Venizelism

In WWI the Venizelists wished to join the Entente, mainly due to the entrance of the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria which was one of the greatest chances to gain all lands Greeks claim and thus fulfilling the Megali idea.

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.

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.

This crisis period for Venizelos occurred when Greece experienced a lagging economy, growing political corruption, profiteering by the few, and eight continuous years of mobilization.

Venizelists Sophoklis Venizelos and Georgios Papandreou formed the core of the Greek government in exile during the Axis Occupation of Greece (1941–1944), and held power a number of times in the 1950s.

While the Venizelist legacy was still popular, election results were disappointing as the abolition of the monarchy, the dilution of support for Greek nationalism after the seven years of the junta and the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, and Karamanlis' move towards the political centre had blurred the differences between the liberals and their former conservative opponents, while the socialist PASOK party was gaining support at the left side of the spectrum.

Some points of disagreement included the Venizelos' extreme pro-Entente stance during the World War I and the National Schism (which led to the division of the country between a Venizelist and a royalist government), his policy about the Megali idea and its results (regarding the relations with Turkey and the Greeks who were still under Ottoman sovereignty) and later the Treaty of Lausanne and the population exchange.