Great idea
The Great Idea (in modern Greek: Μεγάλη Ιδέα, Megáli Idéa) was the expression of national sentiment behind Greek nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. It sought to unite all the Greeks into a single nation state with its capital established at Constantinople. Above all, it took the form of irredentism. The term was invented in 1844 by Ioannis Kolettis, King Otto's prime minister. The Big Idea dominated the entire foreign policy and consequently the internal policy of Greece: from the war of independence in the 1820s, to the Cypriot problem of the 1970s, passing through the Balkan wars of the beginning of the century XX. Greece's main adversary in its realization of the Great Idea was the Ottoman Empire and, later, Turkey.
The national sentiment
The weight of the Ottoman occupation
Ottoman armies seized Constantinople in succession in 1453, Athens in 1458, and Mystra, located very close to ancient Sparta, in 1460. Any form of independent Greek state then disappeared. However, the Ottoman administration recognized that there was a population that could be considered 'Greek'. The Ottoman system of "millets" (nations) organized the different populations of the Empire: there was an Ottoman millet and a Jewish millet, for example. There was also a millet-i Rum or Greek millet. In fact, this included all Orthodox Christians, whether they spoke Greek, Bulgarian or Romanian. This ambiguity later played a role in defining the boundaries of the Greek nation. The sign of subjection was mainly the haradj tax. Until the end of the XVII century, added to that the paidomazoma (obligation to supply the janissaries). These taxes, and especially the cascade of salary reductions carried out from above to the numerous imperial officials, were highly frowned upon by the local population. Various rebellions, such as the Orloff Revolution, often entailed increased reductions as punishment. The kleftes, whose exactions were a form of resistance to the tax, are often regarded as the forerunners of the national liberation movement.
The Greek millet was led by the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople was considered by the Ottomans to be the head of the 'Greek nation'. The power of the Orthodox Church was, therefore, closely linked to the Ottoman power, so that the maintenance of Ottoman interests in the area entailed the maintenance of their own interests, which meant a significant discredit among the population.
Define a Nation State
Like all national movements of the 19th century, the Big Idea wanted to regroup into a single nation-state to all the Greeks. He was born in the thought of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Thus, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 26, 1789 proclaimed the right of peoples to dispose of themselves. The Greeks, subject to the Ottomans, wanted to have identical rights and to have a "government emanating from the consent of the governed", as proposed by the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Enlightenment ideas touched the Phanariotes, who due to their administrative and governmental functions (among which the roles of interpreters for the Great Gate stood out) were very much in contact with the West.
Greek intellectuals were also in exile in Western Europe: Adamántios Koraïs spent the entire French Revolution in Paris; Rigas Feraios was in Vienna; there were some merchants due to the diaspora in Odesa, Venice or Marseille. Newspapers (such as Anthimos Gazis's Wise Mercury which was published in Vienna in 1811 and 1812) and intellectual circles had been created by these Greeks throughout Europe. In 1803, the Report on the present state of civilization in Greece appeared in Paris; in 1806 a Discourse on Liberty was published in Livorno. These works conveyed the ideas of the Enlightenment about Liberty or the right of peoples to govern themselves.
But the same definition of what was "Greek" or what was the "Greek" posed a problem in itself (see, for example, the article Names of the Greeks). What principle was to be applied: 'Greek' ethnicity, 'Greek' Orthodox religion, 'Greek' language, geography, history?
Iakovos Rizos-Neroulos stated during the first conference of the Archaeological Society of Athens, in 1838, on the Acropolis of Athens:
Gentlemen, these stones, thanks to Fidias, Praxíteles, Agorácrito and Mirón, are more precious than diamonds or agates: it is to the stones to which we owe our political rebirth.
He evoked here the role of Western travelers, those on the Grand Tour, in the birth of Greek national sentiment at the end of the 18th century . His interest in ancient monuments showed both learned Greeks and local populations that there was another Greece as a reference besides the Greece of the Orthodox Church under Ottoman power. A progonoplexy (obsession with ancestors) and an arkhaiotreia (fascination with the ancient) were born in Greece. Children begin to be given old-fashioned names. The same was done with the names of the boats and with the Greek language itself: the vernacular was considered "contaminated" by foreign words (Turkish above all). A "pure" language had to be rediscovered: the Attic of the V century a was chosen. C. Antiquity became, then, the new reference to define "Greece".
