Improvised war: Strategy, state formation and the Greco-Turkish War 1919-1922

This thesis examines how the Greco Turkish War of 1919 to 1922 was conceived, directed, and sustained by states with limited capacity operating in the aftermath of imperial collapse. It argues that strategy in this conflict was not the execution of coherent prewar plans but an improvised practice shaped by political legitimacy, institutional weakness, and external constraint. Rather than treating improvisation as failure or deviation, the study shows that it functioned as a normal method of war making for both Greece and the Turkish nationalist movement. Drawing on Greek and Turkish archival material, parliamentary debates, military records, memoirs, and contemporary media, the thesis reconstructs how political leaders and military institutions adapted inherited frameworks of war to rapidly changing conditions. It situates the conflict within longer nineteenth century patterns of state building, military organization, and strategic culture, demonstrating how habits formed before 1914 shaped responses to crisis after 1918. The war is analyzed across three connected levels: the conceptual frameworks through which it was understood, the political and institutional processes that directed it, and the ways it was represented and experienced. The study shows that in Greece, competing claims to political legitimacy repeatedly distorted military reform, command cohesion, and mobilization, producing oscillation between expansion and retrenchment. In contrast, the Turkish nationalist movement converted a legitimacy shock into an institutional advantage through the Grand National Assembly, combining centralized political authority with decentralized military practice. In both cases, shortages of manpower, finance, and administrative reach forced reliance on ad hoc solutions, personal networks, and emergency measures. By foregrounding improvisation as a strategic practice rather than an analytical residual, this thesis challenges rationalist and doctrinal accounts of strategy. It offers a comparative explanation of how weak and emerging states wage modern war under conditions of uncertainty, showing that success and failure depended less on formal doctrine than on institutional flexibility, political cohesion, and the capacity to adapt under pressure.