The great Selimie barracks, at Skutari, were therefore evacuated by the Turks, who thus had no troops left on the Asiatic shore of the Straits.
At Pasha Bagtche Chiboukli, on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, Greek soldiers helped to disarm the population, and searched everybody who landed at that village.
At Stambul, on the great bridge of Karakeui, British agents halted all officers and soldiers wearing the Turkish uniform, and directed them to the buildings of the English gendarmerie to be examined.
The Alemdagh district was occupied, and General Milne had all the Government troops disarmed, on the pretext of their questionable attitude and the weakness of the Turkish Government. Yet the latter had, of its own accord, broken up the Constantinople army corps, and replaced it by one division that was to be dissolved, in its turn, after the signature of the Peace Treaty, as according to the terms of peace only 700 Turkish soldiers had a right to reside in Constantinople as the Sultan’s guard.
In an article of Le Matin, July 7, 1920, under the title, “A New Phase of the Eclipse of French Influence in the East,” M. André Fribourg pointed out the encroachment of the British Commander in Constantinople.
The decision taken by the Allies at Boulogne not to grant any further delay had placed the Turks in a difficult situation. The Grand Vizier, who had come to Paris in the hope of negotiating, handed his answer on the 25th, in order to keep within the appointed time.
The Supreme Council examined this answer on Wednesday, July 7, at Spa. After hearing the English experts, who advised that any modification should be rejected, the Council refused to make any concessions on all the chief points mentioned in the Turkish answer, and only admitted a few subsidiary requests as open to discussion. It deputed a Commission of political experts to draw up an answer in collaboration with the military experts.
Meanwhile the Minister of the Interior, Reshid Bey, chairman of the Ottoman delegation, who had left Constantinople on the 25th, and had arrived in Paris with Jemil Pasha only at the beginning of July, sent a note to the Secretary of the Peace Conference to be forwarded to M. Millerand at Spa. This note, which came to hand on July 11, completed the first answer. It included the decisions taken in Constantinople during Damad Ferid’s stay at Versailles.
The remarks offered by the Ottoman delegation about the peace conditions presented by the Allies made up a little book of forty pages with some appendices, which was handed to the Conference on the 25th. The answer, which had been revised in Constantinople, and consisted of forty-seven pages, was delivered a few days after; it differed but little from the first.