1920-1922 Could there have been a different outcome?
- Thread starter Kyriakos
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Ajidica
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Here is the wiki link though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_dotted_and_dotless_I
I should probably make sure I am the last person posting before answering questions if I don't want to get prempted by someone with a better answer.
If I did this I'd post about as third as much.
r16
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this is not a manhood debate , people in my town would have been real amused were ı to be involved in such a case . Nor ı am refuting Greek successes . Went to Ankara twice in my lifetime , first for compulsory military service in 2000 and when you come near Polatlı you see the monument for the battle of 1921 , maybe 100 , maybe 50 kilometres from Ankara and ı remember the area was lightly built up with houses all the way from Polatlı . If they weren't men enough , the Greeks wouldn't come that far . One needs to be realistic when "nationalistic" , with pipedreams you can do far worse then your enemies ; claiming all the courage/good for own side and ascribing all the cowardice/evil to the opposition is a sure recipe for eventual disaster .
and of course there were lots of different reasons . Take the Battle of Sakarya . Our backs were back to the wall and what nationalist-militarist propagandists claim as a huge invention by the great Gazi Mustafa Kemal which said "defence of the surface , not of a line " was a run of the mill , bog-standart "die where you are , no retreats" . It was a meat grinder , lots of casualties with many officers killed and the Greeks came and came , pushing on and on .The season was turning into Autumn . The British who were bankrolling the Greeks had not prepared for the delay and Greeks felt the steppes getting ready for the winter . It was cold at nights and the sacks that bread were brought in became popular items to be used as blankets . The British had not provided for this too . Bread deliveries suffered and hunger kinda set in . Which sapped Greek morale , in addition to the fact that they were also being killed in battle . ı don't know anything about the battle , have been a museum guide and ı doubt ı could explain the movements on a map or a sandtable . Until ı saw the monuments from the bus ı had thought the fighting was somewhere North to the Blacksea , Sakarya being the name of a coastal province ... It is the Stalingrad of the Turkish Liberation War , if you know what ı mean .
had the Kemalists had been anywhere strong or rather had Sakarya been a piece of cake , the follow up would have been immediate ; we had to spend a year for August 1922 . And not all of the delay was for building international relationships .
yes , Mustafa Kemal met with Italian officials before he left for Samsun in 1919 . Because Italians were somehow irritated by the English betrayal of their interests by giving İzmir to the Greeks . They couldn't stop London as imposing the Sevres - even before it was signed - would have taken boots on the ground and Italians could not afford it with their 11 or so Izonsos . So they turned into good neighbours , no clashes in their occupation of the Mediterrenean coast . French felt the anger when the Brits kinda sold them in early 1920 , they had 5 thousand men expedition into the South of the country and it was dealt with . Why , because the rest of their 100 thousand strong army was trying to stop the Arab rebellion of Syria . Local Armenian militias only added to practically racist history approach everybody currently derides . Yes , where were the Brits , why didn't they fight us ? They were popular with lots of people in Turkey and they were looking into future as their brilliant plan - quickly hatched - to "save" Russia from Godless merciless Bolsheviks was unravelling . They would need a buffer in the new version of the Great Game , as such they decided to slow down and cut their losses , Whites and all that . Which meant Russians could fill their pockets with the aid money collected from the Turkic regions of Asia and deliver only part of the weapons bought .Before 1921 or so they couldn't spare anything . It is an exaggeration to claim the Red Army was build on Turkish funds . Americans were about to play the British game and get us cheaply as a mandate , their isolationism quickly hatched by London to make more of the Washington treaties saw it they went nowhere .
which only left the Greeks as supported by the Brits . They were to kill as many of us as possible so that Ittihadist/Kemalist cadres would be destroyed in battle and the remnants would be happy to have British protection against the Moskof . And not every Brit was coldly against us , those with military vocation saw in increasing numbers as time went by that the Turkish Army was not that defeated . Which finally resulted in Toynbee , now in Istanbul to finish what he had started in 1915 by archival examination and re-arrangement , was delegated to talk against Greek re-arranging of population . "Cleansing" had to wait invention by Serbs . He was fired from his post in a university in 1924 , because the department had been funded by Greeks . His words in favour of Turkish sufferings had no impression on Lloyd George ; he was accustomed to oppose military views .
what comes next is not in any Turkish textbook . It involves a certain fairy tale as opposed to halfway truths in this one .
