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Turkey's Pogrom of September 1955 and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul

Turkey’s Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955 Against the Greeks of Istanbul

Britain opposed freedom and democracy for Cyprus following World War II and bears the original and primary responsibility for the post-World War II tragedies that have befallen Cyprus. While other colonies were gaining their freedom, Cyprus was told by the British Minister of State for Colonial Affairs Harry Hopkinson, during a House of Commons debate in 1954, that "[t]here can be no question of any change of sovereignty in Cyprus" and that "there are certain territories in the Commonwealth which, owing to their particular circumstances, can never expect to be fully independent."

Following the Hopkinson "never" statement, Greece decided to bring an application for self-determination to the 1954 UN General Assembly session on behalf of the people of Cyprus. Britain opposed the application. Although Turkey had renounced all rights to Cyprus in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, Britain claimed that the presence of an eighteen percent Turkish Cypriot minority was an obstacle to a solution. Britain called for a tripartite conference among Britain, Greece and Turkey which was held in London in late August and early September 1955 to discuss the situation in Cyprus. The conference ended in failure. Britain, however, accomplished her objective: greater Turkish involvement in the matter to blunt the Greek Government’s efforts on behalf of self-determination for the people of Cyprus.

The Turkish government, to demonstrate its interest in Cyprus at the time of the tripartite conference, planned and organized riots against its Greek citizens and residents in Istanbul and Izmir. It exploded a bomb in the Turkish Consulate in Salonika, Greece, and a false report was spread that Kemal Ataturk’s birthplace had been bombed and destroyed. The following account from an article by John Phillips in Harper’s Magazine in June 1956 describes the carnage:


"On the fifth of September 1955, a bomb exploded under singular circumstances inside the Turkish Consulate at Salonika in Northern Greece. The Turkish press and radio, over which the government is influential, blared out the incendiary and false report that the nearby birthplace of Kemal Ataturk, a sort of Turkish Mount Vernon on foreign soil, had also been destroyed. The events of the following day (September 6, 1955) in Turkey were planned and executed with the same discipline the Nazis used in their onslaughts on the Jews. Squads of marauders were driven to the shopping area in trucks and taxis, waving picks and crowbars, consulting lists of addresses, and the police stood by smiling. Greek priests were reported circumcised, scalped, burned in bed; Greek women raped. The Greek Consulate was destroyed in Izmir. Just nine out of eighty Greek Orthodox churches in Istanbul were left undesecrated; twenty-nine were demolished. Ghouls invaded the huge Greek cemetery where Patriarchs of Constantinople are buried, opened mausoleums, dug up graves, and flung bones into the streets; corpses waiting burial were lanced with knives. There had been no comparable destruction of Greek sanctuaries since the fall of Constantinople.

The Turkish government did its best to keep the world from knowing. A familiar heavy hand fell upon the press, and editors who criticized Premier Menderes were jailed again."

The New York Times on September 7, 1955 reported the riots in a front page story but did not do an adequate follow-up of the events nor any investigative reporting.

On September 13, 1955 the New York Times stated that "The amount of damage has been assessed unofficially at $300,000,000." U.S. Senator Homer Capehart, who was in Ankara at the time, said the riots were "ghastly and unbelievable." He estimated the damage at $500 million. Turkey said it would pay compensation to the victims. It paid very little to a limited number of victims over a drawn-out period of years.

If you add interest at 5% compounded annually for the 50 years since 1955, the amount owed to the victims would be several billion dollars.

There was very little coverage in the rest of the American press and media and little has been written in the U.S. about this barbarism by the Turkish government since Mr. Phillips article.

Now, 50 years later, we have an exceptional account of the catastrophe by Dr. Speros Vryonis, Jr., one of the world’s most eminent scholars of Ottoman and Byzantine history. His magesterial work: The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul, was published this year by greekworks.com of New York. It numbers over 700 pages.

Dr. Vryonis devoted many years to the research and writing of this extraordinary book. He dedicated the book to Demetrios Kaloumenos the photographer for his two-fold contribution. First his copious photography, done under dangerous circumstances, and for his personal record of the events. He graciously acknowledged the financial assistance of the Michael and Mary Jaharis Family Foundation without which this monumental work would not have become a reality.

In the introductory chapter Dr. Vryonis describes the Greek community of Istanbul on the eve of September 6, 1955 who numbered about 100,000. Under the terms of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne regarding the exchange of populations, the Greek population of Istanbul and the Muslim community residing in Western Thrace were exempted from the exchange process. From about 300,000 Greeks in Istanbul in 1922, the number in 1955 had fallen to about 100,000. They had achieved some limited success under exceptionally difficult circumstances and years of discrimination and harassment by the Turks who repeatedly violated the terms of the Lausanne Treaty.