The maximum extension of this nation State would be, for the most extremists, the extension of the Greek world according to Strabo, but the historical reference chosen will be: from southern Italy (Magna Graecia), to Antioch, passing through Crete, Cyprus and all Anatolia; from the north, from the Black Sea (Ponto Euxino) to Crete, passing through the same continental Greece, the north of the Balkans and Asia Minor. This corresponded to the extent of the Byzantine Empire at the time of the Macedonian Dynasty.
To this sentiment must be added the political and religious trauma of the Capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453. Constantinople was the religious capital of Orthodoxy and the political capital of the Byzantine Empire. Its loss coincided with the disappearance of Greece and the subjugation of the Greeks. Their freedom and their existence as a nation could only happen through the reconquest of the "City".
In 1796, while in Vienna, Rigas Feraios, the precursor poet of the insurrection against the Ottomans, had published a letter from Greece (Χάρτας της Ελλάδας), originally intended to illustrate The travels of young Anacharsis in Greece by the French Jean-Jacques Barthélemy. If this huge map (4 m²) focused on ancient Greece (ancient history is the only history represented on the map), it included Constantinople and Wallachia; but also the current Bosnia, Serbia and Albania. The Greece described included in fact all of the Balkans and Romania. The language of this entity should be Greek, a basic element in the definition of nationality. The Rigas chart suffered from the execution of its creator, but in 1800, Anthimos Gazis published a simplified version, adding to that Magna Graecia and Cyprus.
Disappointments after the War of Independence
Independence
The Greek War of Independence was first a war of liberation, a fight against Ottoman oppression. The main movements were in the Peloponnese and around Athens. There was also some fighting in Epirus (mainly because of Ali Pasha). The final victory was obtained thanks to the support of the great powers, France, the United Kingdom and Russia (which later called themselves the "Protecting Powers" of the young Greek kingdom), among other things, with the battle of Navarino and the French Morea Expedition. The Greeks were not in a position to get everything they wanted at the time of the negotiations that followed the end of the conflict. In order to guard against the Ottoman Empire, the London Conference of 1830 fixed the borders of the new state. Greece had to be content with the Peloponnese, with a part of Rumelia (the border ran from Arta to the west to Volos to the east) and some islands close to the mainland, such as Aegina or Hydra and a part of the Cyclades. Of the three million considered to be Greeks, 700,000 were reunited in the new state, while Constantinople regrouped 200,000 Greeks. The great cultural, religious, and economic centers were all outside the kingdom, which did not have any great cities: the three The first capitals (Aegina, Nauplia and Athens itself) did not exceed 5,000 inhabitants. In this way, the disappointment of the Greek patriots inside and outside the State was very great.
Natives and natives
After the coup on September 3, 1843, at a difficult time in negotiations to draft a constitution, Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis became the leader of "heterochthonous", national Greeks born outside the borders of the Kingdom. His family was originally from Wallachia and he himself was a native of Epirus, two regions not yet related to the Greek homeland. He therefore considered that Greece should include the "autochthonous", those born in the kingdom and the "heterochthonous". There were, according to him, two centers of Hellenism: Athens and Constantinople ("the dream and hope of all the Greeks"). He thus declared to the Constituent Assembly on January 14, 1844 in a speech giving rise to the "Great Idea":
Having the East on its right and the West on its left, [Greece] is predestined by its rebirth that illuminates the East as it was for its flight that illuminates the West. In the spirit [...] of this Great IdeaI saw the representatives of the Nation always decide not only the fate of Greece, but that of the Greek nation as a whole. [...] how much wider and wider was this Great Idea that we made of the homeland, and that we had found expressed for the first time in the song of Rigas [the Thourios].
The Greek kingdom is not the integrity of Greece, but only a part, a smaller and poorer part. A Greek is not only someone who lives within the limits of the kingdom, but also someone who lives in Ioanina, in Tesalia, in Serres, in Andrianópolis, in Constantinople, in Trebisonda, in Crete, in Samos and anywhere associated with Greek history or race.
