August 25 is celebrated as the day when Paris was liberated by the Allied forces from Nazi occupation back in 1944.
August 26 is another momentous occasion celebrated by Turks all across the world as the day back in 1922 when a nation was saved from total annihilation by the Greek occupation forces and was given a brand new lease on life.
August 26, 1922 was the date on which the Turkish armies launched the “Great Offensive” under the sterling command of Commander-in-Chief Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
Within the two weeks that followed August 26, 1922, the tired but very determined Turkish forces pushed back all occupation armies first from the heart of Anatolia to the Aegean, and then out of the country altogether.
August 26, 1922 actually started on September 13, 1921, the last day of the bloody Sakarya Pitched Battle which checked the Greek ambition to capture Ankara and break the backbone of the young Turkish state on the shores of the Sakarya River.
After the victory of Sakarya, both the Greeks and Turks knew that the steady-state could not be maintained forever. While the Greek forces pulled back to the Afyon-Kütahya line and reinforced their defensive positions, the Turkish forces hurled themselves into an intensive preparation for the “mother of all battles” ahead that they knew they had to win.
For the looming battle that would determine the future of Turkey, stalemate was not an option. As the leaders of a nation which exhausted almost all its natural, human and economic resources, the military planners under the command of Atatürk knew that, Turkey resembled a rifle with only a single bullet left. The Turkish forces could afford to wage only one last decisive battle. After that, they would either win and as victors start a new page in the history of a proud people, or they would disperse into the interior of Anatolia and continue a guerrilla warfare against the Greek occupation forces for an indeterminable future.
Timing of the preparations was critical to success.
If the Turks attacked without building up their forces and logistics sufficiently, they might be beaten by the better-equipped enemy. Then their only chance to save Anatolia might be lost forever. As Mustafa Kemal has said: “An offensive launched with insufficient preparation is worse than no offensive.”
If, on the other hand, Turks took their sweet time and spent for preparations not only the winter of 1921-22 and spring of 1922 but the winter of 1922-23 as well, then the Greeks might get military reinforcement and political support from the Western countries like Great Britain that were squarely on Greece`s side. The timing had to be perfect.
Turkish General Staff has identified the Afyon and Kütahya plains early on as the main venue of the battle. It was also decided that, since the Ankara-Eskisehir railroad was destroyed in many places by the Greek forces withdrawing westward after the Battle of Sakarya, the Turkish forces would rely on the Konya-Afyon railroad for troop movements and logistic support.
The preparations continued for a whole year in great secrecy and according to a plan which gave great emphasis to training and keeping the troop morale at a maximum level. Since a considerable part of the Turkish troops consisted of new conscripts, they were all put through a six-months basic training. The officers similarly went through a three-months training regimen in preparation for the decisive conflict ahead.
The careful rational planning of every detail, preparation for alternative battle scenarios, and calculation of every possible contingency, including the political groundwork, speaks volumes about the leadership skills of the Turkish General Staff led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
For example, to keep the troop morale at a maximum level, Mustafa Kemal ordered that, if there was a problem in paying the salaries of the regular troops, then no officers, including the generals, were paid that month either.
The Greeks also spent the 1921-22 by entrenching themselves along the Afyon-Kütahya line. A British staff officer provided the following assessment of the Greek preparations: “If the Turks could collapse these positions within four or five months, they could claim that they did within a single day.” Little did he know that the very same positions would collapse within just a few days. It is obvious that the unnamed British officer did not learn anything from the 1915 British defeat at Çanakkale. The British were underestimating Mustafa Kemal for the second time in a row.
Turkish Great Offensive would be executed by two armies, the 1st Army and the 2nd Army.
The 1st Army, as the main offensive force under the command of Nurettin Pasha, would push on the Greek forces with its three corps from the Afyon-Ahirdag line in a Northern and Northwestern direction. Its 5th Cavalry Corps under the command of Fahrettin (Altay) Pasha would cross the Ahirdag Mountain and encircle the western wing of the Greek forces.
The 2nd Army under the command of Yakup Sevki Pasha, would attack the Greek forces along the Afyon-Kütahya line and prevent them from bringing reinforcements from further North, from the Gemlik Bay area and beyond.
Here I should note that my own grandfather, Lieutenant Ali Riza Akinci, served bravely in this historic battle as a cavalry officer under Fahrettin Pasha. As fate would have it, he was one of the first cavalry officers to enter Izmir on September 9, 1922. Moreover, he had the incredible luck and honor of hoisting the Turkish flag at Izmir City Hall, a historic occasion the video clip of which is shown on Turkish TV channels every September 9. That young officer in that grainy old black-and-white clip who climbs the stairs of the City Hall, pulls up the Turkish flag on the balcony post and then salutes it sharply, is none other than my grandfather Lt. Ali Riza Akinci. May he rest in peace.
Click here to see a map of the battle field on August 26, 1922. Click "Return to TurkishPress.com" to return to this site.
The relative strengths of the two sides just before the Great Offensive were as follows:
(Turks-vs-Greeks): Officers: 8,659-vs-6,565; Troops: 199,283-vs-218,432; Rifles: 100,352-vs-90,000; Light Machine Gun: 2,025-vs-3,139; Heavy Machine Gun: 839-vs-1,280; Artillery: 323-vs-418; Swords: 5,282-vs-1,280; Airplanes: 10-vs-50; Trucks: 198-vs-4,036; Automobiles: 33-vs-1,776. [Source: Gen. (Ret.) Necip Torumtay, Cagdas Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devletinin Kurucusu Lider Atatürk, Dogan Kitap, 2001, p. 146]
As one can see, the Turkish and Greek forces were comparable in some categories but the Greeks were clearly superior in numbers of machine guns, airplanes, trucks and automobiles.
Turks, on the other hand, made up for their technological handicap by their superiority in the number of officers, swords and low-tech transportation alternatives like horse carriages (3,052), donkeys (10,306), camels (6,445) and ox carts (2,318).
Troop deployments were carried out in great secrecy until the last day before the battle. In order not to be spotted by the Greek recon planes, the troops that were marched north during the daylight were quietly marched back at night towards their real battle stations around Afyon.
The sophisticated disinformation campaign that the Turkish General Staff executed before the battle included a news item that Mustafa Kemal Pasha would attend a cocktail party in Ankara, on the night of August 25, 1922. In truth, the Commander-in-Chief had left Ankara a couple days earlier on his way first to Konya and then to his headquarters at Kocatepe, near the village of Suhut, southwest of Afyon. The preparations proceeded under such secrecy that even the Turkish Parliament was kept in the dark regarding the exact date and hour of the offensive.
It was a clear and quiet night, the night of August 25, 1922. The crescent moon in the sky glowed gently like a good omen as Commander-in-Chief Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Chief of General Staff Fevzi Pasha, Commander of the Western Front Ismet Pasha, and 1st Army Commander Nureddin Pasha -- the top brass of the Turkish forces -- went over their battle plans for the last time.
The die was cast. The daybreak would unleash the ferocious determination of a nation to survive against all odds. In the words of Halid Edip, the famous Turkish writer who served in the Turkish army during the years of the National War of Liberation, it would be a no-holds-barred “trial by fire” for the Turks of Anatolia.
NEXT: August 30, 1922 – Dumlupinar: The Beginning of the End