SECRET SOCIETIES OF THE GREEKS IN THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE (1918-1922)

Abstract

The War of Independence took place against opponents including not only those with clear and open objectives but also those with secret goals. There were numerous secret organizations operational in Istanbul, which was the capital of the Ottoman Empire that left the war with the Mondros Armistice Agreement. The only issue that these secret organizations, which saw Istanbul as the center of their activities, agreed upon was dividing the heritage that would be left by the Ottoman Empire. Secret organizations, which aimed to make it easier to share the land in Anatolia in the years of invasion served several foreign powers. The Greek government, which had goals about Anatolia, had secret organizations formed in collaboration with the Greeks in Turkey so that they can work for its interests. Secret Greek organizations especially worked by utilizing the religious affiliations of the Ottoman Greeks. While the center of secret Greek organizations was Istanbul, they aimed to occupy Thrace, Aegean coasts and Black Sea shores. The subject of this study was the harmful Greek organizations that acted in Istanbul which had become a priority and target of the world as the intersection point of the Asian and European continents. While investigating the secret organizations founded by Greeks, those that are lesser known in the scientific world or not even heard of were put into the center. The temporal framework of the study was determined as the historical cross-section of 1918-1922. With Istanbul in the center of the spatial boundaries of the study, all activities of the secret organizations towards the geography of Turkey were included. The methods followed by secret Greek organizations, their activities, aims and by whom they were managed were examined based on Ottoman Archive documents. Secret Greek organizations that serve the interests of Greece with secret operations centered in Istanbul, their organic networks and harmful activities were determined.