There were then populations that could be considered Greek, not only according to Kolettis's definition, but also for reasons of language, religion or ethnic origin due to migration:
- On the Balkan peninsula from Valona in the current Albania to the west and Varna in the current Bulgaria to the east;
- Along the sea of Marmara and Constantinople;
- Along the coast of Asia Minor, mainly in Esmirna;
- In Anatolia, above all in Cappadocia and along the north coast, on the Black Sea, in the Contico Alps, but also to Armenia;
- In the north of the Black Sea, in Russia, where certain Greeks had been installed on the plates and merchants."indigenous", around Odessa.
Some of these foreign Greeks, especially the peasants, differed little from their non-Greek neighbors. If they were fiercely orthodox, they spoke the local vernacular. Thus, the 400,000 Greeks of Anatolia (and Constantinople), who spoke only Turkish, were called "karamanlides". One of the great families of Greek politicians of the 20th century is the Karamanlis family. Certain native Anatolian surnames still begin today with "Hadji" (the composer Manos Hadjidakis, the painter Nikos Khatzikyriakos-Ghikas or the founder of EasyJet Stelios Haji-Ioannou) remembering that one of the family members made his pilgrimage to Mecca and it was done like this & # 34; Hadji & # 34;.
Try to bring together these "nationals" in Greece it was one of the constants of Greek politics and diplomacy of the 19th century.
At the same time, efforts were made to purify Greece and its "indigenous" from any foreign influence. It was necessary to re-hellenize Greece. The "purification" of the language with the creation of the katharévousa was one of the examples of this political will.
First territorial extensions
King Otto was very unpopular, except when he espoused the cause of the Great Idea, as he was during the Crimean War. The realization of the Great Idea often came to fruition thanks to the different wars of the second half of the XIX century that allowed Greece annex more and more territories.
With the start of the Crimean War, Greece believed that it could take advantage of the initial difficulties (before Western intervention) of the Ottoman Empire. As at the time of the war of independence, armed bands made up in part of kleftes and led by members of the highest classes of society, in this case students, repeated the guerrilla form of action and sowed confusion on the other side. from the border, in Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia. France and Great Britain, parallel to their intervention against Russia in the Crimea, sent a fleet to occupy Piraeus between March 1854 and February 1857. Greece had to give in to the pressure. Despite everything, a Legion of Greek volunteers, led by Panos Koronaios, came out to reinforce the besieged Russians in Sevastopol.
A first real territorial extension took place in May 1864: Great Britain ceded the Republic of the Ionian Islands to Greece. A referendum in 1863 had designated a British prince to succeed Otto after the revolution, but the Protecting Powers had refused to endorse the choice and had imposed a Danish prince instead. In compensation and to celebrate the coronation of George I (1864), the United Kingdom separated from its protectorate.
The Bulgarian insurrection of 1876 and the Russo-Turkish war that followed (1877) led to the Treaty of San Stefano creating a Greater Bulgaria under Russian protection. Greater Bulgaria was an obstacle to the Great Idea. The United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary and Serbia could not accept this treaty either, since it favored Russia in the Balkan region. Greece knew how to defend its cause and was heard at the Berlin Congress of 1878. Greece was not categorically invited, but rather a Greek delegation was received. It included, among other things, Theodoros Deligiannis and Charilaos Trikoupis. The Ottoman delegation was led by Alexandros Karatheodoris Pacha, an Ottoman Greek. Thessaly and a part of Epirus were integrated into Greece at the end of a new series of negotiations at the Constantinople Conference of 1881. On the other side of its northern border was now Macedonia, the new target.
Crete
The "Big Island" she considered herself and in Athens to be Greek. The union (enosis) of Crete with Greece seemed evident. There were numerous rebellions throughout the 19th century: 1841, 1858, 1866-1869, 1877-1878, 1888-1889 and 1896-1897. Greece, for its part, had tried to force the union. In 1868, Athens sent aid to the Cretan insurgents. The Sublime Porte protested and organized the blockade of Ermoupoli, the port of Syros and, above all, the main port for travelers and merchandise in the Aegean Sea. The mediation of the Protecting Powers settled the disagreement. In 1885, taking advantage of a new crisis, the Prime Minister, Theodoros Deligiannis, sent a fleet to Crete. The Protecting Powers once again instituted a maritime blockade of Greece.
