The Turks and Europe

by Gaston Gaillard

Mustafa Kemal’s plan seemed to be to dispose his forces so as not to be outflanked, and be able to threaten Smyrna later on. To this end, the Nationalist forces advanced along the English sector toward the heights of Shamlija, on the Asiatic coast of the Bosphorus, from which point they could bombard Constantinople.

After a long interview with the Sultan, which lasted two hours, on June 11, the Grand Vizier Damad Ferid Pasha, owing to the difficulty of communicating between Paris and Constantinople, and the necessity of co-ordinating the draft of the answer worked out by the Ottoman Government and the reports drawn up by the various commissions with the answer recommended by the delegation, set off to Paris the next day. So it seemed likely that Turkey would ask for further time before giving her answer.

It could already be foreseen that in her answer Turkey would protest against the clauses of the treaty concerning Thrace and Smyrna, against the blow struck at the sovereignty of the Sultan by the internationalisation of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, as thus the Sultan could no longer leave his capital and go freely to Asia Minor, and, lastly, against the clauses restoring the privileges of the Capitulations to the States that enjoyed them before the war.

Turkey also intended to ask that the Sultan should keep his religious rights as Caliph over the Mussulmans detached from the Empire, and that a clause should be embodied in the treaty maintaining the guarantee in regard to the interior loan raised during the war, for otherwise a great many subscribers would be ruined and the organisation of the property of the orphans would be jeopardised.

At the beginning of the second week of June it was rumoured that the treaty might be substantially amended in favour of Turkey.[30] Perhaps Great Britain, seeing how things stood in the East, and that her policy in Asia Minor raised serious difficulties, felt it necessary to alter her attitude with regard to Turkish Nationalism which, supported by the Bolshevists, was getting more and more dangerous in Persia. For Mr. Lloyd George, who has always allowed himself to be led by the trend of events, and whose policy had lately been strongly influenced by the Bolshevists, had now altered his mind, as he often does, and seemed now inclined, owing to the failure of his advances to the Soviet Government, to modify his attitude towards Constantinople—after having exasperated Turkish Nationalism. The debate that was to take place on June 15 in the House of Lords as to what charges and responsibilities England had assumed in Mesopotamia, was postponed—which meant much; and the difficulties just met with by the British in the Upper Valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates in their struggle with the Arabs convinced them of the advisability of a revision of the British policy towards both the Arabs and the Turks.

On the other hand, it did not seem unlikely that M. Venizelos, who was being expected in London, might have seen the mistake the Supreme Council had made when it had granted the Greek claims so fully, and that the apprehension he was entitled to feel about the reality of the huge advantages obtained by Greece might have a salutary influence on him. Yet nothing of the kind happened, and in a long letter to the Daily Telegraph (June 18) he asserted not only the rights of Greece to Smyrna, but his determination to have them respected and to prevent the revision of the treaty.

M. Venizelos, “the great victor of the war in the East,” as he was called in London, even supported his claims by drawing public attention to the intrigues carried on by Constantine’s supporters to restore him to the throne. He maintained that the revision of the treaty would second the efforts which were then being made in Athens by the old party of the Crown, which, he said, was bound to triumph if Greece was deprived of the fruits of her victory and if the Allies did not redeem their pledges towards her. But then it became obvious that the Greeks did not despise Constantine so much after all, and their present attitude could not in any way be looked upon as disinterested.

It might have been expected, on the other hand, that Count Sforza, who had been High Commissioner in Constantinople, where he had won warm sympathies, would maintain the friendly policy pursued by Italy since the armistice towards Turkey—that is to say, he would urge that the time had come to revise the treaty of peace with Turkey which, since it had been drawn up at San Remo, had constantly been opposed by the Italian Press. All the parties shared this view, even the clerical party, and one of its members in the Chamber, M. Vassalo, who had just come back from Turkey, energetically maintained it was impossible to suppress the Ottoman Empire without setting on fire the whole of Asia. The Congress of the Popular Party in Naples held the same opinion. Recent events also induced Italy to preserve the cautious attitude she had assumed in Eastern affairs since the armistice, and she naturally aimed at counterbalancing the supremacy that England, if she once ruled over Constantinople and controlled Greater Greece, would enjoy over not only the western part, but the whole, of the Mediterranean Sea.

Henceforth it was obvious that the chief stipulations of the treaty that was to be enforced on Turkey were doomed to failure, and it was asked with no little anxiety whether the Powers would be wise enough to take facts into account and reconsider their decisions accordingly, or maintain them and thus pave the way to numerous conflicts and fresh difficulties. Indeed, the outcome of the arrangements they had laboriously elaborated was that things in the East had become more intricate and critical than before. No State wished to assume the task of organising the Armenian State: the American Senate flatly refused; Mr. Bonar Law formally declared in the House of Commons that England had already too many responsibilities; France did not see why she should take charge of it; Italy accepted no mandate in Asia Minor. Syria, on the other hand, protested against its dismemberment. Mesopotamia was rising against the English at the very time when the Ottoman Nationalists entered an indignant protest against the cession of Smyrna and Thrace to Greece.