Defiance: Greece and Europe

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Contents

Rebirth

The future of Europe, with a population of 500 million and a gross domestic product of &8364;13 trillion, depends on the self-sacrifice of 11 million Greeks in its south-eastern corner – or so we are told. If this seems to place an inordinate burden on a population 46 times fewer and a GDP 60 times smaller, then for the Greeks that is nothing new.

Like so many other nations within the Ottoman empire, and also the Russian and later the Austro-Hungarian empires (or the Kurds, Basques and Palestinians today), the Greeks were until the early nineteenth century a stateless and scattered people with a rich culture of their own and a growing yearning for statehood. Modern Greece is a product of revolution. Over three centuries, lawless kleftes or bandits had been defying the Ottoman rulers, together with defectors from the security forces (armatoloi) and their commanders (kapetanioi). Greece's rebirth was impelled by the radical wave that swept Europe in the wake of the French revolution. Inspired by the continental-wide aspiration for liberty, equality and fraternity, early Greek insurgents stood for a multi-national state where Greeks, Turks, Albanians, Slavs and all the other Balkan ethnic groups would participate as equals. Their pioneer Rigas Feraios translated the Marseillaise into Greek and appealed to Napoleon for military support. After his execution, the secret society Filiki Etaireia (Society of Friends) was founded to prepare an armed uprising alongside "the people of Europe, fighting for their own rights and liberties". Tens of thousands of Greeks were massacred during 11 years of guerrilla struggle. Since then, Greece has always been Europe's simmering volcano.

The Greek revolution was closely monitored by the "Great Powers", seeking to play off their rivals. Britain, France and Russia intervened decisively at the battle of Navarino to destroy the Ottoman fleet, while failing to raise the siege of Athens. The British were content to patronise a new Greek mini-state limited initially to the Peloponnese region.

Liberation from Ottoman rule did not free the Greeks from foreign domination, nor from constant coups, wars and civil wars over the following century and a half. In the 193 years since its foundation, Greece has had no fewer than 186 governments – some of them concurrently.

The ruling powers of Europe were wary from the beginning of these unpredictable Greek brigands. In London in 1830 it was decided that Greece's "independence" would take the form of rule by a king chosen by officials of the British Empire from one of the royal families of Europe. It was standard practice for British imperialism either to impose its rule through homegrown local chiefs and maharajahs or to foist surrogate hand-picked royals on those peoples not directly incorporated into its empire – the Hashemites, the Sauds, the Pahlavis and the rest. That is what it did in Greece repeatedly over the following 150 years.

First a spare prince from Saxe-Coburg was approached, and when he passed up the offer, Otto, a Bavarian teenager, was persuaded to accept. The British simultaneously appointed two imperial overlords to command Greece's naval and military forces.

Greece fell under the patronage of the British establishment, which soon found itself incapable of containing the implicit instability of the new state. The new puppet monarchy was propped up by Bavarian troops until new revolts in the 1840s forced Otto to concede cosmetic reforms, which gave him no more than a breathing space. In 1862, Otto was overthrown and fled the country. The "protecting powers" promptly began the search for a new king of Greece, first proposing Victoria's second son Alfred, but following objections from France and Russia, settling instead on another teenager: this time a Danish prince named Glucksburg (the grandfather of "our own" Prince Philip), who assumed the title George I.

The new Greece had a population of 700,000, which still left two million Greeks living under Ottoman rule, or that of other foreign powers (including Britain itself). To assuage anti-royalist sentiment, Britain later ceded the Ionian islands and granted Greece a formally democratic constitution, although it was not until 1951 that women would achieve the right to vote. By the time of the Crimean War, the British were now in alliance with the Turks, and actively suppressed any support for uprisings of Greeks still under Turkish rule.

It was largely left to the British government to determine the new boundaries of Greece. In doing so, it excluded the majority of its current territory. Even today, Greece's northern border is completely artificial: Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, Albanians, Gypsies and Turks were scattered all over the Balkans and moved freely throughout the area. Years later, there was still semi-clandestine movement across the border. (It was not until 1947 that Greece was to extend to its current boundaries, which were drawn in line with NATO's Cold-War considerations: its need to cut off the newly-established states of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania – all falling at least potentially within the Soviet sphere of influence – from access to the Mediterranean.)

