Megalo Idea

Yes, definately. After total civil action of Kuvva-i Milliye, Adana, Mersin, Tarsus, Urfa/Edessa and Antep were all liberated by local, freedom fighter forces. And Mara� was the only city as I know, which was liberated just by the local Turkish forces, without any military interfering.

That's why today, we call Antep as Gaziantep, Urfa as �anl�/Glorious Urfa and Mara� as Kahraman/hero Mara�.

Agree with you for the leadership. It's not that there were no talented Greek officers, but because of the Royalist-Venizelist tensions, all Venizelist officers (who were the majority in the army) were replaced with royalist officers.

I don't agree with you about the soldiers though. The morale of the Greek soldiers was very good, and in the most part better than of the Turkish soldier. Not only the Greek soldiers beleived in their cause, but they were also more confident of the quality of the Greek army. The turkish army had thousands of deserters.

Well, it is a known fact that Greek army had much more artilleries,rifles and trucks, actually a few times more than the Turkish army.

The USSR aid is not an aid that can be despised under any case, but comparing to Anglo-French aid(mostly Anglo, I can say), that wasn't really greater.

The aim is really clear for English, they wanted to oppress national movement by using Greek army, as their public opinion, which was already tired of The Great War, didn't want to send more troops for a new fight they didn't believe...Plus, the colonies, also rejected to send in more troops after sending so much and giving so much casualties in WW I.

There weren't any Kurdish armies at that time..There were a few "�ete"(gangs) formed by Kurdish, but they weren't much against the Turkish nationalist movement,actually most of them were supportive for it.

And I still wait for the battle list from Beylerbeyi.

Because I think there's something to debate over who had the upper hand.

Btw, I was totally right. The articles in Wikipedia are written by Turks and edited by Turks.

This kind of thing happens in revolutionary wars. Read about the French revolutionary wars, or Russian civil war.

In particular, Armenians were very weak, and Russians were our allies. Kurds had no armies, and they fought on the Turkish side anyway. French had armies, but they were dealt with by the local militias. Eastern front was pacified in time so that those forces could be sent West to fight against the Greeks in later battles.

Besides Turks had advantages like better generals and defending most of the time.

It was indeed crucial help, but was next to nothing compared to the aid Greece got from the Allies before and during the war.

Why was Paulus surrounded? Because Hitler forced him to stay. If it was up to him, he would have retreated way before.

One way or another it was clearly a defeat. We can never know what would have happened if the Greeks continued the attack. Maybe they could have broken the Turkish resolve, or maybe they could be totally annihilated.

Yes, and the important point is that these battles had huge political repercussions. Not that who outnumbered who.

Until Inonu, nobody suspected the strength of the Turkish resistance. The Allies thought 'those are just a bunch of pretenders, a rag-tag coalition of remnants of the disbanded Ottoman army and local bandits. The Greek army will defeat them easily and finally end this nuissance, which will allow us to finally end this very unpopular war'. 

Some people suspected this might be more difficult than it seemed, but most have underestimated the resistance. In Inonu, the Greeks found out that they faced a serious enemy, thanks to the success of the Turkish revolutionaries (led by Ataturk) in creating an effective resistance movement.

This gave Ankara international recognition. People started to think about the possibility that Ankara would actually manage to reclaim Anatolia. USSR started helping seriously. The Allies saw that the problem was getting bigger everyday. This led to two different types of behaviour, France and Italy wanted to make peace, in case Ankara would be successful, and Britain and Greece wanted to get rid of the problem, before it got even bigger. Hence the march towards Ankara.

The greeks had a better equipped and bigger army? You are really mistaken.. I always wondered how the turks could drive off the greeks, armenian, and kurdish armies who were around anatolia yet they had such a smaller weaker army? Get real the USSR gave turkish rebels free arms and such supplies and this turned the tide of the wars.

Or I may even be forced to close this topic! But I'll leave that honor for the mod's of this forum to do when necessary.

 For some of the smarty pants on this thread, read my four previous posts closely and then read your own. Tell yourselves who the beligerent one ones are here. I've set a very clear example for any wishing to pay attention. My posts contain no beating around the bush. No profanities. And respectful up to the point where the comparison of one's eating orifice to their intellectual capacity is mentioned. If one finds this sort of debating disrespectful then I find that those people who intentional twist history and follow up with absurd consclusions mixed with blatant lies and avoidance from answering my questions the bigger offence. 

 Those greeks make me laugh again

well done Beylerbeyi

Wikipedia of course is crap, I won't even bother reading your links.

Crap or not, Wikipedia articles were obviously not written by Turks, and they claim that all those battles took place, were bitterly contested and were Turkish victories.

That sounds like a defeat to me. Let's see, Turkish army was defending the Sakarya line, Turkish objective was to stop the Greek army's advance. Greek army attacked, with the intention of destroying the defence and reaching Ankara, disbanding the Turkish resistance movement.

