No armies were so decisively defeated in the closing months of the World War as those of Turkey. The British retrieved their reverses in Mesopotamia, while General Allenby, in the Palestinian campaign, succeeded in striking a death-blow to Turkish military domination over the Arabic-speaking portions of the Ottoman Empire. When it was realized at Constantinople that Germany had come to the end of her resources, Talaat and Enver, who had been in the saddle throughout the war, resigned and got away. A new cabinet immediately entered into negotiations for an armistice, but tried to delay capitulating in order that Turkey might have the advantage of the conditional surrender Germany was manoeuvering to make. This proved to be impossible. On October 30, 1918, the Sultan’s delegates agreed at Mudros to Allied occupation of the Straits and Constantinople, as well as of the Taurus tunnel system on the Bagdad Railway, and to the immediate demobilization of the Turkish army, the surrender of the fleet, the After the armistice British armies entered the Caucasus, penetrated Mesopotamia to Mosul, and passed through Syria into Cilicia. Entente fleets appeared in the Bosphorus; garrisons were disembarked for Constantinople; and Allied contingents took possession of the Dardanelles forts. The British extended their control from the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus along the Anatolian Railway to Eski SheÏr. A prompt peace settlement, such as was imposed upon Germany, would have compelled the Turks to yield to every demand of the Entente Powers. But, as we have seen elsewhere, suspicions and rivalries of the Entente Powers delayed the presentation of a treaty to Turkey. Nearly two years passed before the Turks were forced to sign the Treaty of SÈvres. In the meantime, the Entente Powers had invited Greece to occupy Smyrna and to drive the Turks out of Thrace. The Greek expedition to Asia Minor met with opposition from the beginning, and to break it down the Greeks were gradually drawn into the interior of the country. Syria and Cilicia were handed over to the French, and the British Before the summer of 1920 there was already a wide divergence of opinion on the Near Eastern question among the Entente Powers, and the Turks, under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, had reorganized an army and were defying the Sultan’s authority in the interior of Asia Minor. These significant changes did not deter the Entente Powers, however, from rejecting the pleas of the Turks for mitigation of the peace terms in much the same language they had used to Germany a year before. In view of what has happened since, it is interesting to observe that the Supreme Council, in June, 1920, told Turkey that the Allies were quite unable to agree that Turkey had any less responsibility for the war than the countries to which she had been allied. In fact, they declared that she was “guilty of peculiar treachery to Powers which for more than half a century had been her steadfast friends,” and that she had entered the war “without the shadow of excuse of provocation.” The Allied note went on to say:
The Entente Powers pointed out that they had been generous in leaving the Turks in Constantinople and that, “in view of the misuse made by the Turks of their power in the past, the Allies have had grave doubts as to the wisdom of this step.” A threat and ultimatum ended the discussion:
The sudden change in the attitude of the Entente Powers toward Turkey, beginning only a few months after these words were uttered, demonstrates Beyond the reach of the guns of the Entente fleets, a group of virile Turkish military men, which included most of the officers of the partly disbanded army, was issuing manifestos, appealing to the people against the Government and warning the Sultan and his ministers not to sign the Treaty of SÈvres. When the Turkish delegation at Paris put their names to the treaty, the Turkish Nationalists pronounced it null and void, just as the German junkers have pronounced the Treaty of Versailles null and void. The difference between the Turkish and German Nationalists is that the latter have not yet come to the point of repudiating their Government and starting a revolution. The Turkish Nationalists severed their allegiance to the Constantinople Government and held elections for a National Assembly. Because this document has been the “irreducible minimum” in the negotiations with the powers at Lausanne, it is important to have a clear knowledge of its terms. The Pact contains six articles:
The terms of the Pact are in essence a declaration of independence from foreign control. They ignore the fact that Turkey lost the war, and should therefore expect to share the humiliations of her allies by being subjected to penalties and indemnities. As the Entente Powers have discovered at Lausanne, the Angora Government repudiates responsibility for the World War, and the logical consequences of defeat. The Turks who gathered for the adoption of a program of resistance to the Entente Powers and Greece in the autumn of 1920 assumed that their revolutionary The four territorial articles of the Pact in no sense constitute a confession of the altered position of Turkey because of her defeat. The Arabic-speaking portions of the Empire are not given up. They are to decide their future by a plebiscite, regardless of the mandates of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. The result of the plebiscite might well be a decision to remain within the Ottoman Empire. Aside from the Arabs, there is no question of a plebiscite, except for the three provinces of the Caucasus which Turkey held in the last year of the war. “Portions of the Ottoman territory within as well as outside the armistice line ... constitute an indivisible whole.” This means the flat denial of Kurdish, Armenian, and Greek aspirations. Article 3 calls into question the line agreed upon in the Treaty of London with the Balkan states in May, 1913. Article 4 admits in regard to the Straits only what had always been an international privilege, the “opening of the