CHAPTER XXII
THE TURKISH NATIONALIST MOVEMENT
No armies were so decisively defeated in the closing months of the World War as those of Turkey. The British retrieved their reverses in Mesopotamia, while General Allenby, in the Palestinian campaign, succeeded in striking a death-blow to Turkish military domination over the Arabic-speaking portions of the Ottoman Empire. When it was realized at Constantinople that Germany had come to the end of her resources, Talaat and Enver, who had been in the saddle throughout the war, resigned and got away. A new cabinet immediately entered into negotiations for an armistice, but tried to delay capitulating in order that Turkey might have the advantage of the conditional surrender Germany was manœuvering to make. This proved to be impossible. On October 30, 1918, the Sultan’s delegates agreed at Mudros to Allied occupation of the Straits and Constantinople, as well as of the Taurus tunnel system on the Bagdad Railway, and to the immediate demobilization of the Turkish army, the surrender of the fleet, the withdrawal of Turkish armies from the Caucasus, Persia, and Cilicia, and the capitulation of Turkish garrisons and officers with indigenous troops in Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Tripolitania.
After the armistice British armies entered the Caucasus, penetrated Mesopotamia to Mosul, and passed through Syria into Cilicia. Entente fleets appeared in the Bosphorus; garrisons were disembarked for Constantinople; and Allied contingents took possession of the Dardanelles forts. The British extended their control from the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus along the Anatolian Railway to Eski Sheïr.
A prompt peace settlement, such as was imposed upon Germany, would have compelled the Turks to yield to every demand of the Entente Powers. But, as we have seen elsewhere, suspicions and rivalries of the Entente Powers delayed the presentation of a treaty to Turkey. Nearly two years passed before the Turks were forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. In the meantime, the Entente Powers had invited Greece to occupy Smyrna and to drive the Turks out of Thrace. The Greek expedition to Asia Minor met with opposition from the beginning, and to break it down the Greeks were gradually drawn into the interior of the country. Syria and Cilicia were handed over to the French, and the British were compelled to abandon the Caucasus and northern Persia to Soviet Russia.
Before the summer of 1920 there was already a wide divergence of opinion on the Near Eastern question among the Entente Powers, and the Turks, under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, had reorganized an army and were defying the Sultan’s authority in the interior of Asia Minor. These significant changes did not deter the Entente Powers, however, from rejecting the pleas of the Turks for mitigation of the peace terms in much the same language they had used to Germany a year before.
In view of what has happened since, it is interesting to observe that the Supreme Council, in June, 1920, told Turkey that the Allies were quite unable to agree that Turkey had any less responsibility for the war than the countries to which she had been allied. In fact, they declared that she was “guilty of peculiar treachery to Powers which for more than half a century had been her steadfast friends,” and that she had entered the war “without the shadow of excuse of provocation.” The Allied note went on to say:
Not only has the Turkish Government failed to protect its subjects of other races from pillage, outrage, and murder, but there is abundant evidence that it has been responsible for directing and organizing savagery against people to whom it owed protection. For these reasons the Allied powers are resolved to emancipate all areas inhabited by non-Turkish majority from Turkish rule. It would neither be just nor would it conduce to lasting peace in the Near and Middle East that large masses of non-Turkish nationality should be forced to remain under Turkish rule. The Allies can make no modification in the clauses of the treaty which detach Thrace and Smyrna from Turkish rule, for in both areas the Turks are in a minority. The same considerations apply to the frontiers fixed between Syria and Turkey. For the same reason they can make no change in the provisions which provide for the creation of a free Armenia within boundaries which the President of the United States will determine as fair and just.
The Entente Powers pointed out that they had been generous in leaving the Turks in Constantinople and that, “in view of the misuse made by the Turks of their power in the past, the Allies have had grave doubts as to the wisdom of this step.” A threat and ultimatum ended the discussion:
If the Turkish Government refuses to sign the peace, still more, if it finds itself unable to reëstablish its authority in Asia Minor, or to give effect to the treaty, the Allies, in accordance with the terms of the treaty, may be driven to reconsider this arrangement, by ejecting the Turks from Europe once and for all.