Venizelos, Britain and Cyprus

Above is an interview conducted by Roderick Beaton – former professor of Modern Greek at King’s College London and whose last three books have been George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel; Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution; and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation – with Michael Llewellyn Smith, former UK ambassador to Greece and historian of modern Greece, best known for Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919-1922, and who is now set to publish the first of a two-volume biography of the preeminent statesman of modern Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos, leader of the country during the Balkan wars, protagonist in the National Schism, the Paris Peace Conference, culminating in the Treaty of Sevres that gave Greece the opportunity to realise its ambition of the Greece of two continents and five seas, and in the aftermath of defeat by Turkish nationalist forces that led to the demise of Hellenism in multiple historic homelands. 

As a British historian, Llewellyn Smith may be forgiven for concentrating on the role of Britain in modern Greek affairs and in Venizelos’ thinking and approach. 

Thus, Llewellyn Smith stresses Venizelos’ conclusion that Greece was too weak to advance its interests and hopes in the Eastern Mediterranean and would need to depend on the patronage of Britain, the region’s superpower, if Greek efforts were to succeed. 

Persuading Britain that Greece was an ascending power in the Eastern Mediterranean, which the British empire could rely on, and that Turkey – which Britain had supported in one way or another since the 1840s as a means to keep Russia out of the region – was in terminal decline was Venizelos’ obsession. 

It was an analysis and policy that laid Venizelos open to acute criticism from his opponents – the Dragoumis family and Royalists – who felt Venizelos was diminishing Greece – its sovereignty, room for manoeuvre and ability to chart a course and take decisions entirely in accord with its interests – and making the country subservient to the whims of foreign powers. 

Venizelos’ devotion to Greece’s alliance with Britain remained with him throughout his career. Even after the demise of the Megali Idea, Venizelos insisted that Greece’s foreign policy could not be in conflict with Britain’s. 

It was this caution that shaped Venizelos’ reaction to Greek Cypriot representations to the Greek government after the 1931 uprising on Cyprus – the so-called Oktovriana, which culminated in the burning down of Government House – that challenged British colonial rule on the island and brought to the surface once again the Greek population’s demand for union with Greece. 

In response to pressure from prominent Greek Cypriots and the beginnings of a movement in Greece supporting Cypriot demands for Enosis, Venizelos was scathing. Not only did he order the suppression of any domestic support for Cyprus, but he made it clear to Greek Cypriot leaders that they would find no succour from Greece if they pursued their campaign to end British rule on the island. 

Describing Venizelos’ reaction to the Oktovriana, Holland and Markides write: 

‘Two weeks after the burning of [Governor Ronald] Storrs’s residence [in Nicosia], students in the University of Athens, notably replacing ‘Armistice Day’ with a new Hellenic celebration of ‘Cyprus Day’, demonstrated… The crowd was broken up by police acting under the direction of Venizelos, in office for the last time as Prime Minister. “The maintenance of friendly relations with Great Britain”, read the stern statement issued by Venizelos, “has been the policy of Greece since independence, and those who jeopardized this were insane.”’ (Robert Holland and Diana Markides: The British and the Hellenes, Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850-1960).

Eleftherios Venizelos and the Asia Minor campaign

Above is a talk by Roderick Beaton on Eleftherios Venizelos’ attempt to annex western Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace to Greece following the Great War and the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

Beaton asks what Venizelos was trying to achieve with his irredentist policy and, with the benefit of hindsight, how realistic was the aim of fulfilling the Megali Idea.

Beaton traverses the period 1912-1922, i.e. the successful campaigns in the Balkan wars; the predicament Greece faced with the outbreak of the Great War – whether to join the Triple Entente, as Venizelos ardently believed or remain neutral as King Constantine and his supporters demanded; and the occupation of Smyrna, the Treaty of Sèvres and the defeat of the Greek army by Turkish nationalist forces.

Beaton insists that the National Schism over participation in the Great War that led by 1916 to Greece having two governments – one with Venizelos at its head in Thessaloniki and the other in Athens loyal to the king – was not a constitutional dispute – Constantine insisted that foreign policy was his prerogative, whereas Venizelos insisted that the monarch had to subordinate himself to the wishes of the country’s political leadership on the British model; but rather a rift over what it meant to be Greek and what sort of Greece each side of the civil war – Beaton asserts that the schism amounted to a civil war – imagined.

Venizelos saw the Great War as an opportunity to liberate Greeks who found themselves outside of Greece’s borders – Beaton interprets this as prioritising the Greek ethnos (nation;) whereas Constantine and his followers had a narrower vision of Hellenism, were committed to the Greek state and wary of adventures that might undermine or overburden it. The latter argued that Greece was already stretched digesting the gains of 1912-13 – all areas of which were strongly pro-Venizelos – and that Greece was too weak to absorb more people and territory.

