But what has changed in this TL that makes it harder on the Turks? Constantinople was under Allied occupation IOTL, too.
Your assumption is that all Thrace up to Constatinople will be garrisoned by Greek troops by 1918?
Greece gets Smyrna, Thrace, and Constantinople in alternate Sevres
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Your assumption is that all Thrace up to Constatinople will be garrisoned by Greek troops by 1918?
Short answer: no. Which was lucky for Greece because if they had managed somehow (meaning with French and English support) to keep an occupation strip in Smyrna and Ionia they would have paid the butcher bill in spades within a decade. No one was really serious in handing over Constantinople to Greece, notwithstanding all the nice promises of 1915 and 1916. Seeing that someone even wants Trabzon and Sinope is really too much
Given the proportions, it was like if Poland in 1920 had invaded Russia claiming Smolensk and Kiev
I'd like very much to see some substantiation (by preference not from Megali Idea sites) of the 5 millions
Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians allegedly killed in Anatolia during WW1. The Ottoman census of 1906 (prior to the Balkan wars) listed 2.8 millions Greeks, 0.75 millions Bulgarians and 1.1 millions Armenians out of a population of 20-21 millions (all figures rounded). The census of 1914 registered 1.6 million Greeks and 1.2 million Armenians, out of a population of 16 million. I can accept a claim that the census results had been slightly fiddled with by authorities. However to kill 5 million of people over 3 years of war means killing 1/3 of the total Ottoman population (and twice the number of registered Greeks and Armenians).yourworstnightmare
Banned
Regarding the massacres it's clear that both sides are fiddling with numbers and claims. Doesn't make them less horrible.
The massacres were horrible, the forced exchange of populations were certainly not a nice page in history (although the alternatives were possibly worse). Neither party was innocent when they held the respective upper hand.
However I feel very strongly that perpetuating impossible nationalist claims a full century after the events and multiplying by almost an order of magnitude the number of probable deaths is less than productive and can only lead to a perpetuation of nationalist hate.
1. Could you provide a source? The way I'm counting, it's 2 millions only if you include those killed during the Genocide, whose number is between ~750 and 900 thousands, and those who went to the Soviet Union but did not thereafter go to Greece OTL. With a 1919/20 PoD, you can't save the victims.
2. Can you give some more detailed info on this? Provided he was already out of office since 1920, how did he plan to bargain with Kemal?
Short answer: no. Which was lucky for Greece because if they had managed somehow (meaning with French and English support) to keep an occupation strip in Smyrna and Ionia they would have paid the butcher bill in spades within a decade. (1) No one was really serious in handing over Constantinople to Greece, notwithstanding all the nice promises of 1915 and 1916. Seeing that someone even wants Trabzon and Sinope is really too much
Given the proportions, it was like if Poland in 1920 had invaded Russia claiming Smolensk and Kiev (2)
I'd like very much to see some substantiation (by preference not from Megali Idea sites) of the 5 millions
1. You mean a coastal strip around the city or the OTL Zone? And I don't understand the phrase "would have paid the butcher bill in spades within a decade", I mean I don't know the expression.
2. Well, nobody could realistically say that Greece could get Pontus in Sevres. Ofc, in an ATL which goes worse for Ataturk's armies, the Pontic Greeks, Armenians and, possibly, the Kurds would probably get their independent federation they tried to do OTL (which is a completely different thing to the Republic of Pontus which had been proclaimed earlier).
3. When was that claim made? I don't see anything, or any dubious source.
I'd like very much to see some substantiation (by preference not from Megali Idea sites) of the 5 millions
...Where's the 5 million number coming from?
The numbers I've generally seen are around 700,000 to 1 million Greeks, 1-1.5 million Armenians, and 300,000 Assyrians. So around 2-3 million total.
Constantinople
Banned
These are times when I miss Abdul Hadi Pasha. He would have factually and angrily put this nonsense it its place. There are just not enough Greeks on Earth to make any of this possible in the 20th century.
Theoretically I could see a Greek Constantinople. Just because there are lots of Turks in Thrace doesn't mean they can't be ethnically cleansed....
Theoretically I could see a Greek Constantinople. Just because there are lots of Turks in Thrace doesn't mean they can't be ethnically cleansed....
A coastal strip around the city. It would not have been easy to get that, and it would have required starting to build inland fortifications and fieldworks rather than going gallivanting up to the Afyon river. Even if it happens, the Turks will not take it kindly. Given the disparity of populations it could not go well for Greece: my take is that the Turks will come back for a rematch within the 1920s, it will be a bloody war fueled by nationalistic hate and the Greeks will pay the bill (as in "paying in blood" and a lot of it). There is another interesting point that no one has yet made to my knowledge: the importance of Smyrna was (and is) as an entry port to Turkey. If it becomes a besieged garrison city it will wither on the vine, Greece will have to pour a lot of money in it (which they don't have) and the Ionian Greeks themselves will emigrated, forced not by fear by by a failing economy. It was much better for Greece to have lost the war since it was the only outcome that could have resulted (as it did) in a long-lasting peace.1. You mean a coastal strip around the city or the OTL Zone? And I don't understand the phrase "would have paid the butcher bill in spades within a decade", I mean I don't know the expression.
According to the Ottoman census of 1914 there were 21,000 Greeks in Kastamonu vilayet (where Sinope is located) and 161,000 Greeks in Trabzon vilayet. The Armenian population in the same vilayets was respectively 9,000 and 39,000. However the Muslim population was 737,000 in Kastamonu and 921,000 in Trabzon. This means that the combined Christian population represented 15% of the total in Trabzon and 5% in Kastamonu. Do you support an ethnical cleansing where 85+% of the population is expelled?
