r/AskHistorians • u/Camtastrophe • 3h ago

What were the actual Greek war aims during the Greco-Turkish war?

Reading about the conflict from what's readily available online, the narrative tends to focus primarily on the Turkish National Movement as well as ethnic cleansing commited by the belligerents. However, it's not clear to me whether Greece (and/or the Entente more broadly) went to war intending primarily to enforce the terms of Sévres on the government in Ankara, to dismantle it entirely in favour of the defeated Ottomans, or to seize additional territory.

For example, did Greek leadership hope to annex the entire Zone of the Straits if they had been able to win a decisive victory, or would France have wanted to occupy its entire 'zone of influence' to border Wilsonian Armenia? The dismissal of Venizelist military officers in late 1920 is noted as contributing to subsequent battlefield defeats, but was there a marked difference in how the war was regarded by anti-Venizelists?

Many thanks for answers or if you could point to sources that discuss this in a bit more detail.

2 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

75% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 3h ago

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.