From the very start, class conflicts were already raging, with the shipping magnates demanding huge compensation for their losses, and landowners blocking the attempts of the new government to distribute land previously owned by the Turks to the Greek poor. Between 1865 and 1875 Greece had seven general elections and 18 governments. It was only from 1875 onwards that Greek political life settled down for a while to a British-style alternation of rival establishment politicians: the "westerniser" Trikoupis and the "panhellenist" Deliyannis.

However, even this temporary stability was not to last long. Not only the government but the very borders of Greece were in constant flux. The drive for Pan-Hellenic unity – the Megali (big) Idea – remained powerful. In the 1860s, the people of Crete rose up under the demand for enosis (union with Greece) – a demand rejected by the "protecting powers". After Russia beat Turkey in a new war in 1878, the Ottoman Empire continued to crumble. Bulgaria gained independence and there were renewed claims on areas populated by Greeks. Britain gained overall responsibility for Cyprus, though it was to remain formally under Turkish sovereignty. In 1881, there were more uprisings which forced Turkey to cede more Greek-populated territories to Greece. In 1885, as Greece mobilised its armies for a new war to liberate other compatriots still under the Ottoman heel, the British government sent warships to impose a blockade.

Well before the end of the century, Greece found itself in a predicament that is easily recognisable today. The combination of Trikoupis' domestic liberal reform programme and Deliyannis' foreign expansionist military adventures had drained the treasury dry. No further taxes could be squeezed out of an already impoverished population. Not for the last time, Greece fell under the clutches of foreign bankers. By 1893, half of revenues were going to service external debts; then came a succession of agricultural failures. Greece was bankrupt.

Another familiar consequence of the crisis was the wave of emigration by young Greeks fleeing unemployment and decay at home. Between 1890 and 1914, 350,000 Greeks – one sixth of the then population of Greece – emigrated, mostly to the USA. Greece staggered on, surviving on the remittances of its emigrant workers.

Into the whirlwind

There followed half a century of wars, coups and civil wars. First came simmering conflict with Bulgaria over Macedonia – a melting pot of nationalities including Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Albanians, Gypsies, Jews and Vlachs. Then in 1897 Greece finally went to war with Turkey over the status of Crete. A Greek invasion of Turkey was repulsed, and once again it was the grossly misnamed "protective powers" who established a Commission of Control to enforce the payment of Greek indemnities to Turkey.

By the early 1900s, a combination of economic collapse, military disaster and national humiliation had led to a growing rebellion against the foreign-imposed monarchy. In Crete, the politician Venizelos led a daring revolt which captured the public imagination, and in 1909 a group of mutinous officers known as the Military League led a coup. In 1910 and again in 1911, Venizelos won two successive general elections with massive landslide majorities. He introduced substantial social and military reforms, formed the Balkan League alliance, and, following the defeat of Turkey by Italy, launched a military campaign. The first Balkan War forced Turkey to surrender nearly all of its European territories, and the second pitted Greece and Serbia against Bulgaria. Greece emerged with its population expanded from 2.8 to 4.8 million, and its land area extended by 70%. But three million Greeks were still left languishing under foreign (mostly Turkish) rule. Meanwhile, in Turkey, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling and the "Young Turks" were gaining influence.

In 1913, King George I – by that time the longest-reigning monarch in Europe, having somehow managed to survive on the throne for 50 years – was assassinated. He was succeeded by his son Constantine I.

The outbreak of the First World War plunged the monarchy even deeper into crisis. Constantine's sympathies (and those of his chief-of-staff, General Metaxas) lay with his brother-in-law Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, rather than with his cousins King George of Britain and Tsar Nicholas of Russia, while those of his prime minister, Venizelos, were with the Triple Entente. When Venizelos won another election in June 1915, and started preparations for war, he was dismissed by the king. New elections were called for December 1915, but they were nullified by a mass boycott. By 1916, Greece was close to civil war. August 1916 saw an antiroyalist military coup in Thessaloniki; royalist reprisals in Athens; and Venizelist counter-reprisals in the north. French and British forces landed at Piraeus to enforce a military ultimatum and blockaded the southern ports, bringing starvation to Athens. King Constantine fled the scene and, having failed to persuade his son George to take his place, finally managed to dump the crown on to his second son Alexander. With Greece now firmly back under British control, Venizelos was restored to the premiership in June 1917, and in July Greece entered the war on the Entente side. There was a purge of royalists and pro-German officers from the army and civil society, including Metaxas. May 1918 saw Greece's first military engagement in the war.

