29038 - The example of Asia Minor

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Athina Kehagias

Both the Monarchists and the Venizelians are responsible for Hellenism’s catastrophe in Asia Minor, as much as they want to prove one another’s fault. They tried to avoid history’s condemnation by sacrificing six people for atonement in front of the Greek people, but they turned out to be innocent afterall. Whereas the King, Venizelos and Plastiras survived. The incompetence, the lack of will, the partisanship, and the lack of strategy was the only things they offered the Greeks. The signing of the Lausanne Treaty and the Treaty of Ankara in 1923 and 1930 was simply and utterly unacceptable, as they both constitute practical efforts to place a tombstone on the issue of Asia Minor. And that didn’t occur by mistake, because everyone wanted to patch up their mistakes in any odd way, even if they had to sacrifice all refugees in the attempt. But who cared about those innocent? Neither the Monarchists nor the Venizelians did. Each one of them was trying to save their skin and nothing else. We ended up of course resulting even to coups, which due to euphemism were named movements, in order for the nation to comprehend their undemocratic character. The entire campaign was doomed from the beginning, and higher ranked officials had said so, but they took them out of the picture, and replaced them with incompetent, ambitious ones, who all they could manage was to lead our homeland into one of the most severe catastrophes.