The Great Idea and the Catastrophe Part 1: Why did Venizelos claim western Anatolia?

This month marks the 100th anniversary of The Catastrophe, Greece’s failed campaign after World War One to carve out an empire in the Near East. This is the second of four articles on that story.

Greece’s as envisioned in the Treaty of Sèvres, August 1920. (Courtesy Eleftherios Venizelos Foundation)

The borders of Europe and the Middle East were drawn up after World War One, with the collapse of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. This much is commonly known, but it is only half the truth. The borders of Greece and Turkey were shaped between the wars, in an intense and bloody conflict most of the world little noticed.

After its War of Independence in 1821, Greece spent a century reconquering  from the Ottoman Empire lands where Greeks had lived since antiquity. In the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, it recaptured Macedonia, Epiros and the east Aegean islands of Samothraki, Limnos, Tenedos, Imvros, Lesvos, Chios and Samos, doubling in size and population. Western Thrace also lay within its grasp thanks to its powerful navy. That still left some 2.45 million Greeks under Ottoman rule. An estimated 300,000 were in Eastern Thrace and 100,000  in Constantinople; the rest were in Asia Minor.