The end of the World War brought no respite to the chaos and flux of Greek politics. At the Paris peace talks, Venizelos staked a claim for the territories around Smyrna (Izmir) in Asia Minor, which was the home of a Greek population greater than Athens. As a cynical bargaining counter, he volunteered Greek troops to aid the French intervention in the Black Sea, part of the multinational armed intervention against the Russian revolution. Faced with fierce resistance by the newly mobilised Red Army, the Greek forces suffered heavy losses, along with the British, French and other interventionist armies.

In May 1919, Greek forces landed in Smyrna, sent to police the area on behalf of the British and the French – supposedly until a referendum could eventually be held to determine its fate. The atrocities they are said to have committed there against the local Turkish population aroused national resistance. The presence of the Greek army in Smyrna was disastrous for other reasons too. Anxious to secure the region's stability, it was determined to enforce the rule of both the Greek and Turkish ruling classes, and – being more efficient than the Ottoman authorities – was seen also by the Greek population less as liberator and more as the new oppressor.

While in 1920 the Treaty of Sevres handed over to Greece all the Greek-populated islands except for the Dodecanese, which were still occupied by Italy, Turkey refused to cede any territory on the Turkish mainland, above all Smyrna.

Meanwhile, although the new young king, Alexander, had suddenly died of blood poisoning, having met with an unfortunate accident (he had been bitten by a gardener's pet monkey in the palace grounds), the monarchy was still trying in vain to reassert its dominance. In 1920, there was a royalist assassination attempt on Venizelos, and in November he lost an election. The country was exhausted by years of wars and mass poverty. There was a succession of weak and short-lived governments. For the fifth time, Rallis became prime minister; in February 1921 he was replaced by Kalogeropoulos, to be succeeded in April 1921 by Gounaris, who himself lasted only until May 1922. Koumoundouros was appointed prime minister no fewer than ten times in 17 years.

A grossly rigged plebiscite was held in which, by a highly improbable margin of one million to ten thousand, the throne was restored – if only briefly – to Constantine, and a wave of reprisals rocked military and civil society.

Soon came disaster. In March 1921 a new offensive was mounted against the Turks. This time, Greek armies succeeded in penetrating beyond Smyrna almost into Ankara. With an overstretched supply line in areas devoid of Greek populations, the Greek army crumbled and the adventure ended in disaster.

In August a fierce counter-attack by Ataturk drove them back, and in September 1922 the Turks retook Smyrna. Thirty thousand Christians were massacred, and 250,000 Greeks and other Christians fled to Greece. The defeat had become a full-scale rout. A counter-coup was staged by the Venizelists, forcing Constantine to abdicate in favour of his son George and move back into exile. There followed a new purge of royalists, and a round of executions of former generals, politicians and prime ministers.

By 1923, Greece had lost half of its "historic" land and suffered huge human losses. The Treaty of Sevres had honoured Lloyd George's promise of territory for Greece in return for support in the fight against the Ottoman Empire ... but now it was shamefully abandoned under the Treaty of Lausanne, which formally rescinded it. Venizelos represented Greece at the negotiations and was forced to accept the treaty which established the current boundaries of Greece and Turkey (apart from the Dodecanese, which were only transferred to Greek sovereignty in 1947, following the defeat of Italy in the Second World War).

There followed a massive population exchange – one of the biggest mass migrations in modern history, comparable to the later expulsions of the Crimean Tartars or the Sudeten Germans. Four-hundred-thousand Muslims living in Greece were relocated to Turkey, while a massive 1.3 million Greeks were forced out of Asia Minor to settle in Greece. Refugees came streaming in, swelling the population by 20%. Between 1914 and 1923, an estimated 750,000 to 900,000 Greeks had died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks: yet another of the forgotten genocides of the twentieth century.

In 1923 a new royalist coup led by General Metaxas was suppressed, and the king and queen were driven out of the country. In January 1924, Venizelos won new elections, but resigned after just one month in a dispute with his allies over the future of the monarchy. In March 1924, the National Assembly voted to discard the monarchy and establish a republic. Soon afterwards, a national plebiscite approved this decision by a twothirds majority. The monarchy – that symbol of national humiliation – was overthrown.

And still the political instability continued. Between Venizelos' resignation in February 1924 and his return to office in July 1928, there had been ten different prime ministers and several military coups. In 1925, General Pangalos took power; in 1926, General Kondylis overthrew him. It was only with the return of Venizelos, who again held office from 1928 to 1932, that even a brief breathing space of temporary stability was restored. Venizelos normalised relations with Greece's Balkan neighbours and reached an agreement with Ataturk.