Asia Minor disaster (Mikrasiatiki catastrophe)

Nations have official dates. When making official history, failures are made acceptable and successes are overstated. The strength of the enemy is exaggerated, his own strength is understated. Thus, defeat is justified, success, glory and honor in victories become more valuable. In a sense, we can say that the victors write the history of war. Reading the Turkish War of Independence is like reading an epic story. Because the National Struggle is like a parade of heroes who are determined, self-sacrificing and aware of what they are doing.

There are war history studies of the General Staff regarding the strategic and tactical details of the Turkish War of Independence. In addition to these, Nutuk and memoirs are also important sources. One of the most objective evaluations in terms of strategy and tactics is my dear friend Dr. Mehmet Çanlı's doctoral thesis named "Military Strategy Applied in the National Struggle".

The subject of our article today is mostly what the other side, the Greek Army, thought and did in the Great Offensive on the 99th anniversary. No one wants to share failures, but if there is a failure, there are mistakes. We will now examine the strategic mistakes made by the Greek side in the Great Offensive.

The promise of Mustafa Kemal Pasha for the Battle of Sakarya, "We will strangle the enemy in the sanctuary of Anatolia" actually gives the codes of the Great Attack. From a strategic point of view, the Great Offensive is the continuation of Sakarya. After Sakarya, there was almost a balance between the Turkish and Greek Armies. This is not a balance of power. The numerical superiority of the Greek side can be seen in the records. The balance we are talking about means using the offensive initiative.

The strategic target of the Greeks in the Kütahya Eskişehir and later Sakarya Pitched Battle was Ankara, the center of the National Struggle. By seizing Ankara, the Greek Army wanted to destroy the resistance in Anatolia, to break the will and determination of the Turkish side to fight, to provide moral superiority and to be permanent in Anatolia. They knew that the heart of the resistance was Ankara. This thought led the Greeks to error. When the Battle of Sakarya was over, the Greek Army was stuck in the east of the Sakarya river, demoralized and perhaps most importantly had to spread over the wide geography of Anatolia.

After the Sakarya Pitched Battle, the Greeks had four options;

-- To regroup and attack in the direction of Ankara,

-- To fortify the current situation and prepare for a re-attack,

-- To consolidate the current situation and repel a possible Turkish attack,

-- To occupy a smaller geography by pulling back.

The Greek Army was gradually withdrawn to the harem of Anatolia, which Mustafa Kemal Pasha spoke of. The frontal depth of the Greek Army was 500 kilometers from west to east in the direction of İzmir-Eskişehir, and its width was 600 kilometers from Mudanya/İznik to Nazilli from north to south. The Greeks had lost their weight center. For both defense and attack, these distances were beyond military measures. If we explain with the laws of physics, with this front width and depth, the Greek army lost its momentum of movement and went into inertia.

On the contrary, the frontal width of the main units of the Turkish Army was about 60 kilometers, and the most important part of this width was the area of ​​​​about 30 kilometers between the Greek northern and southern army groups, which was the only gap in the front.

As the offensive power was broken in the Sakarya Pitched Battle, its military lines were based on a physical obstacle like the Sakarya river. It was difficult to expect a forward operation similar to the Kütahya-Eskişehir battles from the Greek army.

The defensive front that the Greeks formed in Anatolia in a period of about a year without conflict from September 1921 to July 1922 showed that the Greek army did not intend to continue the invasion.

Greece declared the Western Anatolian Ionian State on 30 July. In the current situation, this meant that the Greeks would remain in the Anatolian geography through annexation without leaving their geography.

Since the Turkish Army did not attack the Greek Army in a period of approximately one year after Sakarya, the Greeks were able to easily establish and fortify their defense lines from north to south. 30 km between the south-north groups we just mentioned along the whole Greek line. Except for one long field, two-stage trench trenches with copious amounts of barbed wire were built in front of it, and machine guns were placed in front of the trenches. Machine guns were hidden and guarded by trees and stone-walled positions. On the bare ground, trenches were created in the third and fourth trenches, and the machine guns were hidden behind barbed wire. The Greek defensive line consisted of fortified positions on impassable successive hills.

In June-July 1922, almost all of the Greek generals at the front made a general attack against this huge and insurmountable defense of the Turkish Army.

