On Feb. 1, Soviet Russia abrogated the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 and the British Foreign Office “shook hands with murder” to the extent of concurring in the abrogation. But the 1907 Treaty had already worked out to its ghastly fruition. Nothing remained of Persia’s independence but an imprisoned Shah at Teheran. The Caliphate of Islam was destroyed, and few countries have ever been flogged into such ruin as now prevailed in the Turkish remnant of the Ottoman Empire.
On March 2, Germany imposed its peace terms on Soviet Russia at Brest-Litovsk, detaching the Ukraine from Russia, embedding the Black Sea firmly in the Berlin-Baku-Bokhara scheme (the old Berlin-to-Bagdad scheme had been left in the air by the British capture of Bagdad), and making over Batum to the Turks. A Turco-German conference at Trebizond on the Black Sea speedily effected a joint policy for Trans-Caucasia, under whose terms Baku was named as the capital of a new Trans-Caucasian State to be christened “Azerbaijan,” presumably after the Azerbaijan province in north-west Persia which it was proposed to claim as an irredentum for the new State. An Ottoman Army, accompanied by a German military mission, now lost no time in moving on Baku and the British Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force simultaneously detached a small body which it designated the “Dunsterforce,” hurriedly dispatching it across Persia for Tiflis in Trans-Caucasia. Turks, Germans and British raced for Baku, all three determined now that Russia had fallen back behind the barrier of the Caucasus Range, to hold it there.
In the eastern provinces, the Russian rout had left hardly as much as a street cat alive. In what had been Russian Trans-Caucasia, beyond the eastern provinces, three small and quarrelsome Governments bobbed about like corks in the chaos, a Tartar Government at Baku controlled by the local Russian Soviet, an Armenian Government at Erivan controlled by the brigand-patriot Antranik, and a Liberal Georgian Government at Tiflis which feared the Russians and despised the Armenians. The Ottoman Army drove its way easily to Baku. The British Dunsterforce reached there first but only in time to flee back to Persia, for the Ottoman forces stormed the city’s hurriedly extemporized defensive works, installed their Azerbaijan Government, signed their treaty of close military alliance with it, organized the Turkish Federalist Party in its support and set about the task of fetching all Trans-Caucasia under its rule. Firmly founded on the German Berlin-Baku-Bokhara scheme, Pan-Turanianism had finally become a reality.
Meanwhile on July 3, the Crown Prince succeeded to the Throne at Constantinople. The Sixth Mohammed took up his abode in the white marble palace of Dolma Bagtsche on the Bosphorus. But it was not the Old Turks who girded him with the Prophet’s Sword. Instead of the Mevlevi tchelebi from Konia, he was girded by the sheikh of the great Senussi order whose seat is at Jarabub in the Sahara. A German submarine had taken him aboard at an empty place on the African coast and had landed him at Pola. Throughout the crossing, he had said his prayers five times a day in the forward battery compartment, facing toward Mecca by standard compass.
General Mustapha Kemal Pasha who had spent most of a year touring Germany and Austria-Hungary in disgrace, was now recalled and given the Yilderim group (Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Armies) on the Palestine front. But it was too late. Amid the din of a world war crashing to its close, simultaneous offensives were launched in September, by the French command at Salonica with Constantinople as its objective and by the British command in Palestine with Aleppo as its objective. With General Allenby’s great break-through overrunning the Syrian corridor, the French imposed an armistice on Bulgaria and the Enver Government fell in Constantinople. Enver Pasha fled to Daghestan, a dapper young Turk still in earnest pursuit of the Pan-Turanian will-o’-the-wisp, and the Opposition inherited the wreck with its capital gripped by a German garrison and French fingers reaching for it from the Maritza.
But the great wheel twirled and clicked. From a French command with the Old Greeks in tow, the new Izzet Government in Constantinople had nothing to hope. From the Emperor of India, freed from his Russian incubus, it had everything to hope. Secretly in order not to provoke the Germans to counter-action, the Izzet Government lost no time in dispatching General Townshend who was still a prisoner of war on Prinkipo, to the British naval Commander-in-Chief at Port Mudros outside the Straits. Rauf Bey, Minister of Marine in the Izzet Cabinet, followed in hurried secrecy with two colleagues. If their mission was a success, the German garrison in Constantinople would have to be confronted with a fait accompli.
In the cabin of H. M. S. Agamemnon, Admiral Calthorpe’s flagship at Port Mudros, Rauf outlined the Izzet Government’s program in seeking an armistice: (1) a return to the understanding which the Caliph and the Emperor of India had enjoyed down to 1907; (2) autonomy for the Arabs under the Caliph’s sovereignty; (3) recognition of the abrogation of the Capitulations; and (4) temporary financial help, if necessary. Admiral Calthorpe asked only that the Straits be unbarred and the road to Soviet Russia be opened. As for Pan-Turanianism, it might prove useful in holding Russia behind the barrier of the Caucasus Range. Clause 11 of the Mudros armistice stipulated as follows: “Immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops from North-West Persia to behind the pre-war frontier has already been ordered and will be carried out. Part of Trans-Caucasia has already been ordered to be evacuated by Turkish troops, the remainder to be evacuated if required by the Allies after they have studied the situation there.” Clause 15 added: “Allied control officers to be placed on all railways, including such portions of Trans-Caucasian railways now under Turkish control, which must be placed at the free and complete disposal of the Allied authorities, due consideration being given to the needs of the population. This clause to include Allied occupation of Batum. Turkey will raise no objection to the occupation of Baku by the Allies.”
So “hostilities between the Allies and Turkey” ceased “from noon, local time, on Thursday, 31st October, 1918.” The Straits were unbarred and when the French fingers closed upon Constantinople, British fingers closed with them. General Franchet d’Esperet had to share his command with General Milne. Between rows of British and French bayonets, the German garrison marched out of the capital and the Turks were relieved that the Emperor of India was once again the friend of the Caliph. Allied fleets, to be strengthened soon by most of the British Grand Fleet from the North Sea, steamed up the Dardanelles and anchored in the Bosphorus. Greek battleships followed them, anchoring under the windows of Dolma Bagtsche palace, and the Ottoman Caliph, to spare himself the painful sight, repaired to Yildiz Kiosk which for thirty-two years had been the hermit-home of Abdul Hamid. With Liberal Russia destroyed, the Church of England was soon to transfer the venue of its theological disquisitions with the Orthodox Church from the Patriarchate at Moscow to the Phanar in Constantinople. Five centuries of history were about to be re-written and Ottoman Greeks in the capital, trampling their fezzes, donned Western hats in transports of the wildest joy. The remnant of the Ottoman Armenians did the same; both the Ottoman Empire and Russia were destroyed and nothing (except ten centuries of history) now remained to prevent the resuscitation of the mediaeval Kingdom of Armenia.
But the Ottoman capital had been reduced to a supply base for Denikin. With an Anglo-French command in firm control of the great city, the Russians at last began their entry into Constantinople—big Slavs in uniform who had borne the British to their knees in 1907, huge slit-eyed men once kings in Kafiristan, now grovelling for crusts in the gutters of Galata.