and of course there were lots of different reasons . Take the Battle of Sakarya . Our backs were back to the wall and what nationalist-militarist propagandists claim as a huge invention by the great Gazi Mustafa Kemal which said "defence of the surface , not of a line " was a run of the mill , bog-standart "die where you are , no retreats" . It was a meat grinder , lots of casualties with many officers killed and the Greeks came and came , pushing on and on .The season was turning into Autumn . The British who were bankrolling the Greeks had not prepared for the delay and Greeks felt the steppes getting ready for the winter . It was cold at nights and the sacks that bread were brought in became popular items to be used as blankets . The British had not provided for this too . Bread deliveries suffered and hunger kinda set in . Which sapped Greek morale , in addition to the fact that they were also being killed in battle . ı don't know anything about the battle , have been a museum guide and ı doubt ı could explain the movements on a map or a sandtable . Until ı saw the monuments from the bus ı had thought the fighting was somewhere North to the Blacksea , Sakarya being the name of a coastal province ... It is the Stalingrad of the Turkish Liberation War , if you know what ı mean .
had the Kemalists had been anywhere strong or rather had Sakarya been a piece of cake , the follow up would have been immediate ; we had to spend a year for August 1922 . And not all of the delay was for building international relationships .
yes , Mustafa Kemal met with Italian officials before he left for Samsun in 1919 . Because Italians were somehow irritated by the English betrayal of their interests by giving İzmir to the Greeks . They couldn't stop London as imposing the Sevres - even before it was signed - would have taken boots on the ground and Italians could not afford it with their 11 or so Izonsos . So they turned into good neighbours , no clashes in their occupation of the Mediterrenean coast . French felt the anger when the Brits kinda sold them in early 1920 , they had 5 thousand men expedition into the South of the country and it was dealt with . Why , because the rest of their 100 thousand strong army was trying to stop the Arab rebellion of Syria . Local Armenian militias only added to practically racist history approach everybody currently derides . Yes , where were the Brits , why didn't they fight us ? They were popular with lots of people in Turkey and they were looking into future as their brilliant plan - quickly hatched - to "save" Russia from Godless merciless Bolsheviks was unravelling . They would need a buffer in the new version of the Great Game , as such they decided to slow down and cut their losses , Whites and all that . Which meant Russians could fill their pockets with the aid money collected from the Turkic regions of Asia and deliver only part of the weapons bought .Before 1921 or so they couldn't spare anything . It is an exaggeration to claim the Red Army was build on Turkish funds . Americans were about to play the British game and get us cheaply as a mandate , their isolationism quickly hatched by London to make more of the Washington treaties saw it they went nowhere .
which only left the Greeks as supported by the Brits . They were to kill as many of us as possible so that Ittihadist/Kemalist cadres would be destroyed in battle and the remnants would be happy to have British protection against the Moskof . And not every Brit was coldly against us , those with military vocation saw in increasing numbers as time went by that the Turkish Army was not that defeated . Which finally resulted in Toynbee , now in Istanbul to finish what he had started in 1915 by archival examination and re-arrangement , was delegated to talk against Greek re-arranging of population . "Cleansing" had to wait invention by Serbs . He was fired from his post in a university in 1924 , because the department had been funded by Greeks . His words in favour of Turkish sufferings had no impression on Lloyd George ; he was accustomed to oppose military views .
what comes next is not in any Turkish textbook . It involves a certain fairy tale as opposed to halfway truths in this one .
r16
not deity
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now this TV channel has an history magazine that it publishes monthly . And it is seriously expensive too ! Probably because they give away a CD every month . Anyhow ı saw it in TV ads , and from a question in these forums about the sartorial standarts of a certain tribe ı think at least 2 CFC members have bought it . It has an introduction article on counterfactuals / what ifs , some pages on Evliya Çelebi and bandits . Though the cover and the concentration is on 1922 .
the August battles took place in a general setting of between approximately equal numbers of troops on a 300 km long front . Greeks were on the defensive , not only because of their lack of morale . The British had no idea what to do about us and their confusion was transported to the Greeks . Not surprising , as London was their only benefactor and making war overseas is not easy . Overseas despite 70 000 formerly and still Ottoman citizen Greeks of Anatolia served in the ranks of the Army of Athens . We were to attack but lacked the decisive superiority . And we had to attack , as politicians are always like vultures and look for the weak to stumble . The issue was resolved by concentrating the majority of the Army against the Southern section of the front . The importance of the area was not lost on the Greeks and they were well dug in . Though one can still assume that the defenses were not really up to the Western Front norms , but we were not up to the norms of 1918 either , no tanks , no stormtroopers , no gas . Even the artillery crews were trained from the ground up .