In chapter one Dr. Vryonis describes in detail the existing and newly organized institutions that were the instruments of destruction used by the Menderes government in the pogrom of September 6-7, 1955.

In chapter two Dr. Vryonis depicts the events of the nine hours of the pogrom, from 5:30 p.m. on September 6, 1955 to 2:30 a.m. on September 7, 1955, which destroyed the Greek community of Istanbul. "Pogrom" is defined as government instigated and organized violence against an ethnic minority.

He writes: "the events were traced to the five geographical areas in which they transpired….The pogrom’s intent was twofold: first it was a planned and successful effort to destroy the forty-five Greek communities spread out over the vast area of greater Istanbul and its environs; second, it served certain domestic and foreign policies of the Menderes regime."

The government brought many thousands of Turks from Asia Minor and Thrace to join the pogromists in Istanbul. They were "provided with the crowbars, acetylene torches, clubs, spades, pickaxes, dynamite, and gasoline (for the planned arson) that would be the tools" of the destruction. (p. 99) Approximately 100,000 Turkish citizens participated in the pogrom. (p. 68 )

Dr. Vryonis describes the system of attack in three waves. The first wave broke down doors and windows and moved on to the next store, dwelling or church. The second wave fell upon the contents and the third wave finished the work of destruction both inside and outside a building but not before it had thoroughly looted the property. (p. 546)

The material damage to the Greek community was enormous:

1000 homes destroyed and 2500 partially destroyed and all were looted;
4000-4500 stores were looted and destroyed or damaged;
Thirty Greek males were killed; and
200 Greek women raped.

The damage to the Greek Orthodox churches was enormous and is documented in detail by Dr. Vryonis in chapter five:

of the 83 Greek Orthodox Churches, 59 were burned and most others suffered serious damages to the icons and ancient paintings of great value;
the tombs of Patriarchs were destroyed;
Christian cemeteries were defiled.

In chapter three, Dr. Vryonis examines "the pogrom’s damages, both moral and material," and in chapter four he details "the efforts of various organizations or individuals to put a financial value on them." Turkey took actions to limit and reduce the claims for damages and paid only a small percentage of the reduced claims over a period of eleven years.

Menderes official version of what happened was broadcast by radio on the evening of September 7, 1955. It was replete with falsehoods and he tried to blame the communists.

British role and responsibility

Britain had made strenuous efforts in 1954 and 1955 to change Turkey’s policy of being neutral towards Cyprus and to get Turkey on its side despite the terms of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 in which Turkey had renounced all rights to Cyprus. Britain successfully pressured Turkey to change its neutral position and support Britain in the UN and at the Tripartite conference in London. British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan led the effort. Dr. Vryonis states that "Macmillan prevailed upon Turkey to alter its policy on Cyprus and make vigorous representations as to its claims and rights on the island."

Prior to August 1955, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mehmet Fuat Koprulu had declared that Cyprus was a British concern and not a Turkish concern. On August 24, 1955, Prime Minister Menderes replaced Koprulu with Fatin Fustu Zorlu, a virulent anti-Greek and anti-minority zealot.

In a British Foreign Office memorandum of September 14, 1954, at a time when Greece was bringing its appeal for self determination for Cyprus to the UN and the British were courting Turkey to change its neutral stance on Cyprus, a British official stated: " A few riots in Ankara would do us nicely."

Dr.Vryonis writes: "[t]he facts that have come to light are sufficient to suggest that, by the early fall of 1954, the British government may have made vague, informal references on the desirability of some demonstrations in Istanbul as a political barometer of public, and violent, Turkish sentiment on the subject of Cyprus."

The American reaction

On September 18, 1955, 12 days after the devastating attacks against the Greek community of Istanbul and when there was sufficient evidence of the Turkish governments involvement, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wrote almost identical letters to Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Papagos and Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. These letters, in effect equating the victims with the victimizers will "live in infamy."

The British Foreign Office applauded Dulles’ action in sending common letters to the Greek and Turkish governments. Mr. J. A. Thomson of the Foreign Office Southern Department wrote on a Foreign Office copy of Dulles’ letters the following:

"This message has produced a lively resentment among the Greeks. But it no doubt will do good in the long run. It is satisfactory that Mr. Dulles has reversed the earlier line of the State Department which blamed the Turks and favored the Greeks.
The [British] Secretary of State has sent a message to Mr. Dulles expressing his appreciation of his appeal…."