Straits to world commerce.” Article 5, dealing with minorities, establishes The Nationalists rightly call “our highest and most vital principle” the abolition of the capitulatory rÉgime that had been in force, in the relations of Turkey with Occidentals, since the beginning of the Empire. Article 6 asserts the intention of the Turks to insist upon full economic and social independence in their own country, which means the abolition of the capitulations, tariff control, and the mortgage of the Imperial Ottoman Debt upon certain monopolies and revenues. How was a defeated country, whose capital and regularly constituted government were at the mercy of the enemy, whose principal port and the railways leading to it were in the hands of the Greeks, and which had no fleet to challenge the Greek and Allied mastery of the sea, to realize this ambitious program? The declarations of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his followers seemed to be absurd, in view of the military situation. The Nationalists were well officered, and the Turks are natural fighters. But they had no artillery Russian emissaries appeared at Angora soon after the movement started, and the Nationalist leaders found how much they really had in common with the Bolshevists: bitter hatred of the capitalist countries whose exploitation of Turkey had led to her enslavement and virtual dismemberment. The Turks joined the Bolshevists in invading Armenia. Russian Armenia had to accept With Russian help the Nationalists were able to attack the French in Cilicia. The French were driven out of Marash, and, after a pitched battle on the Bagdad Railway, north of Alexandretta, the French retired from Cilicia altogether, leaving to the mercy of the Turks the Armenians, whom they had formed in battalions to help them fight, and abandoning enormous war supplies of every kind. Charges have been made that the French left these supplies purposely, and also that they abandoned the Armenians when the military situation did not necessitate their doing so. Color was given to the accusation by the fact that the French were already in secret negotiations with the Nationalists and by the statements later made at Angora by M. Franklin Bouillon that the Nationalists had reason to appreciate the good will France had shown in Cilicia. The Nationalist successes in the Caucasus and On March 16, 1921, the Nationalists concluded a treaty with Soviet Russia, according to which each contracting party pledged itself not to recognize any treaty or other agreement imposed upon the other party by force, and the Russians promised to ignore the Constantinople Government. On July 30 the Angora National Assembly ratified by 202 votes against 1 the treaty with the Bolshevists. On October 20, 1921, Mustafa Kemal Pasha and M. Franklin Bouillon signed a treaty, which was ratified by the French Government ten days later. The convention was elaborate. France not only gave back to the Nationalists Cilicia (which she had received from Great Britain) without any stipulation for the protection of the unfortunate Armenians to whom the French authorities in Cilicia had appealed three years earlier to help France against the Turks, but returned to Turkish rule a strip of northern Syria that had been included in the mandate entrusted The success of the Kemalists in 1921 had as great an effect at Constantinople as at Athens. At the beginning of the year Mustafa Kemal Pasha had officially notified the Constantinople Grand Vizir that the Angora Nationalist Government was the only government in Turkey, and that no measures passed or decrees issued in Constantinople would thereafter be considered as valid. This was a warning to all the world. Gradually during the year Angora increased in prestige among the Turks, and the Sultan’s authority diminished. Despite the unfavorable military situation of the Kemalists in Western Asia Minor, the great mass of the Turks in Constantinople In 1922 Angora became the Mecca of concession-hunters, Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist agitators, and European agents for the sale of war materials. Because of the refusal of France and Italy to tolerate a Greek blockade, the Kemalists were able to import all the supplies they could buy for cash or on credit. In the spring they began to use the same means they had employed against the Armenians to exterminate the several hundred thousand Greeks living in the Black Sea regions, mostly in the old kingdom of Pontus, whose medieval capital was Trebizond. News of the massacres and deportations was carefully concealed; for the Turks knew that the principal misgiving Entente diplomacy had in the matter of the restoration of Western Asia Minor to Turkish rule was the fear of massacres of Christians, which would perturb public opinion. The Nationalists seemed to have become friends with all the world except the British. Lloyd
In May and June the British press made much of reports of massacres, and the question of the responsibility of the Entente Powers was brought up in Parliament. Because the Kemalists had answered by blanket denials and by counter-charges against the Greeks, which were supported by the French and also by American concession-hunters, the British Government proposed a commission of investigation in which the United States was invited to participate. The commission was to visit the regions occupied by the Greeks as well as those over which the Kemalists held sway, and report to the Supreme Council. Secretary Hughes accepted the proposal. So did the Greek Government. But the Angora Government refused, on the ground that the commission would be made up of those who were technically still the enemies of Turkey. At the closing session of Parliament, on August 5, 1922, Lloyd George made a stirring speech against the claims of the Turkish Nationalists. The French Government, alarmed at the turn events had taken, and urged by French holders of Turkish bonds not to allow the Kemalists to provoke the British, tried to persuade Lloyd George and Curzon to meet the Turks half-way. London The Turks wanted to