Deligiannis was back in power in 1897 when the Cretan insurrection took place. Under popular pressure, he sent a fleet and soldiers to the Big Island. General mobilization was decreed, and in April, war began against the Ottoman Empire in Thessaly. It was the so-called Thirty Day War, a sharp Greek defeat. Despite everything, Greece did not come out of there too badly. The peace treaty granted autonomy, under Ottoman feudal suzerainty, to Crete. George, the second son of King George I, was appointed High Commissioner in Crete. Some adjustments in favor of the Ottoman Empire were made along the border in Thessaly. The main lesson of the humiliation of the Thirty Day War was that Greece would never be able, alone, to realize the Great Idea. The decaying Ottoman Empire itself was too considerable an adversary.
The Balkan Wars
If the population was fairly homogeneous in southern Greece, ethnic boundaries in the north were even more difficult to determine. Different ethnic groups were highly mixed in the Balkans and the various nation-states that were created in the 19th century claimed certain regions, populated at least in part by those they regarded as their nationals. Macedonia was one of these regions: it was populated by Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Turks and Vlachs.
Macedonia
Greece had secretly been operating there since the 1890s. As during the war of independence or the Crimean war, self-proclaimed “freedom fighters” gangs, "Makedonomakhoi& #34;, they took up arms again to claim the union of Macedonia to the Greek kingdom. The first pretext had been the creation of an Orthodox exarchate in Bulgaria that was part of the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In this way the "Exarchists" They were, therefore, Bulgarians and the "Patriarchists" were Greeks. The conflict was religious and political, with the sole objective of gaining control of the region. The various bands and armies were organized. The Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was founded in 1893 and was supported by the Bulgarians. The Greek Ethniki Etairia (National Society) helped Makedonomakhoi. The government of Athens provided more or less direct help: financing via its consular agents, specified by its military advisers. Cretans also participated in guerrilla operations (in his novel Alexis Zorba, Nikos Kazantzakis evokes the massacres of his heroes). Supporters of union with Greece gradually increased their influence and found themselves in a position of strength, preparing for annexation by Greece at the time of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913.
In 1908, the Young Turk revolution in Constantinople brought about several changes. Bulgaria declared itself fully independent from the Ottoman Empire. Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina which had been placed under its protectorate in 1878 in Berlin. Crete then decided on enosis.
The Greek military staged a coup: the Goudi coup in 1909, placing Venizelos at the head of their movement because, of Cretan origin, he was untainted by "corruption" kingdom politics. As a Cretan, Venizelos was also a fierce supporter of the Big Idea. He carried out a policy of modernization of the country thanks to a very large parliamentary majority.
The First Balkan War
The Italo-Turkish War of 1911 weakened the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan countries took advantage of this. Venizelos hesitated before incorporating Greece, because his "nationals" were unacceptable. they were too spread out in the Ottoman Empire not to be at the mercy of possible Turkish reprisals. However, by not intervening, Greece ran the risk of not participating in the distribution of the booty either. On October 18, 1912, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece, regrouped in the Balkan League, declared war on the Ottoman Empire, thus launching the first Balkan war.
The Greek troops seized Thessaloniki at the beginning of November, beating the Turkish troops in a few hours. The Greek navy, modernized by the UK thanks to Venizelos, established its supremacy in the Aegean Sea and seized Chios, Lesbos and Samos. Ioannina, the capital of Epirus, was conquered in February 1913. The Turks recognized these annexations in the London Treaty of May 1913.
The Second Balkan War
United against the Ottomans, the victors broke up over the dispute over Macedonia during the Second Balkan War. Serbia and Greece decided to divide Macedonia at the expense of Bulgaria. Romania stepped in to get its share. The war was short and Bulgaria was crushed. The Treaty of Bucharest (1913) gave Thessaloniki and all of South Macedonia to Greece. However, Bulgaria retained the Aegean port of Dedeagatch (now Alexandroupolis), and the creation of Albania had prevented the Greek annexation of Northern Epirus.
The Big Idea had come true despite everything. In summary, the Balkan wars increased the Greek territory by 70% and its population went from 2.8 million to 4.8 million inhabitants. When Constantine ascended the throne of Greece in 1913, it was expected that he would adopt the title of Constantine. XII, thus placing himself in the direct succession of Constantine XI Palaeologus, the last Byzantine Emperor. The reconquest of Constantinople then seemed near. But Constantine was content to be just Constantine I.