Lessons for today

The Turkish military made no objection to Prime Minister Menderes actions. The Chief of Staff of the Turkish military promised Menderes protection. On May 27, 1960 a military junta took over the government for a number of reasons in a basically bloodless coup. It then arrested and tried Prime Minister Menderes and his cohorts, found them guilty with a few exceptions and executed Menderes, Zorlu and others.

The military’s direct intervention into the political life of Turkey tightened the government’s grip on the Greek minority and the other minorities-- the Kurds, Armenians, Jews, Alawis, Assyrians, Christians and others. Dr. Vryonis writes that the military:

"intensified its suppression of the rights and freedoms of ethnic and religious minorities, as well as of the country’s citizens as a whole" and "proved itself to be a worthy successor to the oppressive regime of the Young Turks. The demographic decline of both the Greek and Jewish communities in Turkey during the latter half of the twentieth century was a direct result of the Menderes and post-Menderes policies and persecution of minorities….

Indeed, the entire history of the last fifty years of Turkish society is tied to the imperialism of the Turkish general staff, which has successfully utilized its forces to impose its territorial aggression and conquest. In effect, the spirit of the pogrom of 1955, whose motive force was the final destruction and expulsion of the Greeks from Istanbul, was continued and finally consummated by successive governments and the activities of the Turkish general staff…General Cemal Gursel proved to be a vigorous and willing heir to the pogrom’s spirit…Furthermore, after the invasion of Cyprus in 1974…these policies were reconceived to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the Greek Cypriot majority in the occupied north. This policy, intended to Turkify northern Cyprus, was attended by willful destruction that strongly resembled the acts perpetrated by the Menderes government against the Greeks of Istanbul. This ethnic cleansing was also applied later, with U.S. weapons, in the destruction of Kurdish villages of southeast Anatolia, which reduced the region to a semi-desolate landscape." (pp 558-59)

Dr. Vryonis discusses the 198-page 1976 report of the Commission on Human Rights of the Council of Europe in which the commission found Turkey and its army guilty of repeated violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. He quotes the January 23, 1977 London Sunday Times statement on the report: "It amounts to a massive indictment of the Ankara government for the murder, rape and looting by its army in Cyprus during and after the Turkish invasion of summer 1974." The U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger aided and abetted Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus.

Dr. Vryonis importantly points out that Turkish policy against the Greeks has added the Aegean. "In the last two decades, the policy of Turkish military aggrandizement has shifted to the Aegean Sea and the Greek islands there. The build-up of land, air and naval forces (including numerous landing craft) has been accompanied by various claims on Greek islands, demands for their demilitarization and increasing violation of Greek airspace, including civil-aviation corridors."

Dr. Vryonis concludes his study as follows:

"Although the pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, occurred half a century ago, its legacy is caught up, even today, in a larger web of regional and international interests. This web is, indeed, the key to understanding important parts of this ongoing history. The ‘success’ of the Turkish military behemoth during the last fifty years has, in fact, made the Turkish state a persistent violator, not only of the human and civil rights of its minorities, but also of those of its vast ethnic Turkish majority."

No book review can do justice to Dr. Vryonis’ monumental study. It must be read in its entirety to obtain the full impact of the catastrophe that destroyed the Greek community of Istanbul and the lessons for today regarding Cyprus and the Aegean.

[zan]

Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History

Lecture 14: Greek nationalism, the "Megale Idea" and Venizelism to 1923

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As noted in Lecture 13, some themes and trends in Balkan history are easier to understand if we abandon preconceptions drawn from general European history, including preconceptions about periodization. This is true in Greek as well as Serbian history, and very apparent when we gauge the proper place of World War I in Greek historical chronology. 1914 and 1918 are not the most useful or critical dates for an understanding of Greek nationalism, because the forces at work began well before the start of the Great War and continued after its conclusion.

Broadly, we can say that nationalism in foreign relations began for Greece with the Revolution of 1821. Narrowly, we can say that the European War of 1914-1918 was only one episode in a series of wars for national territorial expansion, than began with the First Balkan War of 1912 and ended with the war against Kemal Ataturk's revived Turkish republic in 1923. And this decade-long contest was merely one link in a chain of events that is still being forged in places like Cyprus and in Greek relations with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Origins of the Megale Idea

Greek nationalism has the "Megale Idea," the counterpart of Serbia's "Nacertanije." Literally translated as the "great idea" or "grand idea," the Megale Idea implies the goal of reestablishing a Greek state as a homeland for all the Greeks of the Mediterranean and Balkan world. Such a Greece would be territorially larger than the Greek state of today, but would be smaller than the Greek world of classical times, which extended west to the coast of Sicily, northeast into the Black Sea, and south to Egypt. Alexander the Great -- a figure of classical Greek history and legend exploited by competing modern-day politicians -- spread the influence of Hellenism even wider, into Africa and Asia. The Eastern half of the Roman Empire became solidly Greek as Byzantium, and sustained Greek culture in the Balkans and Asia Minor.