reoccupy Constantinople and Thrace immediately. The British refused. After long discussion a compromise was made. The Greeks should evacuate Eastern Thrace; and Turkish gendarmes, with civilian functionaries, should be allowed to take over the administration of Thrace, pending the decision of the Peace Conference. The Nationalists might also send functionaries to Constantinople. But the Entente Powers should remain in control of the Straits, and the garrisons at Constantinople should not be withdrawn until after peace was signed. This was the situation when the delegates of the Entente Powers, the Little Entente, Greece, and Turkey—all of whom had signed the defunct The Turkish Nationalists had numerous friends in Europe and America ever since the beginning of the movement. It is not open to question that the Treaty of SÈvres was as bad a treaty as the other four treaties of the Paris peace settlement. It transferred Turks and other Moslems to the rule of their former subjects. It contained economic fetters and intolerable limitations of sovereignty. But there is no objection to the Treaty of SÈvres that would not hold with equal force in regard to the other treaties. In fact, its injustices were less, and the provocation for its punishments and guarantees for the future were as great as that which explained the Treaty of Versailles, if not greater. Morally or logically speaking, protagonists for the Turks have no more ground to stand upon than protagonists for the Germans. The movement for the revision of the Treaty of SÈvres, which was begun before the treaty was signed, had its origin in the economic rivalry and the mutual suspicions of the victors. Had not this conflict of interests, which we attempt to explain in discussing the question of the Straits, became acute enough for Italy and France to decide to give encouragement and aid to the Turkish The sentimentalists, who see in Mustapha Kemal Pasha “the George Washington of his country,” had not studied the Young Turk movement of a decade ago and experienced its bitter disillusionment. The influences that are contributing to the success of Mustapha Kemal Pasha are as numerous and seemingly contradictory as those that brought to the fore Lenin and Mussolini. Because of the ignorance of the Anatolian Turks, their lack of knowledge and appreciation of Occidental political institutions, and their indifference or actual hostility to the economic and social impulses guiding and directing European and American life, the attempt to find an analogy between the Turks and ourselves in similar circumstances is futile.24 All we can safely do is to point out that the Kemalists are inexperienced in the art of governing and are military masters of the situation only in a defensive sense. They live in a country without roads and railways, into which, as the Greeks The strength of the Turkish Nationalist movement has not been, as some people have imagined, in the invincible patriotism of the Turkish people, the leadership of the Mohammedan world, or the threat of Mustafa Kemal Pasha to band together the Turanian peoples of Western and Central Asia against European overlordship. Volumes have been written on each of these supposed sources of strength. None of them is convincing. There are hardly more than 6,000,000 Turks, The Turkish Nationalist movement, like most nationalist movements, is anti-clerical. The Angora Turks have gone as far as they dared, in view of the advantages of religious fanaticism in their internal policy and of Mohammedan solidarity in their foreign policy, to put the worship of race and country in the place of the worship of God through the intermediary of the Mohammedan faith and practice. The decree of the National Assembly on November 1, 1922, terminating the temporal power of the House of Osman, and assuming the right of the Angora Assembly to elect a new Khalif for the Mohammedan world, illustrates how the Nationalists regard their internal interests and the triumph of their party as transcending religious considerations and the sentiments of the Mohammedan world. The assumption There have been surface indications, however, of a seeming Mohammedan solidarity, which have deceived the casual newspaper reader and have undoubtedly powerfully helped the Turkish Nationalist cause. A sacred flag of Islam was sent by the Turks to the Mohammedans of India in February, 1923, when the first Lausanne Conference broke up. It was used as a symbol in processions in Bombay and other cities, which ended in mass meetings of Mohammedans in which sympathy and support for Turkey were voted. Along with these demonstrations there has been a recruiting movement in Northern India, which has These indications must be interpreted as moves in the Nationalist trouble against the British in India, and not as a recognition of the importance of the Turks in the Mohammedan world. The whole Turkish race in Asia Minor numbers less than one-tenth of the Moslems of India! While the Indian Moslems are backing the Turks they are also interested in gauging the strength of Arabic opposition to Great Britain, and have accepted the Arabic determination to remain from now on free from Turkish domination. Angora was ignored at the April Lucknow Conference, on the question of the administration of Mohammedan Holy Lands and regulations for the Mecca pilgrimage. There was no reference to Constantinople or Angora, and it was decided to send a deputation to the rulers of Hedjaz and Irak, for the purpose of anti-British agitation. If it is difficult to see how the Turkish Nationalist movement is going to control the Mohammedan world, it is still more difficult to accept the idea that there is such a movement as pan-Turanianism, of which the Nationalists make so much. The strength of the Turkish Nationalists is in the geographical position of their country, from the outlet of the Black Sea to the sources of the Mesopotamian rivers, where Russia and Great Britain fear they will some day meet in a struggle for the control of India, and from which France, Italy, and Germany are determined not to be excluded. |