However, not all the inhabitants of the annexed regions were Greek. In Thessaloniki, Sephardic Jews made up the majority of the population. Elsewhere there was a high presence of Muslim Turks, Romanian-speaking Vlachs or Slavs.
The Big Idea played a pivotal role in the "Ethnikos Dikhasmos" ("Great Schism") during World War I.
The "Great Schism"
The Alliance Choice
The Big Idea was not actually a foreign policy. It played a role determining the domestic policy of the Greek Kingdom. It was thus presented as the main, even the only, objective of the successive governments. All of them insisted on the need for national unity in order to realize the Great Idea. It was not necessary to evoke other political problems (slow development, corruption, subjection to the Protecting Powers, etc.) under penalty of being considered unpatriotic. The Great Idea had to weigh above all and served to divert attention from internal problems. Thus, after Charilaos Trikoupis had declared the country bankrupt in 1893 and after the country had plunged into economic crisis, the Big Idea and Cretan affairs were used to divert the attention of the population, resulting in the Thirty Day War and the humiliating Greek defeat.
But it was during the First World War that the Big Idea ended in one of the most serious internal political crises Greece had ever known. When the war broke out, Greece initially declared itself neutral. But staying out of the conflict was not the only reason for this neutrality. The main objective of the State was to generate the conditions to favor the objectives of the Great Idea.
Venizelos, the prime minister, thought of remaining as an ally of Serbia, as during the Balkan Wars, to later definitively dismember Bulgaria, an ally of the Central Powers, for which he wanted to get closer to the Entente.
King Constantine, brother-in-law of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and honorary feldmarschal of the German Army, favored an alliance with Germany and Bulgaria, in order to go against the former Serbian ally and seize their territories.
In October 1915, the king sent Venizelos and informed the Bulgarian government that his country would not intervene in the event of a Serbian attack. He used there a clause of the alliance treaty with Serbia of 1913, which provided that Greece would help Serbia if it was attacked by Bulgaria, except if it was allied to two other powers (in this case Germany and Austria-Hungary).
The British, in order to lure Greece into the Entente, proposed to Venizelos's successor to give Cyprus to Greece in exchange for his help. Prime Minister Alexandros Zaimis refused, proof that the Greek government had chosen to dismember former ally Serbia rather than the Ottoman Empire as a priority.
Complicated by this project, Venizelos had authorized - before being dismissed from his functions - an Anglo-Italo-French expeditionary force of 250,000 men commanded by General Sarrail, who settled in Thessaloniki. The 150,000 survivors of the Serbian army, first evacuated to Corfu, then occupied by the Entente, met in Thessaloniki in April 1916 (not before King Constantine and his new Prime Minister Stephanos Skouloudis had forbidden them to take the Corinth Canal). The Greek government even authorized the Bulgarian troops (enemies of the Entente) to advance towards Thessaloniki, granting them the strongholds of Serres and Kavala.
The Breakup
After having attempted one last conciliation, which the sovereign refused to receive, Venizelos left Athens to return to Crete. He then published (September 27, 1916) a proclamation to the "entire Hellenism"; to which he asked him to take charge of his own destinies and to "save what can be saved" by cooperating with the Entente so that "not only Europe is freed from German hegemony, but also the Balkans from Bulgarian hegemonic claims". In November, Venizelos organized in Thessaloniki a provisional government of National Defense (Ethniki Amyna), a rival to the government loyal to the king led by Spyrídon Lámpros. This was called "Ethnikos Dikhasmos". Thessaly and Epirus, as well as a part of the Army, followed Venizelos.
A buffer zone between northern Greece and "old Greece" it was organized by the Entente, which supported the Venizelos government politically and financially. A Franco-British fleet, under the command of Admiral Dartige de Fournier, occupied the Bay of Salamis to put pressure (as at the time of the Crimean War in 1885) on Athens, to which various and successive ultimatums were sent, mainly concerning to the disarmament of the Greek army. Nicholas II refused, however, to have Constantine deposed.
On December 1, 1916, King Constantine gave in to the demands of the French admiral, and Dartige de Fournier's troops landed in Athens to seize the requested artillery pieces. Nevertheless, the army loyal to Constantine had secretly mobilized and fortified Athens. The French were greeted by heavy fire. The admiral had to take refuge in Zappéion and was able to flee alone during the night. The massacre of the French soldiers was dubbed the 'Greek Vespers'. The King congratulated his war minister and General Dousmanis.
