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The Turkish victory in the Greek-Turkish War (1920-21) shocked the Greeks and dominated Greek Politics in the inter-War era. It made the National Schism / Ethnikos Dikhasmos (the differences between King Constantine I and Prime Minister Venizelos) divided Greek politics and society throughout the Inter-War Era.
The Greco-Turkish War had serious consequences beyond the the immediate military situation. The loss deligitimized the Government in the eyes of many Greeks. And the country was faced with the massive undertaking to
dead with the flood of displaced refugees from the territory lost in Anatolia. The major international problem was the war with Turkey. There was a smaller problem on the northern border with Bulgaria. Bulgaria could do little in the 1920s because it was one of the defeated Cental Powers. This dispute would prove deadly during World War II.
The political situation was generlly unstable during the inter-War era. Military officers formed a Revolutionary Committee (RC)and staged a coup (1922). The coup was led by Pro-Venizelos colonels Nikolaos Plastiras and Stilianos Gonatas They landed 12,000 troops at Lavrion, south of Athens, and seized conrol of the capital. They forced the government to resign and King Constantine to abdicate. Prince George, Constantine's elder son had refused the crown when Constantine left (1917). This time, he accepted and was crowned king as George II (1922-24). The RC began purging royalists from both the government and the military. The disaster of the war with Turkey had to be dealt with politically. There had blame it on someone. The blame was laid on Prime-Mimister Dimitrios Gounaris, who was in office when the war began. Gounaris and seven of his assocites became scapegoats. The RC charged them with with high treason, six were found gulty and executed. The charge of treason was absurd. They were guilty of incompetence. The trial and executions dramatically changed the political climare resulting in a ferocity not previously known. A rift centered on Venizelod biterly divided the Greek people. In addition the military was politiicized and became a force in Greek politucs. Col. Plastiras formed a government. He used Venizelos to negotiate a peace with Turkey--the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). It recognized the Turkish military victories. Turkey achieved control of Anatolia, eastern Thrace (the area ariound Constninopler, and two small islands off Turkey's northwest coast. Greece and Turkey formulated a huge compulsory exchange of populations. Muslims living in Greece (except the Slavic Pomaks in Thrace and the Dodecanese, and Turkish Muslims in Thrace) were transferred to Turkey--some 0.4 million people. Greek Christians were transferred to Greece--some 1.3 million people. The exchange was comulsiry and based on relgion. The two countries agreed to protect small ninirity populations of Orthodox Greeks and Muslims. The Treaty established the nodertn border between Greece and Turkey. The result was rghe creation into an ethnically homogeneous country, but Greece had the the massive problem of assimilating over 1 million desperately refugees. The Treaty, along with the Aremenian genocude, also made Turkey a moire ethnically homoneniius country. The ionly major minority was the Kurds in the south east. Venizelos sucessfully returned brining a degree of stability (1928-32). The Wall Street Crash in America (1929) resulted in economic dislocations and internal conflicts (1931). The monarch was restored and King George II returnd. Ioannis Metaxas was a Greek military officer who became heavily involved in politicsafter unsucessfully oposing Greek involvement in World War I. King George was not popular in Greece, but Metaxas offered important support. TheKing appointedc him prime-minister (1936). He governed constitutionally for only 4 months under King George II. He then established a dictatirship -- the 4th of August Regime. Metaxas adopted fashion features along the lines of Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain. Central to all three was opposition to the Communists. Salazar and Metaxas maintained relations with the British, NAZI Germany and Fascist Italy helped Franco win the Spanish Civil War. Metaxas was still in power when fellow Fascist Benuito Mussolini invaded Greece (October 1940), but died before the Germans invaded (April 1941).
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