One of the unsettled aspects of the Megale Idea and the goals of Greek nationalism has been uncertainty about what is properly considered Greek, and why. In the nineteenth century, religious affiliation with the Greek Orthodox church was often confused with ethnic affiliation: the Bulgarians, for example, worked for many years to secure a separate Bulgarian Exarchate Church for this reason. Extreme Greek territorial claims resulted when the geography of classical Greece was applied to modern maps. The result has been conflict with Albania over Epirus, with Serbia and Bulgaria over Macedonia, and with Turkey over Istanbul (Constantinople), the western coast of Anatolia and islands from the Aegean to Cyprus.

While the fall of Constantinople in 1453 put an end to Greek political power in the Balkans, the Ottoman millet system ensured that Greek influence would remain strong through the agency of the Orthodox Church. As indicated in Lecture 6, the power of the Patriarch and his hierarchy opened important doors for Greeks, and this helped to keep alive visions of a revived Greek state among the Greeks of the Ottoman empire.

Intellectual currents outside the Ottoman Empire also contributed to a consciousness of things Greek. Some educated Greeks fled to Italy after the fall of Constantinople: their writings promoted interest in antiquity during the Renaissance. Western European interest in ancient Greece led to Phil-Hellenism. The British ruling class, in particular, gained an interest in Greece from their education in the classics, and this led to British support for the Greek revolution in the 1820s.

Rhigas Pheraios published a manifesto in 1797, one year before his arrest and execution for anti-Turkish plotting. His work offers insight into Greek thought about a revived Greece, on the eve of the modern revolutionary era. Rhigas envisaged a large country occupying both the Balkans and Anatolia, sheltering all the ethnic groups found there but ruled according to Greek ideas. Rhigas was advanced enough in his thinking to abandon religion as a criterion for national identity but he was not farsighted enough to see the ways in which modern ethnic nationalism, with its emphasis on shared language and culture, would make such an idea impossible. He influenced the planners of the Revolution of 1821: we can see echoes of his thinking in the plans for a three-fold uprising, to take place in Istanbul and the Romanian provinces, as well as in the Greek Peloponessus. And we have seen how this idea broke down in the face of incipient Romanian nationalism, so that the uprising in Romania failed because Romanians resented their Greek Phanariot hospodars.

The Megale Idea after 1830

After the achievement of Greek independence in 1830, the Megale Idea played a major role in Greek politics. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the Greek people remained outside the borders of the limited Greece permitted by the Great Powers, who had no intention that a large Greek state should replace the Ottoman Empire. King Othon became "King of Greece" and not "King of the Greeks" for exactly that reason: the latter title would have implied interests outside the new border.

The Megale Idea continued to be an intellectual as well as a political concept. The work of the historian Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos shows how ideas underlay politics. Paparrigopoulos was born in 1815 in Istanbul. As a child his family fled to Odessa after the 1821 uprising failed in the Turkish capital. In the new Greece, he became an influential professor writing history in the service of nationalism and "the fatherland." His work shows to what degree the Greek state relied not only on present-day needs but historical roots to justify and identify itself. In 1843 Paparrigopoulos refuted a German paper claiming that the present Greek population was descended from Slavs and Albanians who had repopulated Greece in the 500s CE. His work was self-consciously political: he spoke at political rallies and offered his expertise at the Congress of Berlin to ensure that the borders drawn in 1878 reflected Greek positions about the ethnic identity of the Macedonian population. Paparrigopoulos tied modern Greece to its classical and medieval roots, a position which implied valid claims to all the lands of the Byzantine Empire.

Greeks and their leaders uniformly wanted to liberate the "unredeemed" Greeks abroad, but differed about when and how to do so. In the 1880s, Kharilaos Trikoupis (seven times prime minister between 1875 and 1895) stood for reform and modernizing the domestic economy before taking international risks. His rival, Theodoros Deliyannis (five times prime minister between 1885 and 1905) took the opposite tack, and his career shows the risks at work. When the small Bulgarian principality expanded into Eastern Roumelia in 1885, Deliyannis mobilized the Greek army in an effort to secure more territory for Greece as well: but the Great Powers reacted with a blockade that damaged Greece's economy. Deliyannis went to war with Turkey in 1897 over the island of Crete, leading to twin humiliations: the Ottomans soundly defeated Greece in battle and a state bankruptcy led to Great Power control of the Greek national budget. But despite these setbacks, pursuit of the Megale Idea remained a viable basis for a political career.

