Middle East

1919–1922: The Greco-Turkish War

May 1919 – October 1922 · 1 battle

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire the victors meant to partition Anatolia. In May 1919, with the consent of the Peace Conference, Greek troops landed at Smyrna, and Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos hoped to realise the Great Idea, the union of all Greeks in a single state. The landing, however, roused in the Turks a sense of mortal threat. In the Anatolian interior Mustafa Kemal built a new government and army, which rejected the Treaty of Sèvres, halted the Greeks on the Sakarya and in 1922 drove them into the sea. The war ended with an exchange of populations and the birth of the Turkish Republic, the only defeated state to win by force a revision of the peace imposed on it.

15 May 1919 – 11 October 1922The Greco-Turkish WarThe war for western Anatolia (1919–1922). The Greeks got close to Ankara, but Mustafa Kemal stopped them on the Sakarya and in 1922 drove them into the sea.