Eventually, in 1917, after the French navy blockaded Athens and its army occupied Thessaly, Constantine went into exile and Venizelos, having been forced to resign at the end of 1915, resumed power over the whole country, with Constantine’s brother Alexander ascending the emasculated throne.

Greece’s contribution to the Macedonian front gave it a place at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the war. Here, Venizelos, in May 1919 got approval for the occupation of Smyrna, confirmed by the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920, which also ceded Eastern Thrace to Greece.

In seeking to enforce the Treaty of Sèvres – which the Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal had rejected – Greek forces found themselves dragged deeper and deeper into Anatolia, where the Turks had retreated.

At the same time as Venizelos was lobbying the British for financial and material support for Greek forces to deal a knock-out blow to the Turks, he was also preparing for elections in Greece. When they were lost in November 1920, Constantine and his supporters returned to power.

For opaque reasons, Beaton argues, even though the royalists had campaigned to end the Asia Minor war and bring the troops home, they decided to pursue Venizelos’ knock-out blow policy – but, critically, Beaton says, without seeking British backing. The result was defeat at the Battle of the Sangarios River in August/September 1921 and a year-long retreat to the Asia Minor coast and the end of the Ionian vision.

Critics of Venizelos have argued, Beaton says, that the root causes of the Asia Minor Catastrophe was the idea itself; that a Greek enclave in western Asia Minor was unviable, both from an economic and security standpoint, and that Sèvres was inherently unworkable.

But Beaton argues that Smyrna cut off from its Anatolian hinterland would have been no different from Thessaloniki, liberated in 1912, cut off from its Balkan hinterland and that the Macedonian city survived and thrived within Greece.

Beaton also asserts that rather than Greece, with the annexation of Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace, ending up having to rule over large numbers of resentful Muslim Turks, Greece would have pushed for a population exchange on the lines of the Balkan wars, with those Turks and Muslims left in the newly-liberated Greek territories being exchanged with Greeks and Christians who found themselves in the rump Turkish state.

As for the assertion that the Asia Minor campaign was doomed from the start by the military difficulties involved, Beaton argues rather that Greek forces nearly won the Battle of Sangarios River – the Turkish nationalist leadership ensconced in Ankara had made plans to evacuate the city – but that the declining morale of Greek troops and, crucially, the lack of backing from Britain swung the war the Turks’ way.

Venizelos, Beaton argues, would never have advanced further into Anatolia without British backing and it was a fatal mistake of the royalists to do so.

Where Venizelos is at fault, according to Beaton, was his over-enthusiastic support for the Triple Entente, his willingness to take Greece into the war from 1914 – even when the French and British were still trying to keep Turkey and Bulgaria out of the war and wanted Greece to hold off its involvement.

Rather than dismissing the objections of King Constantine and his supporters to Greece allying itself with Britain and France, Beaton believes Venizelos should have used his diplomatic skills – which outside of Greece had him heralded as a great European statesman – to persuade Constantine and the royalists of his vision.

If Venizelos wasn’t responsible for the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Beaton says, then he must take his share of the blame for the National Schism.

The project of creating Greece of the five seas and two continents, of reversing hundreds of years of history, needed to be underpinned by a strong, unified state and Venizelos’ failure to ensure this is where his responsibility for the demise of the Megali Idea lies.

The Greek-Turkish population exchange: a necessary evil?

Thanks to the HA reader who suggested I go here and watch the talks and Q&A (in English) from professors Giorgos Mavrogordatos and Ayhan Aktar on the 1923 population exchange agreements between Greece and Turkey that saw 1.5 million Greeks from Asia Minor, Anatolia and Thrace resettled in Greece and half a million Turks go the other way.

Mavrogordatos suggests that the exchange was the best, or at least most pragmatic, outcome to the failed attempt by Greece to liberate Ionia.

Arguing in favour of homogenous nation-states, Mavrogordatos says that the Ottoman Greeks provided a means to complete the Hellenisation of those territories (especially Macedonia) liberated during the Balkan wars; ensured, with the expulsion of Muslims from Greece, that Greece didn’t end up with a problematic Muslim minority, which would now number three million; and that, indeed, since Turkey’s preferred method of dealing with minorities in its midst was physical destruction, having some sort of agreed relocation was the only way to guarantee the survival and future of 1.5m Greeks.

On the other hand, the Turkish professor bemoans the population exchange, guided as it was, he argues, by narrow, nationalist definitions of ethnic identity, which ended up impoverishing both countries and was a disaster for those directly affected.

The discussion to be had on the issues raised is inexhaustible, but I’ll just make a couple of points.

