The Turks and Europe

by Gaston Gaillard

The Ottoman Government, in a note sent on November 1, 1916, by the Turkish ambassadors in Berlin and Vienna to the German and Austrian Ministers of Foreign Affairs, notified to their respective Governments and the neutrals that henceforth they looked upon the two international treaties of Paris and Berlin as null and void.

Now the treaties of Paris in 1856 and of Berlin in 1878 were the most important deeds that had hitherto regulated the relations between the Ottoman Empire and the other European Powers. The treaty of Paris confirmed the treaty of 1841, according to which the question of the closing of the Straits to foreign warships was considered as an international question which did not depend only on the Turkish Government.

The Berlin treaty of 1878, too, asserted a right of control and tutelage of the Powers over Turkey, and in it Turkey solemnly promised to maintain the principle of religious liberty, to allow Christians to bear evidence in law-courts, and to institute reforms in Armenia.

As the King of Prussia and the Emperor had signed the treaty of Paris, and the Austrian Emperor and the German Emperor had signed the treaty of Berlin, Turkey could not denounce these treaties without the assent of these two allied countries, which thus gave up the patrimonial rights and privileges wrested from the Sultan by Western Europe in the course of the last three centuries. This consideration accounts for the support Turkey consented to give the Central Powers and the sacrifices she engaged to make.

In order to understand the succession of events and the new policy of Turkey, the reader must be referred to the note of the Ottoman Government abrogating the treaties of Paris and Berlin which was handed on November 1, 1916, by the Turkish ambassadors in Berlin and Vienna to the German and Austrian Ministers of Foreign Affairs. This note, recalling the various events which had taken place, pointed out that they justified Turkey in casting off the tutelage of both the Allied Powers and the Central Powers:

“Owing to the events that took place in the second half of the last century, the Imperial Ottoman Empire was compelled, at several times, to sign two important treaties, the Paris treaty on March 30, 1866, and the Berlin treaty on August 3, 1878. The latter had, in most respects, broken the balance established by the former, and they were both trodden underfoot by the signatories that openly or secretly broke their engagements. These Powers, after enforcing the clauses that were to the disadvantage of the Ottoman Empire, not only did not care for those that were to its advantage, but even continually opposed their carrying out.

“The Paris treaty laid down the principle of the territorial integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire; it also stipulated that this clause should be fully guaranteed by all the Powers, and forbade any meddling, either with the relations between the Imperial Government and its subjects, or with the interior administration of the Ottoman Empire.

“Nevertheless, the French Government kept on interfering by force of arms in Ottoman territory, and demanded the institution of a new administrative organisation in Lebanon. Then the Powers signatory to the treaty were compelled to participate in this action by diplomatic ways, in order not to let France have a free hand in carrying out her plans, which were contrary to the Paris treaty and paved the way to territorial encroachments.

“On the other hand, the Russian Government, pursuing a similar policy, held in check by an ultimatum the action of the Porte against the principalities of Serbia and Montenegro, where it had raised an insurrection, and which it had fully provided with arms, supplies, officers, and soldiers; and after demanding the institution of a new foreign administration in some Ottoman provinces and of a foreign control over their home affairs, it finally declared war against Turkey.

“In the same manner the clauses of the Paris treaty did not hinder either the French Government from occupying Tunis and turning this province of the Ottoman Empire into a French protectorate—or the English from occupying Egypt to become the ruling power there, and from encroaching upon Ottoman sovereignty in the south of the Yemen, in Nejed, Koweit, Elfytyr, and the Persian Gulf. In spite of the same clauses the four Powers now at war against Turkey have also recently modified the condition of Crete and instituted a new state of things inconsistent with the territorial integrity that they had guaranteed.