British document shows Greek plan to invade İstanbul in July 1922

[Onur]

Turkish historian found a document in British state archives while he was doing his research in England. The document shows that the Greek government planned to occupy and invade Istanbul in July 1922 but it`s been refused by the Brits, Italians and French. It looks like they tried to do this as their last desperate attempt cuz in July 1922, they were constantly retreating to the İzmir and about to be kicked out from Anatolia, which already happened in September 1922.

British document shows Greek plan to invade İstanbul
A newly released book titled “İngiliz Yıllık Raporlarında Türkiye: 1922” (Turkey in Annual British Reports: 1922), part of a series of the same name by Marmara University history professor Ali Satan, includes a document drafted by the then-British high commissioner in İstanbul indicating that the Greek army had planned to invade the city in July 1922.


According to the document, written by British High Commissioner Nevile Henderson, Greece asked the allied powers for permission to invade İstanbul and was denied this approval on July 31, 1922. The British government along with France and Italy showed no tolerance for the plan and stopped Greece from realizing its ambition.

Great Britain recalled its fleet located in the Mediterranean to İstanbul to show its determination in line with the other great powers to stop Greek troops from entering the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, which was occupied by the allied powers at the time.

Henderson stated in his report that the assignment of Georgios Hatzanestis as commander-in-chief of the Greek Army in Asia Minor instead of Anastasios Papoulas in May 1922 was the first step in the occupation plan. Hatzanestis was known as a radical and a hawk in comparison to his colleague. Henderson indicated the attack on Samsun was a pre-strike prepared by the Greeks to facilitate the implementation of the occupation plan.

According to Henderson, the march of four Greek divisions to İstanbul was a very stupid move that was designed to restore the morale of Greek soldiers and thus weaken and demoralize the enemy by directly capturing the capital city. The occupation plan failed roughly a month before the last big battle, which took place between the Turkish and Greek armies on Aug. 26. Ali Satan addresses the significance of the document by implying that if the Greek army had succeeded in invading and occupying İstanbul, the Turkish army would have had to fight to take İstanbul back before fighting for İzmir.

22 August 2011

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-2546...-istanbul.html

Btw, Georgios Hatzanestis has been sentenced to death and executed in Greece because he lost the war against Turks. They executed few more soldiers at the same time but some of the high ranked Greek commanders escaped to England in that time to seek refuge and later they became British citizens and it`s been found out that most of the high ranking officers in Greek army was in fact working with MI6, British intelligence service.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Do you think it would have been in the interest of the Greeks to first try and capture Istanbul then? Would that have made it more difficult for the Turks and possibly allowed the Greeks in Izmir to attack them from the rear?

[Sekirani]

I think it definetly would have made it difficult for the Turks to fight the Greeks in a rearguard action

[Onur]

Ofc Greeks wanted to invade Istanbul since day 1 but even Brits was against this idea because there was no way in hell French and Italians would accept this. Italians was already extremely disturbed about Greece and even hostile to them because England requested from them to leave all the Aegean islands and Aegean Anatolia to Greece. Actually it was the Italians first who were going to get Aegean islands and the mainland, not Greeks. So, it was kinda like a clash of former civilizations. British wanted to create a puppet hellenic kingdom stretching from central Anatolia, Cappadocia to Albania but Italians wanted to revive Roman empire under their control. Italians already had Libya and they wanted to get all the Aegean islands, Aegean Anatolia to get the full control of the mediterranean sea. Ofc British was against that Roman dream (as you know, after 15 years of that, Mussolini tried to achieve same goal in WW-2). So, the plan was to create new Istanbul to be like today`s Belgium, a cosmopolitan place ruled by an international committee, denationalized and demilitarized. Some kind of fake state in paper.

BUT more importantly, Turks would never allow this. Istanbul was under de-facto occupation of England, France and Italy from 1919 to 1922 but they were just sitting in their warships at bosphorus shores but they were keeping the last sultan of the empire under their command. There was meetings of 100.000s of people everyday in the streets of Istanbul during those days and everyone was declaring that if a single Greek soldier steps inside Istanbul, then they would all die and destroy whole city including themselves at the same time.

We cant know what would exactly happen if Brits would allow them to do that. They would definitely fail again because they couldn't even manage to occupy Aegean Anatolia while there was no Turkish army (Turkish army completely disbanded shortly b4 Greek soldiers came to Anatolia and all their weapons has been confiscated by the allies). They were struggling a lot vs the guerrilla fighting of ordinary Turkish people and as we know, as soon as Ataturk secretly gathered our army in 1922, Greek army constantly defeated by them.

But i am sure about one thing; If Greeks would invade Istanbul and do the same rapes, killings and massacres as they did in Izmir, then surely there would be not a single Greek left in Istanbul as early as 1922 cuz all of them would be expelled out as a result of this. Then Greek forum members like Fatso would come here today and shout like "LIAR..., ANSWER FOR THE CONSTANTINOPLE GENOCIDE FIRST" just as they do so today, for the so-called Symrna and Pontus "genocides".



P.S: As a result of the Greek megali idea fantasy and their adventure in Anatolia under the command of British MI6 agents, 530.000 Turks and 310.000 Greeks died in Aegean Anatolia between the years of 1919 to 1922. The majority of the 530.000 Turks was just ordinary civilians, so they did a whole massacre in Aegean Anatolia and this can be considered as a genocide because there was no Turks left in Aegean Anatolia except guerrilla fighters between 1919-1922. If this is not considered as a genocide today, it`s only because we won the war in the end. Also, only a few 1000 of ~300.000 Greek soldiers was able to return to mainland Greece alive in the end. As you can guess, most of these so-called Greek soldiers was Albanian speaking Arvanites.

http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5042

[George S.]

What a stupid mistake that would have been had they tried to invade instanbul by the greek army.LIke other campaigns by the vritish eg galipoli it would have been destined to fail.Wholesale slaughter on a grand scale.