Note that these are pre-WW1 official census data. You might argue that these numbers were not representative of the reality but then some alternative credible data should be provided
It is true that in 1919 Georgia, Armenia and Pontus tried to lobby the Allies to establish some kind of protectorate over these three regions: obviously without any luck, since no one was crazy enough to antagonize Russia and Turkey at the same time in particular if we factor in that the Allies were pretty much spent after a long an bloody war (and more cynically I would note that none of these three areas had significant mineral resources or was of strategic value). The Kurds were never a part of this plan, and I'd doubt very much they would ever be given the bloody history with Armenians and the conflicting claims. Now let's assume - as you say - that with some handwaving the Greek manage to send some ships and troops to Pontus and land in Trabzon. Will these happen before or after the Red Army conquers back both Armenia and Georgia? FYI IOTL this happened in 1921. Mind even if the Russians for any reason respect the Greek occupation taking and holding one or two isolated cities at the other end of Black Sea would make the Smyrna problem look very easy by comparison.
See the quote from Cimon's post in this thread (emphasis is mine). There was no source but I noted a veiled attempt to promote a conspiracy theory ("count the five million Armenians,Anatolian Greeks,Christian Syrians etc that the Turks massacred from 1915 to 1918 that it was conveniently forgot by the powers in order to serve real politic until recently") as well as promoting ethnic cleansing ("Ethnic cleansing meant nothing those days....Greeks would kick out the Turks from Eastern Thrace"). Obviously it might be argued that no source is better than a bad source
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The 5 million deaths were claimed by Cimon in an earlier post in this thread (see my reply to Romanos above).
My guess (but I admit that finding unbiased data on these events is very difficult) is that even your assumptions are still inflated by 25-30% at least.
However the issue is not 1 million, 2 million, 3 million: quoting the immortal Heinlein "men are not potatoes", and killing just 1,000,000 is not much different from killing 3 million other than in pure numerical terms. Both are crimes, and this is true even if a portion of the actual deaths came through the hardships of the forced relocation of populations.
So to get some kind of Greek victory, we'd need a PoD that begins with a significant Greek population in Asia Minor. That pretty much means an Ottoman Empire that did not treat non-Muslims as second-class citizens.
(and that is actually possible given some of the other splits I have in my ATL)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:...Asie_Mineure_statistique_officielle_d1914.png
(and that is actually possible given some of the other splits I have in my ATL)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:...Asie_Mineure_statistique_officielle_d1914.png
Correct me if I'm wrong but in 1919 the Greek Army is smaller but better organised and equipped than the new Turkish Army which is based on the remnants of the defeated Ottoman Army. The Greek Navy is bigger and stronger than the Turkish Navy. The OTL Symrna campaign was a disaster and without a POD a long time before its hard to imagine a scenario where the Greeks can go up against the Turks in Asia Minor and win. The population disparity is too great without a massive technological disparity (US vs. North Korea scale).
However what exactly could the Turks do if the Greeks seize Thrace and Constantinople, i.e. OTL European Turkey and put their fleet in the Dardanelles? I find it very difficult to imagine the Turks could do better than the Allies at an opposed amphibious attack and as I understand it the Greeks have naval superiority anyway making it even more suicidal.
While the population figures seem to be heavily disputed, though the argument that some people are making that the Ottomans undercounted non-Turks seems reasonable, even the Ottoman numbers suggest there are more Greeks in Asia minor than Turks in Europe. Which would presumably ensure that in the event of a population switch (i.e. mutual ethnic cleansing) Greece could repopulate its new territories.
However what exactly could the Turks do if the Greeks seize Thrace and Constantinople, i.e. OTL European Turkey and put their fleet in the Dardanelles? I find it very difficult to imagine the Turks could do better than the Allies at an opposed amphibious attack and as I understand it the Greeks have naval superiority anyway making it even more suicidal.
While the population figures seem to be heavily disputed, though the argument that some people are making that the Ottomans undercounted non-Turks seems reasonable, even the Ottoman numbers suggest there are more Greeks in Asia minor than Turks in Europe. Which would presumably ensure that in the event of a population switch (i.e. mutual ethnic cleansing) Greece could repopulate its new territories.
Quite correct;the Turks could do nothing!
with regard to Smyrna think also this:Venizelos had already predicted the loss of the war by the whites in Russia and could suggest to English that the British fleet could secure two bases in Trebizond and Sinope to balance probable Bolshevik naval increase
in the Black Sea in cooperation with the Greek population there declaring the cities autonomous or giving them a Protectorate status;that would have forced any future Turkish government to...behave.
One more point:Numbers do not necessarily decide a war;the Greek navy was smaller than the Turkish one in the Balcan and WWI wars but it bottled them into the Dardanelles after inflicting on them two sharp defeats;the Turkish army was defeated in Greek Macedonia along with the Bulgars in Scra di Legen...Napoleon had said that God is on the side of big battalions but he was thinking of his own army....
The Turks would have to organise an army and that cost money and Turkey was bankrupt...had to repair its economy and that takes years...
The above situation would have attracted white Russians to settle in Pontus,Ionia and Constantinople and the boost to Greek economy and manpower in the east would have been enormous...
That is exactly what Josef Stalin maintained!....
The number of three million Armenian victims of their genocide by the Turks between 1915-1918 are a matter of public record in the official documentation of the Armenians between the various official Armenian councils
and have been disputed by none of the 45 nations(including USA,USSR,France Italy etc) that have officially recognized the genocide along with at least a million Greeks and a minimum of 500000 Syrian Christians incorporated in the total number as the American anti-genocide organizations proposed and as such the petition was accepted.Yes there is no difference between 1 million or three million or 5 million to constitute genocide but...fata viam invenium-(facts regulate life) and numbers give the appropriate emphasis as to the viciousness of a regime as field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz notes in his memoirs...
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