because the morale of the army would have been higher and the army would have been easier to supply.
In OTL , the Greek army had to deal with a hostile population when they advanced , and morale was low.
Andrei said:
A hostile population? once you get out of the Meander valley, there is almost no one until Afyon (in the 1990s, I mean: in the 1920s, it would have been even worse).
The majority of Greeks was in Smyrna proper: do you think that Greece can hold just the city?
Part of the reason that area of the country is so empty, IIRC, is the mass-deportations of 1923, so the locals might actually have been quite pro-Greek in 1919.LordKalvan said:
OTOH, it's an area Turkey would badly have wanted back. 3rd largest city in the country today, and the source of major trade revenue. Come 1920, you'd have to work very hard as a Greek commander to hold it against a determined attacking force of Kemal-inspired, fiercely patriotic Turks.
The area is empty because there is no water; not now not in 1920.Satyrane said:
If it had been inabited by greeks (impossible, btw: all the greeks were living in the cities or on the coast) who were deported after the turco-greek war, it would have been filled in by turkish deported from Greece (as happened in Smyrna, btw). And Smyrna was the 2nd turkish city in the 1920s: Ankara was just a provincial town.
LordKalvan said:
Whereabouts do you mean, exactly? Perhaps we're talking at cross purposes. The Gediz and Kucukmenderes (pardon my spelling) rivers are pretty wet, and people do live there.The population exchanges weren't equal: about 1.5 million Greeks were moved out of Turkey; about half a million Muslims were moved from Greece. Turkish deportees didn't just 'fill in the gaps', as you seem to suggest.