The Olympic Games

It is slightly unfair to dwell always on the negative aspects of nationalism. While national pride has caused some of the worst of wars, it can also lead to positive results. One of the most interesting has been the revival of the Olympic Games in a modern form, which took place for the first time in Athens in 1896.

The impetus for our modern international Olympics came from Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman who hoped that athletic programs on the British model would help revive France after the defeat by Germany in 1870. Interest in the Olympic concept was not new. Groups of Phil-Hellenes in England held "Olympic Games" off and on since the 1600s: Shakespeare referred to the ancient Olympic Games in 'Henry VI.' The King of Greece contributed one of the trophies for a long-running series of English games held in Shropshire from the 1840s to the 1880s. King Othon sponsored Olympic Games outside Athens in 1859, an event that took place again in 1870, 1875 and 1888.

None of these festivals involved competition between athletes from different countries but the notion of an international event, held in modern Greece but harking back to classical times, had obvious appeal for Greeks trying to attract attention in the world community. The Games carried the clear message that ancient and modern Greece were one and the same, and supported Greek hopes that the glories of the former would attract international support for the ambitions of the latter. Greeks therefore welcomed de Coubertin's idea.

When de Coubertin began serious planning in 1894, a Greek named Demetrios Bikelas organized the International Olympic Committee. Consistent with their contrasting politics, Deliyannis endorsed the idea, while Trikoupis rejected it as a waste of money. However, the idea had the support of both the Greek population and King George. The king agreed to host the Games at Athens in 1896, and private funds were found to pay for them. To further the identification between ancient feats and modern sports, sponsors invented a new 40-kilometer "Marathon" race based on legends about the Athenian victory at Marathon in 490 BCE. Again in line with nationalist undercurrents, the games opened on the Greek independence day: April 6, 1896. Greek pride received a boost when a Greek won the first marathon race. Even though a Greek proposal to make Athens the permanent site of the quadrennial games was rejected, the Olympics became an unusual and peaceful way to secure credibility for Greece, based on its national history.

Crete and Macedonia

After the high good times of 1896, the lost war of 1897 was a reminder that economic backwardness, military weakness and political corruption still prevented Greece from achieving the goals of the Megale Idea.

The country was unable to achieve union ("enosis") with Crete despite repeated uprisings on the island. In Macedonia, Greeks were surprised by the pro-Bulgarian uprising of 1903 and had to create a rival guerilla force in haste. When Paul Melas, son of a prominent Athens family and a commissioned officer in the Greek army, was killed while serving secretly and illegally in Macedonia, the revelation caused a scandal: the Great Powers condemned Greek interference inside Turkey, but the Greek population condemned the government for not doing more to secure Macedonia for Greece. Although Greek guerillas gradually secured the southern half of Macedonia by defeating pro-Bulgarian units, nothing came of their victories because the 1908 Young Turk revolution restored Ottoman rule, apparently in a form that was stronger than ever. 1909 saw another uprising on the island of Crete, and once again Greece was too weak to risk "enosis" by war.

The Goudhi coup

No one was more aware of political corruption and military weakness, or more susceptible to patriotic embarassment, than the officers in the Greek army. In July 1909, 1300 junior officers organized themselves as the "Military League" and drew up a petition asking for financial and tax reforms, to be used to pay for expansion and improvement of the military. King George installed a ministry that promised reform, but within a few days the new prime minister (the unremarkable Mavromichalis) went back on his pledge and installed the usual cronies in key posts. The officers' protest seemed to have become an excuse for the usual factional politics. Mavromichalis then began court martial proceedings against the Military League's leaders and refused to meet with a delegation of officers.

In response, the Athens garrison marched to the suburb of Goudhi, then threatened to occupy the capital to enforce demands for reforms and amnesty. The small craft guilds of the city came out in favor of the League, which was also calling for lower taxes. Another reform ministry took power but this time the Military League placed the government on notice: unless specified laws were passed, the League would assume power as a military dictatorship. The measures were promptly passed.

As in Serbia in 1903, a dangerous precedent had been set: the civilian government now functioned at the mercy of junior officers in the army. In the next months, the Military League forced some civilian officials and ambassadors out of office, repressed a mutiny by naval personnel who wanted a share of the power seized by the army, and forced the legislature to pass a list of economic bills, many of which were unworkable (lower taxes, for example, could not be reconciled with demands to spend more on the military).

