Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
42 
vindicated Venizelos among supporters and won over opponents
41
. That he 
postponed an electoral reckoning until after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed in 
August 1920 lends credence to this view. 
Greece was in no position to take offensive action in July 1917 and more than a year 
would pass before she and the Entente forces based in Salonica were ready to break 
out against the Bulgarians. The Allied record against Turkey had up to the middle of 
1917 been mixed. There had been successes, such as the catastrophic Ottoman defeat 
at Sarıkamış in January 1915 at the hands of the Russians and the winter
42
. But the 
Gallipoli attack had been seen off by the beginning of 1916
43
; Turkey still held 
Palestine; she had put up fierce resistance in Mesopotamia and with two years of 
effort the British had only got as far as Baghdad
44
. The advance of the Russians into 
eastern Anatolia, where they held Trabzon, Erzurum and Erzincan had not made any 
gains for a year, and its stability after the February revolution looked uncertain. 
During the war years political divisions in Turkey had been, in contrast to those in 
Greece, latent rather than overt. Since the coup of January 1913 government had 
been in the hands of the İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and 
Progress – CUP)
45
; political action on the part either of the traditionalist forces 
which brought about the brief “counter-revolution” of 1909 or of the various 
41
So Toynbee, 72-73. In fairness to Venizelos it should be acknowledged that he and his Foreign Minister, 
Politis, also expressed a willingness in September and October 1918 to accept mandatory or alternative guarantee 
arrangements for the protection of the Greek populations rather than cession to Greece: Leontaritis, 369-370 and 
617 n. 91; 475 and 660 n. 29. 
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Mango, 141 
43
Mango, 158 
44
McMeekin, 356 
45
Zürcher 2004, 110 

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