Greco-Turkish War and Treaty of Lausanne
The Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and its settlement at the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) was one of the defining geopolitical events of the interwar period, establishing the modern Turkish state and creating a new international precedent: compulsory population exchange as a solution to ethnic conflict. The Greek landing at Smyrna in May 1919 — authorised by the Paris Peace Conference as Greece's reward for entering World War I on the Allied side — was the catalyst. Greek forces expanded from Smyrna into the interior of Anatolia, seeking to realise the 'Megali Idea' (Great Idea) of a reconstituted Byzantine-Greek sphere. The Allied governments — Britain, France, and Italy — nominally supported this expansion. Mustafa Kemal, a former Ottoman general who had distinguished himself at Gallipoli, organised Turkish nationalist resistance from Ankara. By 1921 the Grand National Assembly had declared Kemal's government the legitimate authority of Turkey; the sultanate in Istanbul was reduced to Allied-protected irrelevance. Kemal defeated the Greek forces at the Battle of the Sakarya River (August 1921) and in the Great Offensive of August–September 1922 drove the Greek army entirely out of Anatolia. The reconquest of Smyrna in September 1922 was followed by the Great Fire, which destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters of the city and killed between 10,000 and 100,000 civilians (estimates vary widely). The fire's origins remain disputed; Turkish military involvement is asserted by most Greek and Armenian accounts. The Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923) recognised Turkey's Anatolian and eastern Thracian borders, abolished the Ottoman capitulations, removed reparations obligations, and — most consequentially — mandated the exchange of populations: 1.2 million Orthodox Christians from Anatolia to Greece, and 400,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey. The exchange was categorised by religion, not language or ethnicity; Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians were sent to Greece, Greek-speaking Muslims to Turkey. It uprooted communities that had coexisted for centuries and established a precedent that would influence ethnic cleansing policy throughout the 20th century.
- Year: 1919 CE
- Category: Political