It was indeed a close battle, but in the end Turkish army succeeded in its objective, stopping the Greek army, and the Greek army was defeated, because they failed to reach their objective and had to retreat, suffering heavy losses. 

Same thing happened in Stalingrad. Was it a German victory or a Soviet victory?

Stalingrad was a tightly contested battle as well.

Sakarya was a very close battle. Greeks had clear superiority in everything, and they fought well, breaking the Turkish lines at points. They say artillery was heard from Ankara, and they were planning to move the parliament to Kayseri.

But Turks had advantages as well, such as favourable defensive position, better generals, psychological advantage. Beind the defending side is important, because in WWI it was a big advantage. I think that is the main reason why Turkish armies could win against the outnumbering Greek armies in the Inonu and Sakarya battles. Turkish armies failed to go after the defeated armies in all those cases, because they were too weak to attack. Otherwise the Greek adventure would have ended much earlier.

The Greek army lost the strategic initiative after Sakarya, but Turks had to wait for a long while until they gathered enough forces for an offensive operation. That's why there was a long time gap between Sakarya and Dumlupinar (the final Turkish offensive). 

Not really. Sometimes it is wiser to retreat. In Stalingrad, Von Paulus wanted to retreat, but Hitler forced him to stay, it was a disaster in the end. In Sakarya, Papulas (who was a decent General, better than his replacement) saw the impending doom, and retreated, allowing the occupation last another year.

In what way would the Turks be impressed by Greeks getting themselves slaughtered and retreating? Do you actually believe what you wrote makes any sense? By no stretch of imagination can this state of affairs be called a Greek victory.

Not really, but it is a technicality anyway. The important point is the Greek army was FAR better equipped than the Turkish one. 

So you actually never heard of the Inonu battles?  Wow, I think this fact in itself speaks volumes about how much you actually know about what happened. It's like talking about Hitler's invasion and suddenly asking 'what is Kursk battle?'

If your defeats are edited out of the books, no wonder you think that the German King was the cause of your defeat in Asia Minor.

So you at least learned that they exist.

Turks were routed? Let's see, they were defending their positions, Greeks came and attacked, and forced to retreat suffering heavy losses. In what way is this a Turkish defeat exactly? But of course if you consider Sakarya a Greek victory, these are Greek victories as well. Just like the German victory in Stalingrad.

Ismet Pasha, who became Turkey's second President after Ataturk, got his surname (Inonu) from these battles, because he won them.

I am not claiming that Greek army was sh*t and it lost all the battles. On the contrary all battles were closely contested (except maybe the final Turkish offensive), and after the two Inonu battles the Greeks have regrouped and started another offensive, which was successful. Turkish armies which held the territory west of Sakarya in the two previous offensives (the Inonu battles) were forced to retreat to the east of the river at that time.

Even though you'll find some imbeciles who'd fall for it, it is simply ridiculous to claim that Turks have lost these battles but turned them into propaganda victories. It wasn't like the media anywhere except the USSR was on Turkey's side. If the Turks had lost the Inonu battles, they would have retreated to the east of Sakarya, before the defeat in the third battle. 

There is no debate on whether Greeks outnumbered the Turks or outgunned them, the debate is HOW MUCH they outnumbered and outgunned them. For me the details are not very important, so I won't go looking for them.

Yes, it is difficult to shoot when you are running away from the enemy as fast as you can.  All they shot was poor villagers which they came across.

Such as? I wrote you, out of the five major battles, four were Turkish victories and only one was a Greek victory. Even if you count the initial stage of the occupation where the Greeks faced irregulars or no defence at all, then it would be 2/6. Still not good enough.

So what? Turkey had all these problems doubled. There was a civil war going, and the war had an Eastern front for us, unlike for you. Half the country was occupied. There was another (Vichy-like) government fighting against the resistance. There was NO economy, just the resistance taking stuff from the people by force.

How come do you think Turks had a smaller army in Turkey than you did?

I also never claimed that 'we were bringing civilization to Anatolia'. It seems you turks like to feel the 'underestimated', the underdog, the ones that wrong was done to them.

Well, most of your relatively recent history is about being the underdog, so I am sure you can have some empathy for us in this situation. For once, we were being occupied.  If you want Turks to respect your independence and borders, your rights to those, and not just be a province to be ruled by Turks, you have to respect Turkey's independence and borders. What you people are doing in this thread is coming across like, 'when Turks occupy us, it is horrible, when we occupy them it is glorious'. If you have this mentality, you have no right to complain about the Ottomans.

This is better. And I think that Greece should be independent, and not be ruled by Turks or Germans or the British. I think all Turks here agree with me on this point. Basically, you stay on your side of the Aegean, and we stay on our side. Venizelos and Ataturk accepted this. So can we.

Ah, by the way, its you that should bring documents that prove that Greece ever laid claims on Ankyra, not me. The suspect is innocent until the opposite is proved. So...

I hadn't said that the Greeks claimed Ankara.

This was the part I disagreed with, and you should prove this claim. Greeks hadn't talked to Ataturk at the beginning of the war.