Greco-Turkish War (1897)

Greco-Turkish War (1897)

Greek lithograph depicting the Battle of Velestino
Date18 April – 20 May 1897
(32 days)
Location
Mainland Greece, mainly Epirus, Thessaly and Crete
Result Ottoman victory
Territorial
changes
Belligerents

 Ottoman Empire

Kingdom of Greece Greece

Commanders and leaders
Abdul Hamid II
Edhem Pasha
Ahmed Hifzi Pasha
Hasan Tahsin Pasha
Hasan Izzet Pasha
Essad Toptani
Kingdom of Greece Crown Prince Constantine
Kingdom of Greece Konstantinos Sapountzakis
Kingdom of Greece Thrasyvoulos Manos
Strength
120,000 infantry [1]
1,300 cavalry[citation needed]
210 guns[citation needed]
Kingdom of Greece 75,000 infantry[1]
500 cavalry
Kingdom of Italy 2,000 Italian volunteers
Armenia 600 Armenian volunteers[2]
Kingdom of Greece 136 guns[citation needed]
Casualties and losses
1,300 killed [6][7]
2,697 wounded[6][7]
Kingdom of Greece 672+ killed
Kingdom of Greece 2,481 wounded
Kingdom of Greece 253 prisoners[6]

The Greco-Turkish War of 1897 or the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 (Turkish: 1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Savaşı or 1897 Türk-Yunan Savaşı), also called the Thirty Days' War and known in Greece as the Black '97 (Greek: Μαύρο '97, Mauro '97) or the Unfortunate War (Greek: Ατυχής πόλεμος, romanizedAtychis polemos), was a war fought between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Its immediate cause involved the status of the Ottoman province of Crete, whose Greek-majority population had long desired union with Greece. Despite the Ottoman victory on the field, an autonomous Cretan State under Ottoman suzerainty was established the following year (as a result of the intervention of the Great Powers after the war), with Prince George of Greece and Denmark as its first High Commissioner.

The war put the military and political personnel of Greece to test in an official open war for the first time since the Greek War of Independence in 1821. For the Ottoman Empire, this was also the first war-effort to test a re-organized military system. The Ottoman army operated under the guidance of a German military mission led (1883–1895) by Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, who had reorganized the Ottoman military after its defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

The conflict proved that Greece was wholly unprepared for war. Plans, fortifications and weapons were non-existent, the mass of the officer corps was unsuited to its tasks, and training was inadequate. As a result, the numerically superior, better-organized, -equipped and -led Ottoman forces, heavily composed of Albanian warriors with combat experience, pushed the Greek forces south out of Thessaly and threatened Athens,[8] only to cease fighting when the Great Powers persuaded the Sultan to agree to an armistice.[9][need quotation to verify][10][11] The war is notable in that it was the first to be filmed on camera, though the footage has since been lost.[12]

  1. ^ a b c Mehmet Uğur Ekinci: The Origins of the 1897 Ottoman-Greek War: A Diplomatic History. University Bilkent, Ankara 2006, p. 80.
  2. ^ a b Kokkinos, P. (1965). Կոկինոս Պ., Հունահայ գաղութի պատմությունից (1918–1927) (in Armenian). Yerevan: National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia. pp. 14, 208–209. ISBN 9789609952002. Cited in Vardanyan, Gevorg (12 November 2012). Հայ-հունական համագործակցության փորձերը Հայոց ցեղասպանության տարիներին (1915–1923 թթ.) [The attempts of the Greek-Armenian Co-operation during the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923)]]. akunq.net (in Armenian). Research Center on Western Armenian Studies. Archived from the original on 25 August 2020. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  3. ^ Gyula Andrássy, Bismarck, Andrássy, and Their Successors, Houghton Mifflin, 1927, p. 273.
  4. ^ Mehmed'in kanı ile kazandığını, değişmez kaderimiz !-barış masasında yine kaybetmiştik..., Cemal Kutay, Etniki Eterya'dan Günümüze Ege'nin Türk Kalma Savaşı, Boğaziçi Yayınları, 1980, p. 141. (in Turkish)
  5. ^ Yunanistan'ın savaş meydanındaki yenilgisi ise Büyük Devletler sayesinde barış masasında zafere dönüşmüş, ilk defa Lozan müzakerelerinde aksi yaşanacak olan, Yunanistan'ın mağlubiyetlerle gelişme ve büyümesi bu savaş sonunda bir kez daha görülmüştür., M. Metin Hülagü, "1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Savaşı'nın Sosyal Siyasal ve Kültürel Sonuçları", in Güler Eren, Kemal Çiçek, Halil İnalcık, Cem Oğuz (ed.), Osmanlı, Cilt 2, Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, 1999, ISBN 975-6782-05-6, pp. 315–316. (in Turkish)
  6. ^ a b c Clodfelter 2017, p. 197.
  7. ^ a b Dumas, Samuel; Vedel-Petersen, K. O. Losses of life caused by war. Clarendon Press. p. 57.
  8. ^ Uyar, Mesut; Erickson, Edward J. (2009). A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Ataturk: From Osman to Ataturk. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 210. ISBN 9780313056031. Retrieved 19 April 2021. The three pitched battles (Velestin, Catalca, and Domeke) in front of the last Greek defensive line turned out to be decisive. The Greek defenders were beaten in detail and lost any chance to safeguard the road to Athens.
  9. ^ Erickson (2003), pp. 14–15
  10. ^ Pikros, Ioannis (1977). "Ο Ελληνοτουρκικός Πόλεμος του 1897" [The Greco-Turkish War of 1897]. Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, Τόμος ΙΔ′: Νεώτερος Ελληνισμός από το 1881 ως το 1913 [History of the Greek Nation, Volume XIV: Modern Hellenism from 1881 to 1913] (in Greek). Ekdotiki Athinon. pp. 125–160.
  11. ^ Phillipson, Coleman (1916). Termination of War and Treaties of Peace (reprint ed.). Clark, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. (published 2008). p. 69. ISBN 9781584778608. Retrieved 19 April 2021. In the Greco-Turkish War, 1897, the Powers intervened, and asked the Sultan to suspend his offensive operations. After some delay [...] [h]ostilities went on, and the Turks soon became masters of Thessaly. The Czar or Russia having made an appeal to the Sultan (as has already been mentioned), an armistice convention was concluded on May 19 for Epirus, and on May 20 for Thessaly.
  12. ^ "First filming of war".

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