concentration took a lot of time . Troops would walk at night - hide at daylight , units were detailed to sweep the fields with bushes and tree branches to destroy footsteps and marks of advance . All of it against aerial reconnaissance because the Greeks had 50 planes to our 10 . SPADs were bought from Italy without gun synchronization , we had to adapt from D Vs . Whatever . In the end Inönü had it in his memoirs that no Greek planes ever flew over . This was a relief as we had stripped the Northern sector bare and it was a real possibility to get stuck in the South , while the left hand of the Greek army could advance to Ankara . Had they known the line in front of them was just a bluff .
the magazine bemoans that one cemetary on the site of Kocatepe where HQ staff watched the opening of the August 26 offensive is fake (from 1993) and what is more some idiot has put a plane , a Do-28 of 1960s vintage , in the memorial . An insult to Turkishness and historic accuracy . Indeed the performance differential implied is false . ı have always found Siemens Schuckert DIII an interesting plane . And all this is a myth . So unimportant that the militarist approach of the late 1990s has decided to dilute it with absolute absurdity of a post-WW2 STOL type in civilian colours . America's former friends were so unhappy with myths that they "discovered" one of the mines that were laid by Turks in 1915 80+ years on . ( You know the perception that Gallipoli is the only battle we ever need to know . ) America #1 , anybody else who can gain points by historical falsehoods or myths is an enemy ( especially if it is one that obviously supports the Islamists ) . That didn't stop America's new friends to put the formers to jail .
there are a couple of rocks to upturn with von Seeckt , though it would take a real historian .
had 1922 failed , the name of this thread would have been 1920 -1923 . And Sevres is not all lost , people will impose something even worse when America sweeps us under . The Prospects are so bleak that the former chief of staff who resigned in protest that his collegues are in jail on fake evidence , produced a fake speech last week , purported to be from June . Usual stuff , army is unprepared , officers are showing cowardice , it is good outta there , we must speak etc etc . No charges this time , it is whispered , next he will answer what he was doing in the last 30 years for the unprepared , untrained army .
the August battles took place in a general setting of between approximately equal numbers of troops on a 300 km long front . Greeks were on the defensive , not only because of their lack of morale . The British had no idea what to do about us and their confusion was transported to the Greeks . Not surprising , as London was their only benefactor and making war overseas is not easy . Overseas despite 70 000 formerly and still Ottoman citizen Greeks of Anatolia served in the ranks of the Army of Athens . We were to attack but lacked the decisive superiority . And we had to attack , as politicians are always like vultures and look for the weak to stumble . The issue was resolved by concentrating the majority of the Army against the Southern section of the front . The importance of the area was not lost on the Greeks and they were well dug in . Though one can still assume that the defenses were not really up to the Western Front norms , but we were not up to the norms of 1918 either , no tanks , no stormtroopers , no gas . Even the artillery crews were trained from the ground up .
concentration took a lot of time . Troops would walk at night - hide at daylight , units were detailed to sweep the fields with bushes and tree branches to destroy footsteps and marks of advance . All of it against aerial reconnaissance because the Greeks had 50 planes to our 10 . SPADs were bought from Italy without gun synchronization , we had to adapt from D Vs . Whatever . In the end Inönü had it in his memoirs that no Greek planes ever flew over . This was a relief as we had stripped the Northern sector bare and it was a real possibility to get stuck in the South , while the left hand of the Greek army could advance to Ankara . Had they known the line in front of them was just a bluff .
the magazine bemoans that one cemetary on the site of Kocatepe where HQ staff watched the opening of the August 26 offensive is fake (from 1993) and what is more some idiot has put a plane , a Do-28 of 1960s vintage , in the memorial . An insult to Turkishness and historic accuracy . Indeed the performance differential implied is false . ı have always found Siemens Schuckert DIII an interesting plane . And all this is a myth . So unimportant that the militarist approach of the late 1990s has decided to dilute it with absolute absurdity of a post-WW2 STOL type in civilian colours . America's former friends were so unhappy with myths that they "discovered" one of the mines that were laid by Turks in 1915 80+ years on . ( You know the perception that Gallipoli is the only battle we ever need to know . ) America #1 , anybody else who can gain points by historical falsehoods or myths is an enemy ( especially if it is one that obviously supports the Islamists ) . That didn't stop America's new friends to put the formers to jail .
there are a couple of rocks to upturn with von Seeckt , though it would take a real historian .
had 1922 failed , the name of this thread would have been 1920 -1923 . And Sevres is not all lost , people will impose something even worse when America sweeps us under . The Prospects are so bleak that the former chief of staff who resigned in protest that his collegues are in jail on fake evidence , produced a fake speech last week , purported to be from June . Usual stuff , army is unprepared , officers are showing cowardice , it is good outta there , we must speak etc etc . No charges this time , it is whispered , next he will answer what he was doing in the last 30 years for the unprepared , untrained army .
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