Ismet Pasha, like Mr. Edison, is deaf; and possibly feels with that great inventor that, “though it is uncomfortable when people insist on making a spitoon of your ear, for the rest it is all advantage.” For example, at dinner one can “get on with one’s thinking,” instead of listening to the conversation. Ismet Pasha only “hears what he wants to hear,” often a great advantage in diplomacy.
As to being content with the “working of the Conference,” he said, “we are doing all in our power to make peace, but it is difficult for one nation against all the other powers. Willingly or unwillingly, they cannot see what our National Pact means to us; and that, as a proud people, we cannot accept terms of peace which they would not think of offering the Greeks and Bulgars. It is said that the Great Powers must conciliate public opinion which hates and distrusts us as ‘barbarians,’ but we feel certain that the Powers could deal with ‘public opinion’ if they so desired, and convince the whole world that we are now working by civilised methods to become a free and independent nation. Instead of facing the vital question of a ‘right to exist’ as a State, we feel that much time has been wasted over details that do not need any discussion. It is known, for example, that we are offering, what we have always offered, equal rights to Moslems and Christians; yet we are asked to establish inequality by exempting Christians from military service.
“If ever the Powers consent to accept our point of view, it is considered a great concession, and when we point out that our whole demands have been reduced by us to the lowest minimum, they laugh; imagining it is a ‘concession’ to give us back one room in our own house.
“For three years, Turkey has given proof that none can dispute of her organising capacity, her great vitality, and her deep longing to regenerate her country. We came here hoping and believing that the plenipotentiaries would bear this in mind. They do not. They beg us to ‘trust’ them; but they treat us with the same caution, the same distrust, as they have always shown towards the old ‘decayed’ Turkey, towards which, maybe, there used to be some slight justification. Such an attitude cannot produce satisfactory progress.”
“What are the chief obstacles to Peace?”
“Mosul—Finance—Judicial Capitulations—Reparations.
“We are only asking four milliard gold francs for reparations. That is a small figure for a country that has been completely devastated, and it takes no count of loss of life.
“Mosul was never captured by Great Britain, though they claim the right of conquest. Their troops were a long way from Mosul when ours were demobilised at the end of the war. They ‘captured’ it by ‘violating the terms of the Armistice’; as they did at Constantinople, and as the French did in Cilicia.
“The population of Mosul is Kurd and Turkish, with only a small Arab minority. It must, therefore, belong to Turkey on all the principles by which the Powers have determined the frontiers of Europe. This was recognised, indeed, in the Sykes-Picot agreement, which admitted that Mosul is not a part of Mesopotamia.
“It was finally handed to England by the French Foreign Office; but M. Clemenceau afterwards apologised that he had not previously ‘known of the oil there.’ The Kurds of Mosul have nothing in common with the Arabs; and naturally want to be united with their ‘brothers’ in Anatolia. Why are we the only nation to whom the principle of racial frontiers has been denied? By what kind of justice does an Arab minority, probably smaller than one quarter of the population, give England the right to annex Mosul!