Comparative military history: Russian defence against Napoleon and the Turkish resistance in the Independence War

In history, very few campaigns and battles are similar in terms of both the reasons, the models of action, the manners of action, the strategies and tactics used. In this context, Napolyon's 1812 Russian Campaign and the Greek Asia Minor Campaign are similar in terms of the parties' acceptance of their policies to each other through armed elements and their resistance to these pressures. Our goal in this study is to present the Russian Defence in Napolyon's 1812 Russian Campaign and the Turkish Resistance in the Turkish War of Independence by using the comparative history method according to the information obtained from the archive documents and published sources. As a matter of fact, Napolyon, who took over the control in France as a result of the French Revolutionary Wars, invaded Russia in 1812. Similarly, in 1919 Greece started to invade and occupy Western Anatolia, especially İzmir. Behind these movements, the Russian Tsar Alexander I refused to accept the Treaty of Tilsit and Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) refused to accept the Treaty of Sevres. To this end, the French and Greek sides mobilized their armed elements in order to put those treaties into effect. Napolyon, who entered Russia with Grande Armée, started to chase Russian armies in the hope of a short and quick victory. The Turks, who were largely deprived of a regular army, also gathered militia forces and started to clash with the Greek occupation force and started to work for to found and establish a regular army. After the foundation and establishment of their regular army, the Turks carried out several battles with the Greek Asia Minor Expedition Army, engaged in a total struggle with the Battle of Sakarya. The Russians, who retreated from Smolensk to Moscow, finally accepted a battle with Napolyon near Borodino in a similar action. As a result, the French and Greek forces, which had suffered great losses by their invasion deep into Russian and Anatolian soil, were unable to continue their operations in the face of increasing Russian and Turkish resistance and eventually Russian chasing battles and the Turkish Grand Offensive had brought the French into the waters of the Berezina River and the Greeks into the waters of the Aegean Sea.