Talk:Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)

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Before any edits

Sorry for writing on top, the rule is still to right below older comments, stick to chronology, it makes it easier to read.

One thing to bare in mind, this article is still of average quality, but has a LONG history of stupidity, abuse, nationalism and POV pushing, believe me this is perfect compared to the past. BEFORE you complain or change anything, take some time to read the archived talk pages to see what points of controversy existed in the past.Deadjune1 (talk) 11:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

New rules for this article

We have people willing to contribute productively here to a controversial topic (and, quite frankly, the amount of silliness reflected in the protection log is ridiculous), but they are being deterred by edit warring.

This is situation is not acceptable, so we're going to try out some new rules for this article. The edit warriors on this page forfeited the right to gentleness quite some time ago, and no one really wants an arbitration case, methinks. As I and others have done in the past, at Liancourt Rocks and Islam (for example), the usual rules are going to be tightened up.

• Any single-purpose accounts/IPs that turn up here on their first edit, make a revert or contentious edit, and then walk off, will be blocked.
• Uncooperative editing is not permitted. Do not make an edit that you know will be reverted. "Uncooperative" means: any edit that significantly shifts the POV balance in such a way that a reasonable outside observer must know in advance it will be unacceptable to the other side.
• Instant reverting without discussion will not be permitted either. If you simply have to revert, please wait until the issue at hand has been fully discussed on this talk page.
• Edit summaries.All edits must be accompanied by precise, informative edit summaries. These must clearly indicate if an edit contains something potentially contentious. In particular, all reverts (complete or partial) must be clearly marked as such.
• Really blatant POV which obviously violates NPOV by simply declaring either side of the dispute right and the other wrong, may be treated like vandalism and reverted.
• Incivility on this talk page, or in edit summaries, will not be tolerated, and will be punished heavily by block.
• Anyone who violates 1RR within a 24 hour period will be blocked.

Violation of the above conditions will be rewarded by block, and savagely so, until the message sinks in. Fortunately, everyone seems a bit more inclined to edit constructively, so this should not be necessary. We'll keep these rules in place for a month, I think, at least to begin with. Please let users who want to edit well and are not fans of edit wars, do so. Thank you. Moreschi ^Talk 22:21, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Army size

Any neutral source?I know that in 1921 Greek army reached it's maximum size of nearly 200,000 personnel (fighting,logistical,stationed).Obviously the Turkish army as the conflict grew could attract big numbers from the population and after 1920 could acquire guns from deals with France, Italy and USSR.Can someone help find some neutral sources about the army size of both combatants throughout the 3 years of conflict? Eagle of Pontus (talk) 13:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The turkish army had generally smaller numbers than the greek, but lesser needs as well. On the greek side huge quantities of manpower were needed to support the campaign. In 1922 the total size of the turkish western front (fighting the greeks) was 113,810 men of which 93,940 were combatant. The greek army (the front units) had 161,291 men, of which 85,000 were combatant. The difference comes from the fact that the turkish army did not cout the logistical units as military personnel. Every turkish division had some 7,500 men, while a greek some 11,000 men. Both had however similar actual strentgh, because the greek divisions included many non-combatant units, such as at least 3,000 transport mules and their guides (every mule had one).--Xristar (talk) 08:29, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Venizelism movement?

This section is entirely irrelevant to its title, as it barely mentions anything about Venizelos and his politics, focusing instead on King Constantine... Cplakidas (talk) 14:15, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, The National Schism was important background (and major factor for the final defeat) NOT Venizelism CORRECTED TITLE, PLEASE COMMENT Also content needs improvement, take example from the very well written National Schism article. Deadjune1 (talk) 17:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "Kapur" :
  • Kapur, H. ''Soviet Russia and Asia, 1917-1927''
  • Kapur, H ''Soviet Russia and Asia, 1917-1927''

DumZiBoT (talk) 07:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

PLEASE do not go hot headed again and revert all my effort NO2=

Same again, i did not touch any of the controversial bits, I just hated the way the article was hard to read by someone that his first language is English and has NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EVENTS,

All you guy's seem to forget what is the purppose of an Encyclopedia, is not a fight of "I have 12 references that support my POV you only have 11 for your POV, I win, nah-nah-nah, I am better..." RELAXXXXXXXXXX Deadjune1 (talk) 13:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

PLEASE do not go hot headed again and revert all my effort No1=

All I did is to reedit the order of the paragraphs which was very haphazard and not in chronology, I also improved some structural problems and logical jumps. I also changed a couple of bad English. (What the F..K is "ouster???) PLEASE KEEP THE STRUCTURE or comment on your disagreement

1-Background
2-MILITARY OPERATIONS AND CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS (DO NOT MIX DATE ORDER)
3-OUTCOME-RESOLUTION-DISCUSSION OF WHY IT ENDED THIS WAY
4-ALL THE HOT ISSUES ABOUT ATROCITIES ETC KEEP AT THE END, DO NOT INCLUDE IN THE EVENTS AND MAKE IT HARD TO READ'
Deadjune1 (talk) 14:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

What happened between December and August??????

