What Turkish town in Asia Minor was attacked by Greek troops in 1923 and what was the motivation for that agression?

author

I suppose you mean Smyrna/Izmir? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smyrna#Ottoman_period Aug 30 10, 3:57 PM

flem-ish

Sure. But why did they invade? After all the First World War was over. Aug 30 10, 5:08 PM

gtho4

The Greeks invaded/occupied Smyrnia from May 1919 to September 1922. I can't find any mention of an attack in 1923. e.g Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the victors had, for a time, intended to carve up large parts of Anatolia under respective zones of influence and offered the western regions of Turkey to Greece with the Treaty of Sevres. On 15 May 1919 the Greek Army occupied Izmir, but the Greek expedition towards central Anatolia turned into a disaster for both that country and for the local Greeks of Turkey. The Turkish Army retook possession of Izmir on 9 September 1922, effectively ending the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) in the field. Part of the Greek population of the city was forced to seek refuge in the nearby Greek islands together with the departing Greek troops, while the rest left in the frame of the ensuing 1923 agreement for the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, which was a part of the Lausanne Treaty. The war, and especially its events specific to Izmir, like the fire that broke out on 13 September 1922, one of the greatest disasters Izmir ever experienced, influence the psyches of the two nations to this day. For the Turks, on the one hand, the occupation was marked from its very first day by the "first bullet" fired on Greek detachments by the journalist Hasan Tahsin and the killing by bayonet coups of Colonel Fethi Bey and his unarmed soldiers in the historic casern of the city (Sar Ksla � the Yellow Casern), for refusing to shout "Zito o Venizelos" (Long Live Venizelos). The Greeks, on the other hand, have accused the Turks of a number of atrocities against the Greek and Armenian communities in Izmir, including the lynching of the Orthodox Metropolitan Chrysostomos following their recapture of the city on 9 September 1922 and the slaughter of as many as 100,000 Armenian and Greek Christians throughout the city. A Turkish source on Izmir's oral history concedes that in 1922, "hat-wearers were thrown into the sea, just like, back in 1919, fez-wearers were thrown". The lack of comprehensive and reliable sources from the period, combined with nationalist feelings running high on both sides, and mutual distrust between the conflicting parties, has led to each side accusing each other for decades of committing atrocities during the period. The city was, once again, gradually rebuilt after the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. http://izmir.biz/?id=2 Aug 31 10, 5:12 AM

Baloo55th

The First World may have been over - but a lot of fighting went on. There were troubles in the Baltic leading to the independence of the Baltic States and Finland, and the Greeks and Turks still hated each other from way back. The populations had mixed during the rule of the Balkans by the Ottomans, and there were Turks in Europe and Greeks in Asia. There weren't any interventions from outside because the USA had retreated into isolationism and everyone else was broke. Greece also had post-war problems with Albania and Bulgaria, but these didn't get quite so violent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greece Aug 31 10, 10:59 AM