Despite what happened, the Entente did not act immediately. Russia, but also Italy, wavered. It was only on June 11, 1917 that Constantine's abdication was demanded. On June 12, under the threat of a landing of 100,000 men at Piraeus, the king went into exile without officially abdicating. His second son, Alexander, ascended the throne. His faithful, including General Doúsmanis and Colonel Ioannis Metaxás, were deported to Corsica. On June 21, Venizelos formed a new government in Athens, and on the 26th, Entente troops settled there. Greece, with an army purged of Constantinian elements, went to war on the side of the Entente against Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire.
The "Great Catastrophe"
Aftermath of World War I
In the summer of 1918, 300,000 Greek soldiers were fighting on the Eastern Front under the command of General Franchet d'Esperey. Bulgaria capitulated on September 29 and the Ottoman Empire on October 31. The Greek participation in the victory allowed him to achieve practically everything that the Big Idea dreamed of.
Greece sent two divisions to the White Armies commanded by Vrangel in southern Russia to protect the 600,000 "Pontic Greeks", but also with the aim of establishing itself as the new great Orthodox power.
Italy did not wait for the decisions of the Treaty of Versailles to try to dismember the Ottoman Empire. She landed her troops at Antalya and marched them towards Smyrna. To prevent an early collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom, France and the United States authorized Greece to militarily occupy Smyrna. On May 15, 1919, protected by the British fleet, the Greek troops landed, committing all kinds of atrocities and massacres: 350 Turks perished in the clashes. The skirmishes and skirmishes continued until a true armed conflict broke out. This occupation of Izmir was in effect the catalyst for Mustafa Kemal's nationalist revolution.
Treaty of Sèvres
- Detailed Article: Sèvres Treaty
In August 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres granted Greece: Thrace, the islands of Imbros and Tenedos, and Smyrna (which then had more Greek inhabitants than Athens). This hinterland was mandated by the League of Nations until a referendum scheduled for 1925.
However, the Great Schism did not end. In the legislative elections of 1920, the monarchists (loyal to Constantine, not Alexander, who had just died bitten by his monkey) and the liberals of Venizelos faced each other. The royalists campaigned for demobilization and the peace proposition, "A small but honorable Greece". The liberals incited the resumption of the conflict to create a "Greater Greece embracing two continents and five seas (Mediterranean, Aegean, Ionian, Marmara and Black Seas)". The monarchists won the elections and restored to Constantine. The army was now purged of its Venizelist elements.
The application of the Treaty of Sèvres decided the events. Contrary to the city, Smyrna's hinterlands were mostly Turkish and opposed to Greek domination. The monarchists in the government reneged on their electoral program and covered an expansionist policy under the euphemism of the preservation of order, which led to a new Greco-Turkish war. However, since Constantine's return to power, Westerners were wary of Greece. This could no longer count on the same help as in 1918. All requests for arms, ammunition, even food were rejected. Turkey, led by Mustafa Kemal, put up a stubborn resistance. Greek nationalism clashed in this way with Turkish nationalism. The Greek offensive on Ankara in March 1921 was a disaster. In March 1922, Greece declared itself ready to accept the mediation of the League of Nations. The attack launched by Mustafa Kemal on August 26, 1922 forced the Greek army to retreat in front of the Turkish army, which massacred all the Greeks present in the region. Izmir, evacuated on September 8, was set on fire. It is estimated that 30,000 Greeks died in the event.
Treaty of Lausanne
- Detailed Article: Lausanne Treaty
The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that followed was unfavorable to Greece, which lost eastern Thrace, Imbros and Tenedos, Smyrna, and any chance of staying in Anatolia. The Greeks were driven out of Asia Minor after 3,000 years of presence. In this way, the Great Idea would never be realized.
To prevent any new territorial claim, a massive deportation of the population was carried out, an event that became known as the "Great Catastrophe". During the conflict, 151,892 Greeks had already fled from Asia Minor. The Treaty of Lausanne displaced 1,104,216 Greeks from Turkey, 40,027 Greeks from Bulgaria, 58,522 from Russia (because of the defeat at Vrangel) and 10,080 from other origins (Dodecanese or Albania, for example). In short, the Greek population increased in one fell swoop by 20%.
