Who was Eleftherios Venizelos, one of the most important statesmen in the history of modern Greece? Why did the most famous practitioner of the Megali Idea nominate Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, for the Nobel Peace Prize?
Who was Eleftherios Venizelos, one of the most important statesmen in the history of modern Greece? Venizelos, the most famous implementer of the Megali Idea idea, the leader of the Cretan Revolts in 1897 and 1905, the Prime Minister of Greece during the Balkan Wars, and the signer of the Treaty of Sevres, the text of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, always played a leading role in times when the course of history changed. What was the impact of Venizelos on both modern Greek politics and Turkish-Greek relations?
Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos (23 August 1864 – 18 March 1936) was a Cretan Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. He is noted for his contribution to the expansion of Greece and promotion of liberal-democratic policies. As leader of the Liberal Party, he held office as prime minister of Greece for over 12 years, spanning eight terms between 1910 and 1933. During his governance, Venizelos entered in diplomatic cooperation with the Great Powers and had profound influence on the internal and external affairs of Greece. He has therefore been labelled as "The Maker of Modern Greece" and is still widely known as the "Ethnarch".
Eleftherios Kyriakos Venizelos, who is considered one of the most important political faces of Greece and associates his name with the dream of a Greater Greece (Megali Idea), was born on August 23, 1864, in the village of Mournies in the Chania district of the island of Crete, which was under Ottoman rule at that time.
Born as the fifth child of the merchant couple Kyriakos Venizelos and Styliani Ploumidaki, Venizelos took his name from Saint Eleftherios. The surname Venizelos is the baptismal name of his paternal great-grandfather, Venizelos Krevvatas. According to Greek sources, the birth story of Eleftherios Venizelos was shaped according to a local tradition in Crete.
The Venizelos family, who had lost all their previously born boys shortly after birth, left the last born boy in a nearby olive grove, and a shepherd passing by supposedly found the boy and gave him up for adoption to the family. According to superstition, the child who deceives Azrael will only be healthy and long-lived.
The origins of Eleftherios Venizelos go back to the Krevvatas family from Laconia. His great-grandfather, Venizelos Krevvatas, fled to Crete in 1770 after participating in the Orlof rebellion against the Ottomans and settled there. All members of the Venizelos family took part in the uprising against the Ottomans in Crete during the Peloponnese Rebellion of 1821, and the father, Kyriakos Venizelos (1810), went to Greece and fought against the Turks in Monemvasia. Kyriakos Venizelos, who opened a trade office when he returned to Crete, was exiled to Greece by the Ottoman Empire because he took part in an uprising on the island. Kyriakos Venizelos, who stayed in Greece for nineteen years, returned to Crete in 1851. However, he was exiled again to Syros Island on the grounds that he supported the Cretan Revolt of 1866. Eleftherios Venizelos became a "political exile" when he was only two years old. Kyriakos Venizelos and his family were able to return to Crete in 1874 from Syros, where they stayed for eight years.
Eleftherios Venizelos's education life continued in different places due to exiles and deportations. He started primary school in Syros and continued his education on this island until the second grade. When his family returned to Chania in 1872, he completed the remaining primary school education there. Venizelos, who studied the first year of secondary school and high school in Chania, was later enrolled in Antoniadis High School in Athens by his father in 1877 and studied the first year of high school in Athens. Venizelos, who later enrolled in Siros Boys' High School, graduated from high school at the age of sixteen.
Returning to Crete in 1880, Venizelos dealt with trade with his father for a short time. Although his father wanted his son to become a merchant, Venizelos decided to continue his higher education in order to expand his horizons and subsequently convinced his father and enrolled in the Athens Faculty of Law in 1881. He graduated from the Athens Faculty of Law in 1887 and received the title of Doctor of Law.
The fact that his father's side was a bourgeois family engaged in trade played an important role in determining the personality and political life of Eleftherios Venizelos. The Venizelos family is a revolutionary family that has transferred the merchant profession and the Greek patriotic spirit from generation to generation.
The year he graduated from Athens Law School, he opened a law office in Crete and practiced law for a while. At the same time, he started publishing a newspaper called "Lefka Ori" with a few friends, and he wrote various articles in this newspaper about the need for the Christian Balkan States to unite against the Turks.
The first months of 1909 were a period of strong political crises in Greece's domestic and foreign policy. Greece's bad financial situation has increased criticism and resentment towards the traditional government system and old parties. In particular, the thought that the Greek army was starting to get out of the government's control led to the initiation of secret negotiations among junior Greek soldiers. As a result, the Gudi Military Operation, carried out by the Military Union (Stratiotikos Sindesmos) on 28 August 1909, constituted an extremely important turning point in the political career of Eleftherios Venizelos, as a military coup attempt to remove the blockage in Greek domestic politics.
As stated in the official newspaper Time (Hronos), the Military Union is looking for a new formation and a new face to replace the old parties that are seen as the cause of the clumsiness in Greek domestic politics. It is thought that Eleftherios Venizelos is the new face and fresh blood who can take on this new task. Because the officers who organized the military operation did not aim to take over the government, as they believed that they were politically inexperienced.
