Reddit reviews A History of the Modern Middle East

Hopefully someone can chime in with a more complete answer on this, but I believe answer is yes. During the Greco-Turkish war Greece got a bit uppity because they thought that they had the full support of the Allies despite being a relatively weak nation. They attempted to steal a bunch of territory from the fledgling state of Turkey. Turkey pushed them back and managed to retake all of the land claimed by Greece in their initial conquest. At the end of that war there was a massive population exchange in which all of the "Turks" were evicted from Greece and sent to Turkey and all of the "Greeks" were evicted from Turkey and sent to Greece. To me this exchange of populations suggests that both Turkey and Greece were interested in expanding their territories further but decided it was easier to just accept things as they were and switch around the controversial portions of their populations.

Despite the population exchange, the Turks and the Greeks still lived in close quarters in Cyprus because Cyprus was, and still is, an independent nation; except for Northern Cyprus which was claimed by the Turks following the 1974 coup in Cyprus. The Turks claimed that they took over the territory in an effort to protect the Turks that were living on the island, but to this day they have never given back the land they took over which implies that they were interested in more than protecting the Turkish Cypriots.

It is also important to remember that the original Turks were mainly Ottomans who were used to living in a massive empire. Many of those that went on to create and fight for Turkey had fought throughout the Middle East in WWI trying to defend the Ottoman Empire. The diaries of many ex-Ottoman officers have shown that they were loyal to the empire until the very end. So I don't think it is unlikely that during the establishment of Turkey there would have been feelings of resentment towards the Allies and a desire to procure more land and reestablish the mighty Ottoman Empire.

For a succinct overview of the Turkish history mentioned here I would check out chapters 10 and 14 of Cleveland and Bunton's A History of the Modern Middle East. For more insights into how Ottoman military officers felt about the empire during and after WWI I recommend Leila Parson's The Commander.

A History of the Modern Middle East

An earlier version of this book was part of my university curriculum, and I found it to be fairly unbiased. It examines the middle east over the past 200 years, from the roots of modern conflicts through to the present strife in the region.

I took a Modern History of the Middle East overview class in college, and the Cleveland book already recommended was our main textbook for the course.

We also read [From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East] (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104039.From_the_Holy_Mountain), which is not an objective overview, but rather an engaging travel narrative through the region which helped to make many of the complex historical nuances and religious conflicts much more 'real' and understandable for me.