increased support for the Greek rebels. By the late 19th and early 20th century, the Greek element was found predominantly in Constantinople and Smyrna, along the Black Sea coast (the Pontic Greeks) and the Aegean coast, the Gallipoli peninsula and a few cities and numerous villages in the central Anatolian interior (the Cappadocian Greeks). The Greeks of Constantinople constituted the largest Greek urban population in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the first half of 1914, the Ottoman authorities expelled more than 100,000 Ottoman Greeks to Greece. World War I and its aftermath Given their large Greek populations, Constantinople and Asia Minor featured prominently in the Greek irredentist concept of Megali Idea (lit. "Great Idea") during the 19th century and early 20th century. The goal of Megali Idea was the liberation of all Greek-inhabited lands and the eventual establishment of a successor state to the Byzantine Empire with Constantinople as its capital. The Greek population amounted to 1,777,146 (16.42% of population during 1910). During World War I and its aftermath (1914–1923), the government of the Ottoman Empire and subsequently the Turkish National Movement, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, instigated a violent campaign against the Greek population of the Empire. The campaign included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, and summary expulsions. According to various sources, several hundreds of thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Some of the survivors and refugees, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire. Following Greece's participation on the Allied side in World War I, and the participation of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers, Greece received an order to land in Smyrna by the Triple Entente as part of the planned partition of the Ottoman Empire. On May 15, 1919, twenty thousand Greek soldiers landed in Smyrna, taking control of the city and its surroundings under cover of the Greek, French, and British navies. Legal justifications for the landings was found in the article 7 of the Armistice of Mudros, which allowed the Allies "to occupy any strategic points in the event of any situation arising which threatens the security of Allies." The Greeks of Smyrna and other Christians greeted the Greek troops as liberators. By contrast, the majority of the Muslim population saw them as an invading force. Subsequently, the Treaty of Sèvres awarded Greece Eastern Thrace up to the Chatalja lines at the outskirts of Constantinople,