PARIS 1919: GREECE POSITION PAPER War Experience Since the fifteenth century, the Greeks had been living under the domination of the Ottoman Turks. In spite of centuries of foreign rule, the Greeks had nonetheless survived as a people, united by language and their own orthodox religion. Galvanized by the explosive patriotic energy and sense of possibility unleashed by the French Revolution, national aspirations and a fervent desire for independence inspired the Greeks to revolt in 1821. Although often quarreling among themselves, the Greeks battled on against the Turks, hoping for eventual support of European governments. With the backing of Great Britain, France, and Russia, whose governments were often responding to popular demands (educated Americans and Europeans were simply in love with the culture of classical Greece, and Russians were often stirred by the piety of their Orthodox brethren). Militarily compelling Turkey to comply, the above European powers declared Greek independent in 1830, after which they installed a German prince as king of the new country in 1832. In the years leading up to the First World War, Greece continued to gain at Ottoman expense. At the end of the century, Crete freed itself from Turkish rule and joined the country. In the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, Greece was able to acquire a large swath of territory in the north, from Epirus in the west to Macedonia and part of Thrace in the east. The new territories more than doubled the size of the nation-state. Greece then turned its ambitions east, which meant Ottoman Turkey. After all, so much of the Greek past lay in that area: Troy and the great city-states along the coast of Asia Minor (Pergamum, Ephesus, Halicarnassus), the birthplaces of Herodotus and Hippocrates, to name just a few examples from the ancient world. The Byzantine Empire and Christianity added another layer of memories, and therefore another basis for claims. Indeed, the Greek Orthodox patriarch still lived in Istanbul (which had been Constantinople), and centuries- old prophecies foretold that the city would one day be redeemed from the heathen Turks, who had taken it in 1453. Many Greeks believed that, as a people of the modern Western world (although much of Greek society bore the imprint of the Ottoman past), they would not only unite Greeks from across the region (about one and a half million Greeks still lived under Ottoman rule), but would civilize the backward Turks. The thousands of Greeks who migrated to Turkey looking for work and opportunity in the decades before 1914 fed such aspirations, for they brought with them the hopes of their countrymen that the Turkish Greeks could be redeemed, even though many of the latter did not even think of themselves as part of a greater Greece. Only in the main ports, Smyrna and Constantinople did Greek nationalism truly mean something. Changes in Turkey itself stimulated Greek nationalism. When the Young Turks seized power in 1908, the old easy tolerance the Ottomans had shown to minorities was doomed, for in 1912 and 1913, when Muslim refugees fled from the Balkans back to Turkey, reprisals commenced in the area against Christian minorities. Even so, before the Great War, Greek leaders were cautious about talk of protecting the Turkish Greeks or of bringing them into union with Greece; the country, after all, had to recover from the Balkan wars and absorb its conquests. Indeed, in 1914, the Greeks even expressed the willingness to negotiate a peaceful population exchange of Greeks from Thrace

1

and Asia Minor for Turks from Greece (The exchange, eight years later, was neither negotiated nor peaceful). When the First World War broke out in 1914, internal political divisions (see below) kept Greece out of the war until 1916, but Greece did eventually enter the war on the side of the Entente. During the conflict, the Greeks bravely allowed the British and French troops to land at Salonika (today Thessaloniki), even when the country was still neutral. The Greek government spent millions on a military that it could not afford. Greece even sent forces to help Allied anti- Bolshevik forces in Russia. The outcome of the First World War changed Greece’s position vis- à-vis the Ottomans completely, for the latter had chosen the losing side, the former the winning one. By 1919, the Ottoman Empire was in disarray, and even Turkey seemed fated to disappear. The extent of the victory and the power of Greece’s friends were simply intoxicating. Paris Conference Expectations The Greek delegation was headed by the country’s Prime Minister, Eleutherios Venizelos (1864- 1936), his first name meaning “Liberator.” His father had fought for Greece’s independence and three of his uncles had died in the cause. When Venizelos was only two, a ghastly incident occurred which he never forgot. A rebellion, one of a series that shook the island repeatedly, ended in disaster when beleaguered Cretan rebels blew themselves up in a monastery. The survivors were massacred by the Turks. Such personal history produced a passionate Greek nationalist. As a college student at the University of Athens, he saw himself as a missionary of a Hellenic world to his fellow nationals who still lived, unredeemed, under Turkish rule. At the end of the century, as Crete first freed himself from Turkish rule and then joined Greece, Venizelos was prominent in the struggle. By 1910, he was prime minister. He achieved much success in the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. Although Venizelos had been outspokenly pro- Ally form the start of the war, King Constantine, who was married to the German emperor’s sister and, more importantly, was a realist, wanted to keep Greece neutral. The King and his supporters were immune to the heady vision of a greater country. A small but honorable Greece was their preference. A prolonged political crisis between 1915 and 1917 saw Venizelos driven from office; in 1916 he set up a provisional government in defiance of the king, which brought half of Greece into the war, and in 1917, Constantine was forced to leave the Greece. Venizelos always remained a loyal ally to the Entente. The Greek delegation had certain concrete objectives at Versailles. They sought the southern part of Albania and further east, between the Aegean and the Black Sea, Thrace (at the very least the western part), a few islands, and a huge piece of Asia Minor stretching from a point halfway along the south shore of the Sea of Marmara almost four hundred miles down the southern coast of Asia Minor to Smyrna. It did not ask for Constantinople explicitly. Entente support for such ambitions seemed uncertain. With the Ottoman Empire crumbling, Britain sought an alternative partner to keep the eastern end of the Mediterranean safe for their shipping, as well as to limit French expansion in the area. Venizelos believed that he could count on the French as well. After all, Greek troops were fighting with the French against the Bolsheviks. The Americans seemed sympathetic. The Italians were his main worry, for they were making similar claims on Albania and Asia Minor. Italy also hoped to keep the Dodecanese islands, even though their inhabitants were overwhelmingly Greek. 2

3