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CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
31 
separately and at other times interacted. For a short summary one can pick out three 
such levels. The first concerns inter-state diplomacy and war. The second concerns 
the population movements and eliminations which war provoked; these in a 
relatively short span of time made it appear inconceivable, in striking contrast to 
previous epochs, that people with different identities could live side by side. The 
third concerns intra-state dissension. 
A short summary will not take full account of a number of important factors, of 
which one can pick out two. The first of these is the all-important background in the 
world of ideas in which the challenge of the west had separately obsessed Greek and 
Turkish intellectuals for decades before the war. The second is the great power 
rivalry which conditioned Greco-Turkish relations, but for which these relations 
were but one minor factor among other larger ones
3
. The Greco-Turkish war was just 
one of many territorial conflicts spawned by the First World War from Ireland to 
Mesopotamia
4
; treating it in isolation with spasmodic injections of great power 
influence, as this one, following most others, will do, deprives the narrative of 
illuminating analogies with other contemporary conflicts; but it also makes the 
apparently intermittent and even incoherent nature of the attention paid by the great 
powers still more difficult to understand. 
The frictions between Greece and Turkey in their modern form could be traced back 
to the events which led to the outbreak of the Greek revolt in 1821; and accounts of 
the Anatolian War of 1919-1922 or of modern Greek history generally are usually 
3
Leontaritis, 438-503, places the diplomatic efforts of Greece in the context of Great Power diplomacy.
4
See Gerwarth for a recent synoptic treatment arranged by region. 

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