For the Military Union, Eleftherios Venizelos was seen as the right person to defend national interests.
One of the first actions of Venizelos, who established the new government with the opening of the parliament on January 8, 1911, in domestic politics was the entry into force of the Constitution he prepared within the framework of new reforms. Another issue that Venizelos emphasized was the reforms aimed at the development of the Greek army and navy. Military investments and imperialist expansion policy are seen as priority issues in Greece's Megali Idea policy.
However, World War I, which started in August 1914, marked the beginning of political polarization, defined as national division, in Greece. In fact, the first disagreement between them emerged when crown prince Constantine, who was at the head of the army during the First Balkan War, supported the military landing in Monastir, while Venizelos immediately advocated the capture of Thessalonica due to its geopolitical importance. Different considerations about whether Greece should participate in World War I or not caused the ties between King Constantine and Venizelos to be completely severed. While King Constantine had the idea of neutrality with the idea of "a small but respectable Greece", Venizelos advocated that Greece should immediately enter the war on the side of the Entente. This intellectual conflict between the King and Prime Minister Venizelos resulted in Venizelos resigning from the government twice in 1915 and at the same time establishing a de facto government called the Government of National Defense in Thessaloniki on September 11, 1916. This political polarization called the National Schism (1915-1917), caused separate political actions of two different governments in Athens and Thessaloniki until 1917.
However, as a result of the armed conflict that occurred in Athens between the Greek army and British and French soldiers, King Constantine resigned on June 12, 1917, and left the throne to his son Alexander. With the abdication of King Constantine, Venizelos came to Athens from Thessaloniki and re-established the government as prime minister on 27 June 1917. He declared mobilization immediately after establishing the government, and thus Greece became involved in World War I.
The war ended with the victory of the Entente forces on November 11, 1918, and Prime Minister Venizelos, one of the victorious parties, expressed all his national demands, especially the issue of giving Western Anatolia and Izmir to the Greeks, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. With the decision of the Paris Peace Conference, Greece landed troops in Izmir on 15 May 1919 and occupied the region. Venizelos' dream of creating a great Greece consisting of "two continents and five seas" was finally resolved with the Treaty of Sevres signed in Paris on 10 August 1920.
Venizelos could not be elected as a member of parliament in the general elections held in Greece on 14 November 1920. A pro-King government was established in Greece under the prime ministership of Dimitrios Rallis. Another important development in this period was that the Greek King Alexander died after being bitten by a monkey in the Tatoi palace, and Queen Olga, who was acting on the throne, called her exiled son Constantine to take over the monarchy again. Venizelos, who lost the elections, went to Paris, stating that he was retiring from active politics after King Constantine regained the throne. On September 15, 1921, he married Elena Skylitsi (1874-1959), of Chios origin, the daughter of one of England's rich families, for the second time in London. However, the Asia Minor Disaster of 1922 led to the establishment of a new regime and military government in Greece as a result of a military coup. The military government requested that Greece be represented by Venizelos at the Lausanne Peace Conference to be signed with Turkey. Accepting to undertake this political duty, Venizelos represented Greece in the Lausanne Peace Talks, and the Lausanne Peace Treaty was signed between Turkey and Greece on 24 July 1923.
Eleftherios Venizelos was elected as a member of parliament in the elections held on 16 December 1923, returned to Greece, and was elected president of the Parliament with the yes votes of all MPs in the parliament. Although he was assigned to form the government in Greece on January 11, 1924, he resigned from the government on February 4 and returned to Paris due to differences of opinion with some politicians within the Liberal Party. Eleftherios Venizelos came to Greece in May 1927 after a long period of political instability, but he did not engage in politics. Returning to politics again with the great success of his party in the elections of 19 August 1928, Venizelos signed a friendship pact between Italy and Greece on 23 September 1928.
Venizelos, who was the head of the government until 1932, carried out reforms in many different areas of Greece. During this period, reformist steps were taken to establish the Council of State, the Ziraat Bank, the National Theater, and 3,000 new schools in Greece. Although the Venizelos government took important initiatives to reduce the impact of the international financial crisis in Greece in 1929, it could not prevent the economic bankruptcy in Greece in 1932. The most important route that Venizelos followed politically during this period was to ensure that Greece could survive on its own without being dependent on any external power. For this reason, he tried to establish friendly relations with neighboring countries. A friendship treaty was signed with Yugoslavia in Geneva on 27 March 1929 and with Turkey in Ankara on 30 October 1930. This diplomatic contact, especially between Turkey and Greece, is considered a turning point in overcoming the crises between the two countries. As a matter of fact, in a letter he sent to the Swedish Academy of Sciences on January 12, 1934, Eleftherios Venizelos nominated Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding leader of the Republic of Turkey, for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since the Liberal Party lost its superiority against the People's Party in the general elections held in Greece on March 5, 1933, Venizelos announced that he was withdrawing from politics and left Greece on March 12, 1935, and entered Paris. He passed away as a result of a stroke in Paris on March 18, 1936. Venizelos' body was brought from Paris to Chania on March 29, 1936, and buried on the island.