Venizelos

By January 1910, the officers were frustrated by an inability to make progress through dealings with the legislature. Most members of the Military League had no wish to become politicians, only to assure themselves that the military would get sound financial support. To improve their legislative negotiating skills, they brought in the Cretan politician Eleutherios Venizelos as their adviser and spokesman.

Venizelos was 46 years old and a native of the island of Crete, which was still under Ottoman rule and remained so until the Balkan Wars. He had attended law school in Athens, then returned to Crete. Venizelos was active in an 1896 rebellion that led the Great Powers to grant the island some degree of autonomy under Turkish rule. He served in Crete's assembly and as minister of justice. Venizelos' supporters called him a political genius; his detractors, an opportunist. By 1910 he saw that he could do little more in his position on Crete, so he accepted the League's offer to become its spokesman. He soon negotiated the dissolution of the League, when the officers accepted a royal promise to hold special elections for a national assembly.

When the special elections took place, independents and reformers replaced the old party hacks as the majority and Venizelos was invited to lead them, even though he was technically not a citizen. Venizelos' rhetoric appealed to all the important constituencies: he spoke in favor of a moral regeneration of Greece, but also praised the monarchy. In this way he gained the support of the king, who felt threatened by republican extremists in the Military League. Late in 1910 Venizelos had the king call another round of elections: Venizelist delegates now took 260 of 362 seats. This large majority let him pass a long list of reform bills aimed at ending the spoils system, the manipulation of votes, and other tools of the old oligarchical parties.

Venizelos' success has been ascribed to a "bourgeois revolution" in Greek politics: the political heirs of the old notables and landowners gave way to a new class based on manufacturing, shipping, the professions and other new forms of enterprise. The Venizelist party also captured popular support by becoming the primary advocate for the Megale Idea. The old elite was often lukewarm about national expansion, because its power base in the the old core of the state would have been diluted by the addition of new lands whose inhabitants often worked in the new industries. When World War I raised the question of national expansion in an acute form, Venizelos' identification with irredentism led to a crisis in Greek politics.

We can also call this a conflict between "insiders" and "outsiders." Recall that at the time of the Greek Revolution, there was a deep split -- even civil war -- between two competing classes. On one side, power and wealth flowed from a legacy of old privileges granted to ex-Ottoman officials and the landowning notables of the Peloponnessus: both had been well-connected insiders during the Ottoman period. On the other side, the outsiders came from a newer class of merchants, shipowners and professionals, and were sustained by incomes, skills and connections derived from ties to Western Europe.

By 1909, the old wealth-holding class of landowners had been joined by a new kind of insiders: bureaucrats and politicians who lived by controlling government patronage. The status quo satisfied these groups: for them, reforms meant higher taxes and the potential loss of their jobs. All their rivals, in turn, suffered under the status quo: those rivals included reform-oriented liberal politicians, a growing industrial and commercial middle-class, and members of modern professions ranging from teachers to army officers.

These outsider groups -- the party of Venizelism -- looked favorably on the expansion of Greek territory because it offered them access to more resources, expanded markets and new voters, all of which further pushed the balance in their favor against the entrenched power of the insiders and oligarchs. Every territorial expansion not only took Greece closer to the goals of the Megale Idea: it also strengthened Venizelism. After the victorious Balkans Wars of 1912-1913 Greece added a million new citizens, and most of them voted as Venizelists.

Greece in World War I

Involvement in the Balkan Wars was not controversial or risky: Greece had pursued land in Macedonia for thirty years, and the Balkan League alliance clearly was too strong to be defeated by Turkey. But in 1914, Greeks were divided about their best course. When Bulgaria and Turkey joined the Central Powers, the potential stakes rose for Greece. It was likely that the end of the war would bring major border changes. If the Central Powers won, Bulgaria might claim land in Macedonia and Thrace at the expense of Greece. On the other hand, if the Allies won, Bulgaria and especially Turkey would lose territory. As a noncombatant, a neutral Greece would have no say in the peace treaty and the lands of the Megale Idea might be awarded to rival states.

King Constantine (George having been assassinated in 1913) opposed entering the war at all, and especially opposed joining on the Allied side. His family was German: he was the Kaiser's brother-in-law. He expected the Central Powers to win. Prime Minister Venizelos on the other hand was sure that the Allies would win the war and that Greek participation would yield benefits against Bulgaria and Turkey.

