The origins of the Greco-Turkish war of 1897 lie in the Cretan crisis of 1895. Crete which had been under Ottoman rule since 1669 had seen many Christian uprisings taking place between 1833 and 1898. In 1895, the Cretan insurgents encouraged by the nationalists of the Ethniki Etairia, or National Society, managed to wrest control of a large part of the island asking for annexation of Crete to Greece.
Cretan Crisis and Revolt
Prime Minister of Greece was at the time Theodoros Deliyannis, the arch-enemy of Charilaos Trikoupis who had died in 1896. The Cretan revolt had sparked popular interest and there was mounting pressure in favour of Greek armed intervention. In 1896, Deliyannis was ready to dispatch warships to Crete but was convinced by King George and the ambassadors of the Great Powers, Britain, France and Russia to refrain from action.
Deliyannis continued to maintain a neutral stance towards the Cretan insurgency while King George advised Cretan representatives to Athens in 1897 to give up the idea of annexation. However, many Greek officers broke rank and joined the Cretan insurgents in the island. Collapse of peace plans, further escalation of violence and popular pressure prompted Greek intervention in the Cretan crisis contrary to the wishes of the Great Powers.
A proposal for Cretan autonomy under Ottoman sovereignty was rejected by the insurgents. In March 1897, Britain, France and Russia made it clear that they were not in favour of Crete’s annexation to Greece. In fact, the Powers including Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Germany and Austria proceeded in occupying key towns of Crete.
War in Thessaly
Although neither the Great Powers nor the Sublime Porte favoured the outbreak of war, for some Greeks war was inevitable and in 15 March 1897 Crown Prince Constantine departed for the Thessalian front to lead the armed forces stationed at the border.
However, the Greek army was ill-prepared, inexperienced and suffered from lack of horses, weapons and munitions. Both the regular army and the widely used Greek irregular forces were no match for the German-trained, reorganised Turkish army equipped with the new generation Maurer rifles.
Main battles took place in the Thessalian and Epirus front from 18 April and lasting about a month. The inexperienced Greeks suffered a crushing defeat in the hands of a superior Turkish army which occupied the main Thessalin towns, Tyrnavos, Larissa, Trikala and Volos. Peace was signed by both sides on 20 September 1897. Greece was forced to proceed to minor frontier modifications and pay a war indemnity of 4 million Turkish pounds.
The most humiliating provision of the peace settlement was the setting up of an International Financial Control Commission which was to oversee the payment of the interest on Greece’s large external debts. This was the final blow to a country which has gone bankrupt in 1893 and suffered a devastating military defeat which put in question its irredentist ambitions.
The Greek public blamed the King and the government for the defeat and Prime Minister Deliyannis was forced to resign. As historian Richard Clogg puts it: “The decade following the defeat of 1897 was one of confusion, isolation, introspection and questioning in Greece. Greece’s isolation was emphasised in 1897, and her search for allies met with little success”.
Sources
Ioannis Pikros, “The Road to 1897 War”, History of the Greek Nation [Istoria tou Ellenikou Ethnous], vol. 14, pp.88-157. [in Greek]
Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece, Cambridge University Press 1979.
L. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, Hurst & Co, London 2000.
Theodore Tatsios, The Megali Idea and the Greek-Turkish War of 1897: The Impact of the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism, 1866-1897, Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984.
Mehmet Ugur Ekinci, The Origins of the 1897 Ottoman-Greek War: A Diplomatic History, MA Thesis, University of Ankara, 2006.
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