The Turks and Europe

by Gaston Gaillard

The assertion that “Turkey entered into the war without the shadow of an excuse or provocation,” recurred again in it and was fully enlarged upon. The events that had taken place lately and the character they had assumed since the end of hostilities did not seem to have taught the writers or instigators of the answer anything at all. We do not wish here to mitigate in any way the responsibilities of Turkey or her wrongs to the Allies; yet we should not overlook the most legitimate reasons that drove her to act thus, and we must own she had a right to mistrust the promises made to her. For the policy that the Allies pursued at that time and that they have not wholly repudiated obviously proved that they would give a free hand to Russia to carry out her ambitious schemes on Constantinople and Turkey-in-Asia, as a reward for her energetic share in the war.

Besides, a fact helps us to understand how Turkey was driven to enter into the war and accounts for her apprehension of England and the Anglo-Hellenic policy pursued by England in relation with her later on, both in the working out of the Sèvres treaty and after the signature of this treaty; it is the proposition made by England to Greece to attack Turkey. According to the letter that M. Venizelos addressed to King Constantine on September 7, 1914, sending in his resignation, which was not accepted by the King, Admiral Kerr, the very man whom later on, in 1920, the British Government was to entrust with a mission to the Hellenic King while he was at Lucerne, formally waited upon the latter to urge him to attack Turkey. The King is said to have laid down as a necessary condition to his consent that Britain should guarantee the neutrality of Bulgaria and should contrive to bring Turkey to afford him a pretext for opening hostilities. Admiral Kerr, speaking on behalf of the British Government, is reported to have given him full guarantee on the first point; but with reference to the second point he hinted that he thought it unnecessary to seek for a pretext or wait for a provocation as the Hellenic policy constantly evinced a feeling of hostility towards Turkey.[34]

In this answer the Allies again reproached the Turks with their atrocities—without mentioning the atrocities committed by the Armenians against the Turks; and yet at that time Mr. Lloyd George seemed to have wholly forgotten the German atrocities, for he did not say a word about the punishment of the war criminals, and seemed ready to make concessions as to the reparations stipulated in the treaty with Germany. Why should the Turks be chastised—as was said at the time—if the other criminals were not punished? Was it merely because they were weaker and less guilty than the Germans?

Though it was a palpable falsehood, it was asserted again in this document that in Thrace the Moslems were not in a majority.

The Powers also gravely affirmed they contemplated for Smyrna “about the same régime as for Dantzig,” which could not greatly please either the Greeks or the Turks, judging from the condition of the Poles in the Baltic port; but they did not add that perhaps in this case too England would finally control the port.

“With regard to the control of the Straits,” said the document, “the Powers must unhesitatingly take adequate measures to prevent the Turkish Government from treacherously trampling upon the cause of civilisation.” It seemed to be forgotten that Turkey insisted upon keeping them in order to prevent Russia from seizing them; and at the very time when the note was drawn up some newspapers declared—which might have sufficed to justify the Turkish claim—that the passage of the Straits must be free in order to allow the Allies to send munitions to Wrangel’s army.

The Allies, however, decided to grant to “Turkey, as a riparian Power and in the same manner and on the same conditions as to Bulgaria, the right to appoint a delegate to the Commission and the suppression of the clause through which Turkey was to surrender to the Allied Governments all steamers of 1,600 tons upwards.” These were the only two concessions made to Turkey.

The Allies’ answer laid great stress upon the advantages offered by the organisation of a financial control of Turkey, which, to quote the document itself, “was introduced for no other purpose than to protect Turkey against the corruption and speculation which had ruined her in the past.” As a matter of fact, that corruption and speculation had been let loose in Turkey by the Great Powers themselves, under cover of the privileges given by the Capitulations.

Judging from the very words of the clause which left Constantinople in the hands of the Turks, the Allies seemed to allow this merely out of condescension, and even alleged that the territory left to Turkey as a sovereign State was “a large and productive territory.”