The Cretan Struggle and the Intervention of 1897

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The success of some of the Greek population to free itself of the Turkish yoke inspired other Greeks in still subjugated lands. Chief among these was Crete, the largest and richest Greek island and a strategic Mediterranean port.

Here, sporadic yet consistent revolts throughout the 19th century intensified, and as would be the case in turn-of-the-century Macedonia, Turkish massacres shocked the world and stimulated Europeans to act. The most dramatic such event occurred during the great uprising of 1866, when on November 8 the Rethymno-area monastery of Arkadi was besieged by 15,000 Turkish soldiers. The villagers huddled inside had used up all of their ammunition against the advancing Turks by the second evening. Rather than waiting to be massacred, the Cretans detonated barrels of gunpowder in storage- killing more than 600 of their own men, women and children, as well as around 1,500 Turks. The Cretans’ defiance unto death astonished the world and European criticism of Ottoman misrule grew louder. By 1896, a major insurgency against the Turkish administration finally succeeded in tipping the balance in favor of the Greeks.

As in the 1820’s, a Greek rebellion had resulted in an intervention from the major Christian powers. Through diplomatic pressure they forced the Turks to grant autonomy to Crete, which would be ruled by a local, Christian governor. So as to lessen the humiliation of the concessions, the Great Powers decreed that political functions were to be divided between Christians and Muslims according to a two-to-one ratio. In February 1897, Greek troops landed on the island. In March, the Great Powers sent an international peacekeeping force, made up of 3,000 European troops. In a move that would exactly prefigure the Mürzsteg Program in Macedonia, not to mention the UN/NATO partitioning of Kosovo in 1999, the Great Powers divided the island of Crete into 5 sectors, to be run by the British, French, Russians and Italians. The fifth sector was a special one to be created around the capital city of Chania in western Crete. To the Italian carabinieri was assigned the task of reorganizing the island’s Ottoman police.

In November 1898, the Turkish government withdrew its troops and administration from the island. In June of the following year, the administrative and judicial authority was handed over to the local Cretan leaders. An Admiral’s Council was set up to govern the island, which was later replaced by a Commission of Councils. The Ottoman government’s departure also convinced numerous Turkish Muslims, the minority population, to leave the island.

Although Crete had been for all intents and purposes liberated, it was not allowed to become a part of Greece, which kept a consulate alongside the other international diplomatic missions in the neighborhood of Halepa, on the seafront in Chania. The successful Cretan uprising had been led by a dynamic and charismatic figure, Eleftherios Venizelos, who emerged from the mountains of west Crete with a motley band of tough fighters and would go on to become to the most important prime minister in the history of the Greek state, overseeing not only the eventual reunion of Crete with the motherland, but also the major territorial gains of the Balkan Wars and the tragic population exchanges of 1923.