I agree with other well informed comments. obviously the advance was result of some winning on the Greek side! There was a major battle in the line Eskishejir-Afyonkarahisar in June-July that is not even mentioned. Can someone write something for the advance December 1920 to August 1921? Is ridiculous to give the impression that the Greek Army was advancing for a whole year being constantly defeated! Even an ignorant can understand there is something wrong in this article.

Significant edit, please read

I am quite certain this paragraph has caused heated discussions in the past, but encouraged by the balance established, I decided to expand the section on causes of the outcome, the reason being the older version was a bit poor in modern historiographical terms. Eg we cannot say that the entente just left Greece on their own because of the return of Konstantine, this sounds like a 1930s argument!

Please note that I kept the essence of the consensus version that remained around for a year now. The essence of causes are in both versions

1-GREECE LOSING SUPPORT AFTER 1920
2-KEMAL GAINING SUPPORT AFTER 1920
3-MORALE AND MOTIVES SWINGING IN FAVOUR OF TURKS
4-TURKISH STRATEGICAL ADVANTAGES (either due to reality or talent, both documented)
5-GREEK STRATEGIC DISADVANTAGES (either due to reality or errors/incompetence, both documented)

Please discuss HERE if you want to change-add, but be critical, not passionate. Do not revert without discussion, if you bother to read, is a change in form and little expansion, not change in the essence. I hope you agree with this as a core for further improvement, IS NOT PERFECT, just a start. Feel free to comment constructively. I know that a common way of non-constructively ruining my small contribution is to fill it with 'citation needed', but come on, help, don't fight the article.Deadjune1 (talk) 17:09, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

National Schism request for re-edit

Can someone re-write in the background the political situation in Greece due to the Venizelos-King split. Is not very good now. The full article is well written, I might have to steal stuff from there if nobody re-writes this the next one week. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deadjune1 (talk • contribs) 17:46, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Obviously the Greeks and Turks are on holiday

I did some work to improve this article from the point of view of someone that knows nothing and wants to know what this war was all about. Then I had a look in the archives of talk and I freaked. I wonder how come nobody so far has not automatically reverted my edits, there is long history in this article of any attempt of NPOV to be massacred. Apparently the Greco-Turkish combatants are on holiday. Good time to improve this one! (sorry I know this is not a forum but I could not help it, hehe) Deadjune1 (talk) 19:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Seriously now: This is a relatively unbiased article, and keep the way it is

This article is relatively neutral and please do not try to change by putting controversial stuff. I have been monitoring the previous Greco-Turkish editing wars in various articles and you will freak out with the level of atrocities perpetrated from both sides (permit me the pun) This is actually as good as it gets for a hot potato.Deadjune1 (talk) 22:20, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Significant expansion

I expanded a bit the Afyon battle section, please make constructive comments, I am not an expert on the topic, but I searched some secondary sources. In my undertanding this period was THE defining moment of the whole war, the Turks like to obscure their defeat then, but in reality this defeat helped them win overall, because the Greeks became emotional and instead of organising defence to keep what they had conquered/liberated, they continued the offensive with the irrational ratio of chances 50:50 (something like all or nothing logic). Deadjune1 (talk) 10:58, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

ARCHIVE page 4 now available

I archived last years comments, butr I kept the rules list because I think they should be always visible for potential editors. All of them are very reasonable, please stick to them. Deadjune1 (talk) 11:29, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Major clean up and edit

Work in progress, please contribute.
Please note that NOTHING was deleted, they just moved around under paragraphs that correspond more to the content. Do not go around shouting that I removed anything, this was an improvement of style with minor additions.
I made the background section a bit more readable without changing the established balance. Before it was quite ugly structure
The one side says-the other side says, which is not in the style of Wikipedia.
Also I made a clearer seperation beetween Claims for protection of Greek Community and Megali Idea, which are related but if you wanna keep them under different headings, please avoid duplication and the overlap in their content. Comments welcome, DO NOT REVERT. Deadjune1 (talk) 17:04, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

My final addition and clean-up

I waited for someone to do it but nobody volunteered, eventually I rewrote the National Schism paragraph to make it more relevant to this war. I also tried to shorten it, for details someone can visit the full article.

