ABSTRACT
Between 26 August and 11 September 1922, the Turkish Nationalist Army threw the Greek Army out of Anatolia. This surprised Whitehallon 29 July the War Office told the Cabinet neither Turk nor Greek could defeat the other2-and wrecked its attempts to end the war in Turkey through moderate revision to the Treaty of Sèvres. Whitehall assumed that stalemate in Anatolia would continue indefinitely. It hoped-prayed —this might let Britain manoeuvre Allies and belligerents toward a diplomatic solution that would preserve British interests in the area, as embodied in the Allied proposals of March 1922. According to these proposals, Turkey would receive Istanbul and Anatolia (subject to protection for Christian minorities) but lose half of its European territories, including Adrianople, to Greece; most of Thrace and the Asiatic shores of the Dardanelles would be demilitarized; the Turkish Army would be kept tiny; while a small Allied garrison would remain forever in the Gallipoli peninsula to maintain the ‘freedom of the Straits’. The Greeks were willing to place themselves in the Powers’ hands; so must the Turks. Yet these hopes were never high and, over months of stalemate, British policy drifted toward pessimism tinged with bitterness. Decisive Turkish victory in Anatolia wrecked this policy. It also produced Britain’s gravest strategic crisis between the 1918 Armistice and Munich, plus a seismic shift in British politics; and it almost caused World War Two to start on the banks of the Bosphorus in September 1922. These events merit more attention than they have received.3 They cannot be understood without realizing that Chanak was a military crisis, where political and strategic problems marched hand in hand, and to which intelligence was fundamental. The study of intelligence is essential to explain what happened during the crisis and why-as a lever of events and as a mirror for decisions. Diplomatic intelligence is rarely part of the study of diplomacy or intelligence. This account will show something of its peculiarities, and its significance.