Relations between the king and Venizelos deteriorated. When Bulgaria attacked Serbia in October 1915, Allied interest in a Greek alliance rose. As Prime Minister, Venizelos invited French and British troops to land at Salonika. He justified his action under a very wide interpretation of an old Greco-Serb treaty, and under the original 1830 treaty that gave the British and French rights to act as protecting powers for the Greek state. The assembly voted (147 to 110) to declare war against Germany. When the King refused to go along, Venizelos resigned and Greece remained neutral (despite the presence of Allied troops in the north).

In 1916 Venizelos' party boycotted new elections: by doing so he ended any chance to resolve the crisis through constitutional, parliamentary channels and made the situation much more dangerous. In September 1916 Bulgarian forces occupied part of northern Greece (the Allies had forced neutral Greek troops out of the area, uncertain whether Greece might unexpectedly join the Central Powers). Venizelos decided on extreme measures to save the state. He proclaimed himself the head of a revolutionary government. Eager to bring Greece into the war, the Allies backed Venizelos and forced the king to abdicate in June 1917. This divided Greece into hostile camps, on the verge of civil war.

Venizelos had staked his political prestige on the assumption that the Allies would allow Greece to fulfill the Megale Idea, but he had no specific promises that Greece would gain control of her unredeemed populations in the event of an Allied victory. Meanwhile, the Royalists were treated as potentially hostile elements to be neutralized. The Allies demanded control of the Greek navy, key railroads and military supplies, and enforced their demands with a naval blockade that left the country short of food and fuel. King Constantine left the country to defuse the crisis. Prime Minister Venizelos became head of a regency, and Greek units joined the French and British facing Bulgarian units around Salonika.

For the Balkan states, World War I had now become a referendum on the Balkan Wars: the territorial winners (Serbia, Greece and Romania) faced the losers (Bulgaria and Turkey).

For a while the Central Powers prospered. Serbia was overrun, and Romania forced to sue for peace. Bulgaria recovered lands in Macedonia, Thrace and the Dobrudja. Greece faced an ambiguous situation, thanks to contradictory Allied promises about post-war arrangements. Greek designs on Albania competed with Serbian, Montenegrin and Italian plans. Greek hopes to annex Western Anatolia conflicted with Italian plans for a protectorate. Greek claims on Constantinople (Istanbul) faced Russian plans to annex the zone of the Straits.

Despite the minor and ambivalent role played by Greece during World War I, the Allied victory brought substantial rewards. Competing Russian claims to Constantinople were ignored after the Russian Revolution took Russia out of the war: instead the area became a demilitarized zone under weak Turkish control. The collapse of Turkey allowed Greece to act in Anatolia. Greek troops landed at Smyrna (Izmir) in 1919, and the 1920 peace treaty with Turkey designated a large part of western Anatolia as an autonomous zone under Greek occupation. A plebiscite was planned for 1925: after five years of Greek administration, it was a certainty that the population then would vote for annexation to Greece.

However, the apparent triumph soon fell apart. Turkish nationalists refused to accept the harsh treaty and retreated into the interior of Anatolia. A Greek army followed them to enforce Allied wishes. At the end of extended supply lines, their advance stalled in 1921 and in 1922 a Turkish counterattack threw the Greek forces all the way back to Izmir. The remnants had to be evacuated by sea and much of the city's Greek population left with them, ending a Greek presence that stretched back thousands of years. A revised peace with Turkey made the situation permanent: a million Greeks from Turkey were transferred to Macedonia in exchange for a smaller number of Muslims.

The Megale Idea after the defeat of 1923

On the verge of the greatest achievement of the Megale Idea, the loss of Anatolia was a stunning defeat. The disaster poisoned Greek politics, already strained by the civil conflict during the war. Although the Anatolian adventure was the direct result of Venizelos' policy, the events of 1922-23 took place under a Royalist administration thanks to an accident of timing (King Constantine had returned to the throne in 1920 after his son King Alexander died of an infection from a pet monkey's bite). When six royalist generals were shot for treason after trial by a new and revolutionary government of Venizelists, the seeds were sown for lingering political bitterness.

The competition between Venizelists and Royalists involved the social fabric as well. A million refugees needed to be integrated into social and economic life. Many families arrived without possessions, sometimes unable to speak Greek (Turkish-speaking Orthodox Greeks were a feature of Anatolia) and certainly without connections in the cozy world of the Athens insiders. Quintessential outsiders, these new voters became Venizelists. Most settled in northern Greece, where farms forfeited by expelled Turks were redistributed by Venizelist administrators to refugees who remembered which party gave them their land. 38 percent of the cultivated land of Greece came into new hands during this period. Living on small plots, the refugees found that export crops like tobacco offered a better living than subsistence farming. The Venizelists were also the party that favored exports and trade.

