The Turks and Europe

by Gaston Gaillard

Lord Robert Cecil, who had taken the lead in that politico-religious movement, wrote on February 23 in the Evening Standard a strong article in which he said something to this purpose: “Constantinople is a trophy of victories, not the capital of a nation. From Constantinople the Turks issue cruel orders against the Christian population. From the point of view both of morality and of prudence, the Stambul Government must not be strengthened by such an exorbitant concession on the part of the Allies.”

In the debate which took place on Wednesday, February 25, 1920, in the House of Commons regarding the retention of the Turks in Constantinople, after a question of Lord Edmund Talbot, Sir Donald Maclean, who spoke first, urged that if the Turks were not expelled from Constantinople all the worst difficulties of the past would occur again, and would endanger the peace of the world.

“The decision of the Peace Conference was a great surprise to most people. We owed nothing to the Turks. They came into the war gladly and without any provocation on our part. They became the willing and most useful ally of Germany. If the Turks were left in the gateway of the world, they would be at their old game again.”[16]

Sir Edward Carson said just the reverse:

“It was suggested that we should drive the Turks out of Constantinople.... If the Allies wanted to drive the Turks out of Constantinople, ... they would have to commence another war, and it would not be a small war. You must not talk of cutting down the Army and the Navy, and at the same moment censure the Government because they had not settled the question of driving the Turks out.”[17]

Mr. Lloyd George, speaking after them both, began thus:

“This is not a decision, whichever way you go, which is free from difficulty and objection. I do not know whether my right hon. friend is under the impression that if we decided to expel the Turk from Constantinople the course would be absolutely clear. As a matter of fact, it is a balancing of the advantages and the disadvantages, and it is upon that balance and after weighing very carefully and for some time all the arguments in favour and all the arguments against, all the difficulties along the one path and all the difficulties you may encounter on the other, and all the obstacles and all the perils on both sides, that the Allied Conference came to the conclusion that on the whole the better course was to retain the Turk in Constantinople for achieving a common end.”

Then he explained that the agreement concerning the substitution of the Russians for the Turks in Constantinople had become null and void after the Russian revolution and the Brest-Litovsk peace, and that at the present date the Bolshevists were not ready to assume such a responsibility, should it be offered to them.

“I will deal with two other pledges which are important. My right hon. friend referred to a pledge I gave to the House in December last, that there would not be the same gate-keeper, but there would be a different porter at the gates.... It would have been the height of folly to trust the guardianship of these gates to the people who betrayed their trust. That will never be done. They will never be closed by the Turk in the face of a British ship again....

“The second pledge, given in January, 1918, was given after full consultation with all parties, and the right hon. member for Paisley and Lord Grey acquiesced. There was a real desire to make a national statement of war aims, a statement that would carry all parties along with it, and they all agreed. It was a carefully prepared declaration, which I read out, as follows: ‘Nor are we fighting to destroy Austria-Hungary, or to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race. Outside Europe we believe that the same principle should be applied.... While we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the homeland of the Turkish race, with its capital in Constantinople, the passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea being internationalised and neutralised’ (as they will be), ‘Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine are in our judgment entitled to recognition of their separate national conditions.’ That declaration was specific, unqualified, and deliberate. It was made with the consent of all parties in the community....