Asia Minor Disaster

Asia Minor Disaster is the name Greeks use for the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) - also known as the Asia Minor Expedition - and the subsequent expulsion of Greek presence from Asia Minor.

Background

Greek Presence in Asia Minor

By 1922, Greeks had had a 3000-year uninterrupted presence in Asia Minor. They first settled in the southwest part of Anatolia around the time of the Doric invasion of mainland Greece (1100 BC). They were followed, from the 9th until the 6th Century BC, by waves of Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians who colonised the western coast building important cities and establishing a civilisation equal, if not better than, that of mainland Greece.

Throughout antiquity, though conquered and ruled by Persia, western Asia Minor retained its Greek character which, after Alexander the Great's conquests, spread to central regions as well, throughout the Hellenistic age.

Following the division of the Roman Empire into western and eastern empires, Asia Minor became an important part of the Byzantine Empire. It supplied the Christian, Greek-speaking empire with most of its soldiers and, indeed, with more emperors than Greece itself.

After the Battle of Manzikert, Asia Minor came gradually under Turkish rule. Many Christians converted to Islam and accepted Turkish customs, however, those who lived mostly on the coast and, to a lesser extent others, preferred to keep their Christian faith and Greek character despite the taxation and other disadvantages they were subjected to.

By 1900, it is estimated that Asia Minor had a population of 2,500,000 Greeks. This number decreased to around 2,000,000 by the end of World War I as many were forced to leave or chose to immigrate to avoid service in the work brigades and other hardships imposed by the Young Turk leadership of that era.

The area around Smyrna retained an ethnic Greek majority and was offered by the Allies as an incentive for Greece to enter World War I on their side.

1919-1922

Following the outcome of the First World War, the area around Smyrna ("Ionia") was awarded to Greece, by the Treaty of Sevres, as an occupation zone for five years. After the 5-year period, a referendum was to be held to decide the political future of the region. Greek troops landed in Smyrna harbour in 1919 and were greeted with great enthusiasm by the Greek population and with bullets by the Turks. The occupation zone soon spread beyond what the Sevres Treaty envisioned.

Initially, the Greek army had much success in their efforts to extend their hold over western and northwestern Asia Minor, however, the great political divide of the 1910s surfaced once more with disastrous consequences: despite advice to the contrary by Georgios Kafantaris and other political allies, Eleftherios Venizelos conducted elections in November 1920. Owing to the complexity of the electoral system, his Liberal Party (Komma Fileleftheron) was defeated by Dimitrios Gounaris' Popular Party (Laiko Komma). Venizelos himself failed to be elected in the Hellenic Parliament and left Greece on self-imposed exile.

To be continued