The royalists, on the other hand, kept the allegiance of older rural smallholders who gained nothing from the land reform; of the old-fashioned shopkeepers of Athens, who were threatened by imports and new industries; and of Greece's small organized labor movement, whose members watched wages fall thanks to the influx of refugees.

Conclusion

The legacy of the Megale Idea in the 1920s and 1930s became a destructive cycle of political rivalry and dictatorships. Instead of seeking compromise and solving national problems, the two sides expended their energy attacking each other. We will return to this in a later lecture, but it is safe to say that the immediate interests of the Greek nation were sacrificed in the service of an illusory Greek nation that might have been, based on the Megale Idea. This fundamental flaw in Greek politics continues as an influence even today: the Megale Idea and aggressive nationalism reappear whenever one side or another needs a rallying point at times of crisis. Both the right-wing Colonels of the 1970s and their leftist successors have employed nationalism this way, and the ongoing Cyprus crisis is fueled by it. After generations of population exchanges, the rationale for Greek irredentism has dwindled but its power has not.

[paliometoxo]

............... turk whatever u said is all rubbish...

and i like your post oracle, its so true, the people who have bought missery to cyprus and war is england and turkey if they both kept their nose out from where it does not belong we would be ok now...

[zan]

............... turk whatever u said is all rubbish...

and i like your post oracle, its so true, the people who have bought missery to cyprus and war is england and turkey if they both kept their nose out from where it does not belong we would be ok now...

You should read more.....

[denizaksulu]

The Turkish Media has been flooded with information regarding these pogroms of 1956. The involvement of "Ergenekon' is on the news bulletins daily. Many books have been written, films made of these events. It tells me that Turkey is facing up to its responsibilities for these terrible events. The right wing and the 'Military' no longer have such power. That is good. Perhaps there is something that Greece and the Greeks can learn a lesson from.

[roseandchan]

i think all goverments tell lies and cover up things which make them unpopular. i can see where the uk goverment was coming from by not letting greece rule cyprus independently. as this would not be in the interest of all cypriots. cyprus should be run by cypriots and nobody else. turkey and greece have a long history of issues with each other. hopefully turkey has learnt some lessons from the past not just with cyprus but other countries like armenia and bulgaria. both turkey and britian, did what they did in cyprus for reasons which we will probably never know. lets hope that the future for cyprus will be better than its past.

[Tim Drayton]

The Turkish Media has been flooded with information regarding these pogroms of 1956. The involvement of "Ergenekon' is on the news bulletins daily. Many books have been written, films made of these events. It tells me that Turkey is facing up to its responsibilities for these terrible events. The right wing and the 'Military' no longer have such power. That is good. Perhaps there is something that Greece and the Greeks can learn a lesson from.

I agree. There are clear signs that the Republic of Turkey is maturing and that extrajudicial interference by the military and other forces will no longer be tolerated. Remember that the country is less than 100 years old.

[Oracle]

............... turk whatever u said is all rubbish...

and i like your post oracle, its so true, the people who have bought missery to cyprus and war is england and turkey if they both kept their nose out from where it does not belong we would be ok now...

You should read more.....

Perhaps you should do too Zan ... since your article with dubious historical significance has even less relevance here!

[Oracle]

The Turkish Media has been flooded with information regarding these pogroms of 1956. The involvement of "Ergenekon' is on the news bulletins daily. Many books have been written, films made of these events. It tells me that Turkey is facing up to its responsibilities for these terrible events. The right wing and the 'Military' no longer have such power. That is good. Perhaps there is something that Greece and the Greeks can learn a lesson from.

This information has come out despite the Turkish Deep State not because it is opening up and facing responsibility Deniz. Good attempt to salvage some kudos, but Ergenekon are deeper and more furtive than ever. Most recently with their take-over and control over the present government.

[Oracle]

i think all goverments tell lies and cover up things which make them unpopular. i can see where the uk goverment was coming from by not letting greece rule cyprus independently. as this would not be in the interest of all cypriots. cyprus should be run by cypriots and nobody else. turkey and greece have a long history of issues with each other. hopefully turkey has learnt some lessons from the past not just with cyprus but other countries like armenia and bulgaria. both turkey and britian, did what they did in cyprus for reasons which we will probably never know. lets hope that the future for cyprus will be better than its past.

Britain not allowing Greece to have a say over Cyprus was less about honour and altruism and more to do with their own geopolitical gains.

Besides it was going against what the majority of Cypriots would have wanted, and that makes it no less than a tyrant and dictator.

It's not even that Britain wanted to show "fairness" to the TCs but that they used them us pawns in their end-game!