Then I did a bit of TLC and clean-up in the events, there were still some extrapolations and overlaps that made it look obvious that it was written by 20 different editors, I think now is more smooth and progressive. I did not dare touch the attrocities bit, is still very poor in style with those horrible lists of primary sources and witnesses, but I guess is impossible to change, (see Archives to understand) Deadjune1 (talk) 11:13, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Can I kindly request that no Greek or Turkish half-wit touches anything without good justification and discussion comments?Deadjune1 (talk) 11:13, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

It is strongly necessary to prove that, your references for so-called Greek and Armenian Genocides of Turkish Government in Anatolia were not propaganda materials to justify Greek Agression for those days. Otherwise it is not possible to consider those references as acceptable sources.Thank you.. [GA] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.231.237.55 (talk) 15:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Citation verification

I am starting a citation oriented verification of this article. I am Greek so you may dislike me, tag me, judge as whatever fits your personal label-tagging system. Nevertheless, sources and citations should be verified so that quotation of text is in context.

Here are some rules in a way that I shall try to verify sources.

Proposition 1: "Absolutely Authoritative" : An authoritative source may not be absolutely authoritative.

Proposition 2: "On authoritative source" : Person A who is somewhat authoritative in a field X is not necessarily authoritative outside that field.

Proposition 3: "On cross validation" : Two sources validate if and only if they are in consensus and they are independent.

Proposition 4: "Transfer of Credibility" : Quotation of a somewhat authoritative person A in a field X of a quotation of the sayings of person B, whom the latter may be of unknown credibility, does not necessary make person B or person's B sayings credible and or authoritative. Unless sufficient cross validation is provided.

Citation - Specifics:

Not cited: "The National Schism in Greece..." : This is not cited at all and seems superficial and speculative. It might improve the credibility of the section to provide some exact citing.

Should be removed:

"Historian Taner Akcam noted that a British officer claimed:[43] ... The National forces ... "

This falls under proposition "transfer of credibility". My personal opinion is that taking a look at the book, the scope of this is to reflect the opinion of the British that everyone was doing ethnic cleansing. Therefore, this is out of context here since the original quotation of the author does not serve the purpose here. This was to show the opinion of someone without attributing credibility. Second, the source "A British officer" is anonymous and unverifiable.Please consider revising.

Toynbee seems to be the main source. Since I could not access the related pages online, I will get back to this once i have the relative material from the library. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Georgopl (talk • contribs) 12:16, 16 November 2008 (UTC) --Georgopl (talk) 16:11, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

THE ARTICLE is using FOUR principal sources as references. The section under dispute (Greek Massacres) is solely based upon the views of A.J. Toynbee and his book . It is controversial how one that states : "noted that it was the Greek landings that created the Turkish Nationalist Movement led by Mustafa Kemal and it is almost certain that if the Greeks had never landed at Smyrna, the consequent atrocities on the Turkish side would not have occurred" (A.J. Toynbee) in the same book p.312 . It is controversial since under this source "«1,000,000 Greeks Killed?» January 1 1918 p.15 New York Times" there seems to be a bias on the side of the Turks. Certainly, A.J. Toynbee has to be cross-referenced. Cross - referencing does not mean referencing another source (i.e. another page ) of the same book. --Georgopl (talk) 01:54, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Other suggestions

Would you consider changing the title Greco-Turkish War to Greek-Turkish War or maybe Anatolia Confict, in order that this may be written in proper English?--Georgopl (talk) 16:48, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

in response to above comment

Who says that Greco-Turkish war is improper English? Sounds perfect to me, is used in many secondary sources.Deadjune1 (talk) 17:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Under : Occupation of İzmir (Smyrna) (May 1919)

The article seems to contradict itself: "By contrast, the Turkish population saw this as an invading force, as they resented the Greeks" with later on under Massacres the citation of 48, where a "British Officer" allegedly supports that the Turks where submissive and would cooperate with any occupying force ... Maybe one should reconsider making assumptions like "as they resented the Greeks" which might be true for a few but are not easily supported.--Georgopl (talk) 19:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

---

1. Turkey --> Turk --> Turkish

Greece --> Greek > Greek

e.g. :

Turkish Goverment - Greek Goverment, not Greco Goverment

Turkish Parliament - Greek Parliament

Turkish market - Greek Market

Turkish War - Greek War

and so on...

Greek-Turkish War

Greco does not exist in any dictionary or under any grammatical form in English.

2. Additionally, Greco-Turkish war has to be specific. Turkey is a state after 1923 therefore a war with Turkey cannot be earlier than that.

3. The title is misleading since Greece occupied this area as a result of 1st world war. Other forces were British and French troops whom reports are recalled within the article. There was no war against a state that did not exist nor Greece had occupied this area beforehand.

I would strongly suggest a revision of title since it is both improper and misleading.