Having experienced the humiliating trauma of the decline and disintegration of the Ottoman empire, the new Turkish republic couldn’t countenance the continuing presence of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks and had an unambiguous policy of annihilating its Christian minorities. This decisive approach is in contrast to the policy of Greece towards non-Greeks in the territories it had liberated in 1913 and was expecting to annex in Asia Minor.

Eleftherios Venizelos was torn between creating a Greece that would be a liberal multi-ethnic state in which non-Greeks (Muslims, Jews and Bulgarians) would be full citizens and have their rights and identities protected, and a more homogenous country, insensitive to its minorities, who would be subordinate to the dominant Greek element and encouraged to assimilate or, in the worst-case scenario, face exchange with Greeks living in Rumelia and Turkey. (Exterminating its minorities, as Turkey was prepared to do, did not appeal to Greece).

In Ionia, Venizelos was inclined to the former policy, insisting that the Turks living in the newly liberated areas should experience no discrimination and be won over to the benefits of Greek government – though at other times (as Mavrogordatos notes) he contemplates exchanging the Turks in Ionia for Greeks living in parts of Anatolia not liberated by the Greek army.

Informing Venizelos’ view of the Turks as susceptible to the advantages of enlightened Greek rule was a sense that Turks were less conscious of their national and religious identity than Greeks. This ignorance of the Turks had disastrous consequences for Greek rule in Ionia. More ruthless treatment of the Turks in Ionia may have suited Greek interests better, though it would have risked alienating Greece’s European allies who, hypocritically, made their support conditional on Greece proving its credentials as a civilised country by the fair treatment of the non-Greek population under its jurisdiction.

A similar Greek underestimation of Turkish nationalism was also evident later in Cyprus where, it should be pointed out that, after the Turkish invasion in 1974, the 200,000 Greeks forced from northern Cyprus and 50,000 Turks encouraged (by Turkey and Britain) to leave the government-controlled for the occupied areas – were not, according to the Turks, ethnically cleansed but the necessary victims of an agreed population exchange.

The man who shot Ion Dragoumis

Excellent documentary above made in 1986 on the assassination in 1920 of Ion Dragoumis, one of the most important theorists and exponents of modern Hellenism. It includes an interview with one of Dragoumis’ assassins and tries to piece together who gave the order to have Dragoumis killed, in retaliation for the attempted assassination of Eleftherios Venizelos in Paris.

Eleftherios Venizelos and Greece In Her True Light

Greece In Her True Light is an interesting document published (in English) in 1916, which consists of several memoranda and speeches by Eleftherios Venizelos putting forward the case for Greece’s entry into WW1 on the side of the Allies. It describes the deals Venizelos was prepared to make to secure the maximum advantage to Greece’s national interests, which in this case meant the expansion of the Greek state into Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace and Cyprus. Venizelos’ policy of supporting Britain and France as a means to secure Greek expansion was opposed by King Constantine and other rightist forces in Greece, led by Dimitrios Gounaris.

Just a few points going through the document, which can be read here.

Initially, at the outbreak of WW1, Venizelos’ concern is to prevent Bulgaria – which had never accepted the treaties that ended the Balkan wars in 1912-13 – from joining the German and Turkish axis and threatening first Serbia and then Greece. In order to secure either Bulgarian neutrality or, better still, Bulgarian support in attacking Turkey, Venizelos was prepared to offer, in exchange for Allied backing for Greek demands in Asia Minor, the handing over to Bulgaria of Kavala and Drama in Eastern Macedonia.

Venizelos makes clear that Greek expansion into Asia Minor is not just a matter of creating a Greater Greece, but also protecting the lives of Ottoman Greeks who are already being targetted in a campaign of extermination, similar to the one already suffered by the Armenians. Venizelos adds that the policy of genocide is one the Turks are being encouraged to adopt by Germany.

Venizelos argues that if Greece had participated in the Gallipoli campaign, as requested by the Allies, then that campaign, to capture Constantinople, would have succeeded. He makes clear that Russian objections to Greece participating in the capture of Constantinople – Russia regarded Greece as a rival to claims on Constantinople – would have been overcome by France and Britain.

Venizelos accuses the obstructionist King Constantine of not only admiring Germany, but of desiring German victory in Europe, which would allow the king to sweep away the parliamentary system in Greece and establish a more monarchical system of government.

Venizelos mentions the British offer to cede Cyprus to Greece. Anti-Venizelists argued that such a concession was trifling and not worth Greece entering the war on the side of the British; but Venizelos insists that the addition of Cyprus to Greece would be a significant advance of Hellenism, especially in conjunction with other acquisitions in Thrace and Asia Minor.

It’s worth pointing out that the publication of the document – in English – was intended to convince Allied audiences that Venizelos, not Constantine, represented the ‘true’ Greece. Constantine’s pro-German neutrality was, of course, an outrage to the Allies and, indeed, in Canada and Australia, there were anti-Greek riots (aimed at Greek immigrants).