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I don’t know that the proper response to “Ethnic cleansing against Armenians by the Turks” is “Ethnic cleansing against the Turks by the Greeks”, tbf.
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Explanation: The Treaty of Sevres was the treaty imposed upon the defeated Ottoman Empire after WW1. While the creation of theoretically-independent ‘mandates’ of much of the Ottoman Empire’s foreign holdings was probably inevitable, the proposed butchery of the heartlands of Anatolia, where the Turkish population of the Empire actually lived, was ridiculous and far beyond what the victors of WW1 had imposed even upon Imperial Germany and Austro-Hungary - both objectively far more at fault for the war than the Ottoman Empire. But such affairs are conducted according to the (im)balance of power, not justice.
That considerable territory was to be ceded to the Greeks, whom held long-lasting enmity with the Turks, was additional salt on the wound. The Ottoman Sultan felt that, as a defeated power, he had no choice but to sign it if he wished to keep his throne.
However, the wellspring of outrage was so total that a hero of WW1, one Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later known as Ataturk) managed to rally the people and remaining military forces of Turkiye to oppose the treaty, leading to the expulsion of occupying forces and the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire in the Turkish War of Independence. The resulting Turkish Republic would renegotiate the peace with the victors of WW1 after several years of fighting, leading to the roughly modern (and unoccupied) borders of Turkiye we see today.
None of this would’ve happened if Ottomans just kept their promise to let Crete be independent by the way. Instead the Ottomans reneged the agreement in 1889 which of course pissed everyone off. Especially the majority of Greek speaking and Greek Orthodox people on Crete.
I’m admittedly not the best educated on the subject, but I strongly doubt this meaningfully affected the eventual fate of the Ottoman Empire. The fact of the matter is that the Ottomans were a declining former great power trying to hold its position amidst ambitious and powerful current great powers. This position was always going to bring it into fatal conflict with Britain, France and Russia; the immediate causes of this conflict are almost completely irrelevant to the result, let alone a secondary event like this.
What followed after they reneged the agreement was a series of diplomatic crisis and violent events. It’s the conflicted that clearly showed the two alliances that would later shape the political landscape of Europe during WW1. Germany and Austria-Hungary pretty much sided with the Ottomans on this one. Mind you it’s still debated why the Ottomans even entered the war with their weak agriculture economy. They later punched above their weight but it was never going to work. Perhaps if things didn’t escalate so much on Crete earlier, the sultan wouldn’t have taken the risk just to show it to the Brits, French and Russians. I believe the call was so close that if only very few things had happened differently in the years prior WW1, they wouldn’t have entered the war. Crete is a very good candidate for what could’ve happened differently.
Mind you it’s still debated why the Ottomans even entered the war with their weak agriculture economy.
To reverse some of the humiliation they suffered in the late 19th early 20th century and because they were run by proto-fascists?
I believe the call was so close that if only very few things had happened differently in the years prior WW1, they wouldn’t have entered the war.
Maybe, but my point is more that even if they had survived WWI, they’d have just collapsed from something else. To make some guesses, maybe regional revolts break it during the Spanish flu pandemic, or maybe they lose another war in the Balkans, or maybe they’re straight up overthrown by Britain or France in the process of colonialism. Or hell, probably the most likely scenario: Their core territories are invaded by Russia/the Soviet Union as they expanded southwards. Russia still wanted to take Constantinople for Orthodox Christianity, and the Empire just didn’t have the juice to stop them.