It is seen that he did not expect the Turkish Army to attack. The only General who thought otherwise was Trikoupis, the commander of the Greek southern army. Trikoupis realized that the Turkish Army could launch a general offensive towards the end of August from the mobilization of the Turkish troops and the intelligence he obtained, and he explained his opinion, but he did not insist on this opinion enough due to his distrust of the Greek Commander-in-Chief. Even more interesting was that Trikoupis also predicted that the Turkish attack might be from the Afyon region.

However, it was out of the question for the Turkish Army to wait and accept the status quo in the current situation. Because there was a very serious loss of human resources and materials in Sakarya. On the one hand, the army was trying to gather, on the other hand, it was trying to suppress the internal rebellions. There was strong opposition in the parliament. Every day spent could lower his determination to fight. The success achieved in Sakarya had to be sustained. For this purpose, Mustafa Kemal Pasha had planned the general offensive operation for June 1922, but the inadequacy of military preparations made it necessary to postpone it.

In July 1922, an unexpected development occurred. Prolonged military action, uncertainty, and dwindling British support had mobilized opponents of the war in Greece. The Greek government came up with the idea of ​​occupying Istanbul in order to silence the opposition and consolidate domestic politics. While it was known that the British and French would not remain silent about the occupation of Istanbul by the Greeks, the Greeks pulled 2 divisions from the front and sent them to Thrace in line with the invasion plan of Istanbul. This development showed that in August 1922, before the first rains fell on the Anatolian steppes, in August 1922, the most favorable conditions were formed for a general attack.

Let's think of the Greek defensive front as a fault line. A straight line descending from Iznik from north to south changes its direction in Afyon and turns to the southwest by breaking. At this breaking point in the middle of the northern and southern armies forming the Greek front, there is Murat Mountain, an impenetrable forest and mountainous area. This breaking point later became the breaking point of the war. Because the weight center of the Turkish Army was formed here, the Turkish Army broke through the Greek defense front in this region and opened the way to Izmir, which went to victory with a decisive battle in this region.

To summarize;

The strategic goal of the Greeks in Ankara is a purely political one. The idea of ​​controlling half of the Anatolian geography with a force of 200,000 was unrealistic.

As the Greeks approached Ankara, the depth and width of the front increased, and in parallel, the Greek Commander-in-Chief violated the war principles such as weight center, security, precaution, and power saving.

The Greek Army has been greatly influenced by the political developments in Greece and in the international environment. This issue directly affected the command-command and morale motivation of the Greek Army and the decisions taken.

The Greek side underestimated the combat capability of the Turkish Army and the strategic and tactical capabilities of the Turkish generals. The Greek public was informed that until the Sakarya Pitched Battle, the Greek Army was fighting with a ragged nationalist gang. On the front, however, the situation was very different.

The Greek Commander-in-Chief could not force the Turkish Army to a decisive battle in a narrow geography where it could use its numerical superiority effectively. Offensive or defensive options have always remained at the initiative of the Turkish side. The Turkish Army got results by forcing the Greek Army to a decisive battle whenever and wherever it wanted.

The Anatolian adventure of the Greeks ended with a decisive defeat with the Great Offensive. This adventure, known as the "Asia Minor Disaster" on the Greek side, caused a great political crisis in Greece. On September 26, 1922, the Greek Army dissolved the Assembly, the government resigned, and the Greek King abdicated.

The political and military responsibles of the "Asia Minor Disaster" were arrested. Those responsible were tried in the Military Court in November 1922.

Former Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Dimitrios Gounaris, Former Minister of Finance and Prime Minister Petros Protopapadakis, Minister of Foreign Affairs Georgios Baltazzis, Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolaos Stratos, Minister of War Nikolaos Theotokis, and Former Commander-in-Chief of the Asia Minor Army General Georgios Hacıanestis, who went down in history as the “Sixes”, were found guilty. The Six” were executed by firing squad on November 28, 1922.

Is it the Greek General Trikoupis who predicted what would happen? He was appointed as the Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Armies on September 1, but was captured by the Turkish Army in Uşak on September 2, 1922. He learned that he was the Commander-in-Chief after he was captured. He was greeted kindly by Mustafa Kemal Pasha. He stayed in a prison camp in Kayseri for a while and was later sent to Greece. He was not held responsible for the Asia Minor Disaster like the others, and continued his state duties.