In contrast, 380,000 Turks left Greek territory to emigrate to Turkey and 60,000 Bulgarians from Thrace and Macedonia gathered in Bulgaria. The immediate reception of the refugees cost Greece 45 million francs; then the League of Nations organized a loan of 150 million francs for the settlement of the refugees. By 1935, Greece had spent 9 billion francs on the whole process. The Big Idea had cost dearly, and its partial failure put it out of the limelight of Greek political life for a time. In 1930, Venizelos, even on an official visit to Turkey, went so far as to nominate Mustafa Kemal for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Big Idea of the 20th Century: Cyprus
The Big Idea hadn't completely disappeared. He continued, without really saying his name, either as government propaganda, or to divert the attention of the population.
Thus, after the coup of August 4, 1936, Ioannis Metaxas proclaimed the advent of the "Third Hellenic Civilization", which followed the civilization of ancient Greece and the Byzantine civilization. The Italian attack from Albania and the consequent Greek victories allowed Greece to conquer, during the winter 1940-1941, Northern Epirus, which was then administered as a Greek province, before the German offensive in April 1941.
The occupation, the resistance, and then the civil war pushed the Big Idea into the background. The annexation of the Dodecanese islands in 1947 has nothing to do with this, since it was the result of the Italian defeat and the fact that Greece was part of the winning camp.
The population change of 1922 had not been total. Indeed, some Greeks had remained in Constantinople, now converted into Istanbul. There were also still about 120,000 Turks in Greece. Until the 1950s, thanks mainly to NATO pressure, Greece and Turkey had maintained cordial relations. Cyprus, occupied by the United Kingdom, became a 'bone of contention'. In 1955, the colonel of the Greek army, but of Cypriot origin, Georgios Grivas, launched a campaign of civil disobedience, after carrying out some attacks, whose purpose was first to expel the British, and then carry out the enosis with Greece. The Greek Prime Minister, Aléxandros Papagos, was not unfavorable to this. The British pitted the Turkish Cypriots against the Greek Cypriots. Faced with the enosis request of the Greek population (80% of the Cypriot population), 20% of the Turks responded with a request for "taksim" (partition). Cypriot problems had repercussions on the continent. In September 1955, reacting to the Greek Cypriots' request for enosis, anti-Greek riots were organized in Istanbul, destroying or damaging 4,000 shops, 100 hotels and restaurants, and 70 churches. This prompted a last great wave of migration from Turkey to Greece..
The Zurich Agreements of 1959 resulted in the independence of the island within the British Commonwealth. Inter-ethnic clashes beginning in 1960 led to a famous intervention by the President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, and the dispatch of a United Nations interposition force in 1964.
The Cypriot situation was recovered by the Dictatorship of the Colonels. It presented its coup of April 21, 1967 as the only way to defend the traditional values of the Helleno-Christian civilization. Brigadier General Stylianos Pattakos stated in 1968:
Young people from Greece... You hide, in your breasts and in your faith, this deep feeling of sacrifice. Back to the «Come take them!» of Leónidas, or the «I won't give you the City» of Constantine XI and «No!» of Metaxas. That was the “Stop or shoot!» of April 21, 1967.
The size of Greece from Antiquity to Byzantium, then that of the various dictators came to the surface. The Big Idea wasn't that far away.
The oil crisis of 1973 aggravated Greek-Turkish relations. Oil wells were discovered near Thassos. Turkey asked to be able to prospect in areas that were in conflict with its neighbor Greece, while the situation of the colonels deteriorated. The students had revolted in November 1973 and the Junta had sent tanks to repress the Polytechnic School. The Big Idea was then used again to divert attention from internal problems.
At the height of the 1973 Aegean oil crisis, Brigadier General Ioannidis attempted, in July 1974, to overthrow Cypriot President Makarios and proceed to enosis with Cyprus. This generated an immediate reaction from Turkey. He invaded the north of the island, with a Turkish majority. Both countries proceeded to a general mobilization. However, the military dictatorship did not survive this new failure. The Big Idea still had repercussions in Greek domestic politics.
In a stabilized Europe, the Big Idea seems to have completely disappeared, although Greek-Turkish disagreements over border areas recall Greek and still true irredentist claims. But the economy (oil or fishing) became the main cause of these disputes.
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