Suggestions :

Asia Minor Conflict

Anatolia Conflict

Greek Occupation of Asia Minor

Occupation of Asia Minor

Post World War Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire Partitioning

--Georgopl (talk) 21:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

After looking at the press articles of that era I have to agree that this term is commonly used. Therefore, I would only suggest the change based on grammatical and aesthetics claims. --Georgopl (talk) 22:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Title of article

1-Hey is the above a joke or something? Are you inventing your own grammatical rules? Have you noticed that there is a HYPHEN and when "Greece" forms composite words the word becomes AS A RULE Grec- and the o is euphonic? Check Greco-Italian War, Greco-Roman world, etc etc etc etc. This is the standard, correct English. Deadjune1 (talk)

2-The argument that "Turkey" did not exist is a valid one, but this is an Encyclopedia, which means compilation of secondary sources, not original ideas or research. I agree that the term that reflects the political entities in conflict would have been Greekkingdomgovermento-Turkonationalistankarabased War, but you see what I mean with this absurd example... It was a war between Greece and a big part of Turkey, and it is mostly recorded as such, don't spent time on such minor points. Anyway, most sources of the time referred to the Ottoman empire as Turkey for decades and decades before 1923, is not a super-major difference...Deadjune1 (talk) 19:46, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Other suggestions -response

I agree that the occupation paragraph is badly written, but it is a controversial paragraph and any changes should be well thought through, please contribute and put your comments about any changes. Could I dare to make it "some parts of the Turkish population" which reflects the fact that a significant part could not care less who had the power, nationalism was not so fiery in all, especially among the lower education-economic strata, but I might be wrong... Deadjune1 (talk) 17:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit

Please comment, the change was to
"By contrast, the majority of the muslim population saw this as an invading force. Some Turks resented the Greeks due to long history of conflict and antagonism. Nevertheless, the Greek landings were received by and large passively, only facing sporadic resistance"
Is not perfect, but reads less generalising and better English.Deadjune1 (talk) 17:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

"Some" is a WP:WEASEL word. Can you possibly be more specific? Thanks. Dr.K. (talk) 17:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Also "The majority of the Turkish population" is vague, i.e. weasel again. Do you have a citation for this exact (majority) claim? Dr.K. (talk) 17:45, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

---

Response

Words like "Some" and "majority" are difficult to be supported. What you can back is either they resented the Greeks or they did not. I would rephrase it:

"In contrast, a part of the Turkish population perceived this as an invasion due to a long history of antagonism and conflict (cite most recent conflicts). Though, there was only fading sporadic resistance which implies the occupation's passive endowment by the Turkish population."

--Georgopl (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the above comments, but is probably impossible to avoid words someone might consider weasel words. Is not that there was a scientific survey of the population with the question "do you like the Greek occupation". The above is through extrapolation. If you have any direct evidence, please use it in a objective edit. Anything I searched reads "some of the Turks", ... and I cannot give any more precise facts or numbers. Still it reads better from a generalising "all-or-nobody" statement. The passivity is a well documented fact though.

I propose to leave it for now, this paragraph has much potential for abuse Deadjune1 (talk) 19:24, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Could someone revert the anonymous edit made on Jan 4? It was an automated substitution of the words Moslem and Constantinople by Muslim and Istanbul, respectively, thoughout the whole text. (I'd do it myself, but I'm not sure about how one is to revert a "bad" edit that precedes at least one "good" edit without harming the latter one.) I don't have any opinion at all on which of the two conventions should be followed in the article. The problem is that the substitution was blind: i) it changed quoted passages that contained the former words, and ii) it created so-to-speak monstrous misconstructions, such as a sentence claiming that the Megali Idea referred to (the recovery of) Istanbul, which sounds really odd since Istanbul was a name that the Greeks found offensive as a reference to Constantinople back then (many still do, but this is totally irrelevant). Omnipaedista (talk) 11:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

More generally, could we have a bit more respect for the fact that this is the English Wikipedia? Thus it's best to call the cities Constantinople and Smyrna rather than Istanbul and Izmir, as that is how they were known in English until the 1930s. And transliterating "Megali Idea" is not translating it, as should be done if people are to understand it: it probably needs to be "Great Vision" throughout. Diomedea Exulans (talk) 19:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The latter change would be in opposition to the general convention of keeping the phrase Megali Idea untranslated in all Wikipedia articles, since there is not an unambiguous way to render it properly (Idea versus Vision), and more importantly, since most anglophone academic works on the subject refer to is as Megali/Megale Idea without any attempt to translate it. As for the misquoted passages mentioned above, I was glad to see that they have already been detected and corrected by now. --Omnipaedista (talk) 01:38, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I suppose then that I think it is the convention that is wrong, as Omnipaedista describes it. Is not Wikipedia for the general user rather than specialist academics? Diomedea Exulans (talk) 10:08, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Minor additions for change of government

I added some of the reasons why Venizelos lost the election, is wrong to assume that the Greeks just voted about the war, as usually the case all over the world, people vote-out a government mostly for the economy and internal politics, and that was the case here as well. Nobody really believed that Constantine will withdraw from Turkey the next day, that's naive to support.