Venizelist

Liberal Party

Venizelos' liberal party ruled Greece from 1910 until 1916. That year, determined to enter World War I on the Entente side, Venizelos rebelled against the king and formed a Provisional Government of National Defence in Thessaloniki. Venizelos regained full control of the country in 1917 and ruled until losing the 1920 elections. The strongest support for Venizelism came in the "New Greece" gained after the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, consisting of Crete, Thrace, Epirus, the North Aegean islands, and Macedonia. By contrast, people in "Old Greece" tended to be more much royalist. The fact that in 1916 King Constantine I had allowed the Bulgarians to occupy parts of Macedonia and had been willing to contemplate giving up all of recently gained "New Greece" in the north to the Bulgarians to weaken the Venizelist movement cemented the identification of people in northern Greece with Venizelism. Greek refugees from Turkey also tended to be firmly Venizelist, at least until the 1930s and the signing of the Greco-Turkish friendship agreement by Venizelos (1930).