Megali Idea
Definition
Megali Idea (Μεγάλη Ιδέα) (Greek for "Great Idea") is a concept of Greek nationalism expressing the goal of establishing a Greek state that encompasses all ethnic Greeks. Megale Idea implies the goal of reestablishing a Greek state as ancient geographer Strabon wrote, with a Greek world extended west from Sicily, to Mikra Asia and Euxenus Pontus (Black Sea) to the east, and from Macedonia and Epirus, north, to Crete and Cyprus to the south. Greek populations still lived in those territories in the beginning of 20th century. The dream of every Greek always had been to liberate all the territories and establish a new state with Constantinople as its capital, as it had been in medieval times. After the achievement of Greek independence in 1821, the Megale Idea played a major role in Greek politics. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the Greek people remained outside the borders of the limited Greece permitted by the Great Powers, who had no intention for a larger Greek state to replace the Ottoman Empire.
The Greek state emerging under John Capodistria after the Greek War of Independence left out large groups of ethnic Greeks. The Great Idea encompassed a desire to bring these groups into the Greek state; specifically in the territories of Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, the Aegean Islands, Crete, Cyprus, parts of Anatolia, and the city of Constantinople, that would replace Athens as the capital.
A major proponent was Eleftherios Venizelos, who expanded Greek territory in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 — southern Epirus, Crete, and southern Macedonia were attached to Greece. Thessaly, and part of southern Epirus, had been annexed in 1881. Victory in World War I seemed to promise an even greater realisation of the Great Idea, as Greece won northern Epirus, Smyrna, Imbros and Tenedos, and Western Thrace.
A major defeat followed in 1922, however, when the Turkish nationalists defeated and expelled the Greeks from Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). Greece did not manage to occupy Smyrna, Imbros, and Tenedos from Turkey, to whom they still belong; she also was not capable to occupy southern Albania (northern Epirus). Greece did retain western Thrace, and in 1945, at the end of World War II, won the Dodecanese from Italy.
Although the Great Idea ceased to be a driving force behind Greek foreign policy after the Treaty of Lausanne, remnants remain. Greece only recently, for example, recognised the present Greco-Albanian border (and, implicitly, Albanian rule over northern Epirus). Also, the junta regime established in Greece in 1967 sponsored a pro-enosis military coup on Cyprus in 1974, which was followed by the invasion and occupation by Turkish troops of the north of Cyprus (see Cyprus dispute).
See also
Reference
- Özhan Öztürk (2005). Karadeniz (Black Sea): Ansiklopedik Sözlük. 2 Cilt. Heyamola Yayıncılık. İstanbul. ISBN 975-6121-00-9