The sudden change in the attitude of the Entente Powers toward Turkey, beginning only a few months after these words were uttered, demonstrates their insincerity. They were not inspired by moral indignation, by a desire to liberate subject peoples, or by a knowledge of or belief in the ability or willingness of the three Powers, acting together, to coerce the Turks. The British hoped that the Greeks by their own efforts would be able to crush the rising Turkish Nationalist movement. The French thought that if they yielded to the British, and agreed to give the Greeks a chance, they would have British approval and probably British aid in the policies they wanted to adopt in regard to Turkey.
Beyond the reach of the guns of the Entente fleets, a group of virile Turkish military men, which included most of the officers of the partly disbanded army, was issuing manifestos, appealing to the people against the Government and warning the Sultan and his ministers not to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. When the Turkish delegation at Paris put their names to the treaty, the Turkish Nationalists pronounced it null and void, just as the German junkers have pronounced the Treaty of Versailles null and void. The difference between the Turkish and German Nationalists is that the latter have not yet come to the point of repudiating their Government and starting a revolution. The Turkish Nationalists severed their allegiance to the Constantinople Government and held elections for a National Assembly. This body met at Angora, formally denounced the Treaty of Versailles, and set forth their program in a National Pact, for the realization of which they swore solemnly to fight, and, if necessary, to die.
Because this document has been the “irreducible minimum” in the negotiations with the powers at Lausanne, it is important to have a clear knowledge of its terms. The Pact contains six articles:
1. The fate of the portion of the Ottoman territory which was under enemy occupation at the time of the conclusion of the armistice in October, 1919, will inevitably be regulated by plebiscite, the territory in question being inhabited by an Arab majority. Those portions of the Ottoman territory within as well as outside the armistice line which are inhabited by Ottoman Mussulman majorities, united among themselves by religion and racial ties and by a common ideal as well as by sentiments of mutual respect, constitute an indivisible whole, division whereof is impossible, either in theory or in practice.
2. We accept a new plebiscite, if necessary, for the three districts, Kars, Ardahan and Batum, which joined themselves to the mother-country by vote of their inhabitants just as soon as they recovered their liberty.
3. The adjustment of the question of Western Thrace, which has been disputed with Turkey up until the conclusion of peace, will be made the subject of a plebiscite executed with the fullest liberty to its inhabitants.
4. The safety of Constantinople, headquarters of the Mussulman caliphate and capital of the Ottoman Empire, as well as that of the Sea of Marmora, must be assured. This condition once complied with, Turkey must then treat with the Allied authorities the subject of opening the Straits to world commerce.
5. The rights of minorities will be guaranteed by us in the hope that the same rights will be granted to the Mussulman populations in contiguous territories. The question of guarantees will be subject to the same laws and principles which have been established between the Entente and its enemies and between the Entente and some of its allies.
6. Our highest and most vital principle is to have entire independence, with which, as in the case of all other countries, we shall be able to develop ourselves both socially and economically. We are opposed to all restrictions which are but obstacles to our political, judicial, and economic development. The terms of the payment of our debts, which will certainly be settled, must not be contrary to the spirit of this principle.
The terms of the Pact are in essence a declaration of independence from foreign control. They ignore the fact that Turkey lost the war, and should therefore expect to share the humiliations of her allies by being subjected to penalties and indemnities. As the Entente Powers have discovered at Lausanne, the Angora Government repudiates responsibility for the World War, and the logical consequences of defeat. The Turks who gathered for the adoption of a program of resistance to the Entente Powers and Greece in the autumn of 1920 assumed that their revolutionary government was the rightful heir to all the titles and privileges of the old Ottoman Empire, but to none of its treaty obligations and its responsibilities in connection with the lost war or the horrible massacres and deportations of Greeks and Armenians during the war.
The four territorial articles of the Pact in no sense constitute a confession of the altered position of Turkey because of her defeat. The Arabic-speaking portions of the Empire are not given up. They are to decide their future by a plebiscite, regardless of the mandates of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. The result of the plebiscite might well be a decision to remain within the Ottoman Empire. Aside from the Arabs, there is no question of a plebiscite, except for the three provinces of the Caucasus which Turkey held in the last year of the war. “Portions of the Ottoman territory within as well as outside the armistice line ... constitute an indivisible whole.” This means the flat denial of Kurdish, Armenian, and Greek aspirations. Article 3 calls into question the line agreed upon in the Treaty of London with the Balkan states in May, 1913. Article 4 admits in regard to the Straits only what had always been an international privilege, the “opening of the Straits to world commerce.”
Article 5, dealing with minorities, establishes the principle of reciprocity. The Turks hope for reciprocal guarantees with neighboring states, and they refuse to assent to any more specific guarantees than those the Entente Powers cause to be inserted in the treaty with enemy states and the smaller countries that were to profit by the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire.
The Nationalists rightly call “our highest and most vital principle” the abolition of the capitulatory régime that had been in force, in the relations of Turkey with Occidentals, since the beginning of the Empire. Article 6 asserts the intention of the Turks to insist upon full economic and social independence in their own country, which means the abolition of the capitulations, tariff control, and the mortgage of the Imperial Ottoman Debt upon certain monopolies and revenues.
How was a defeated country, whose capital and regularly constituted government were at the mercy of the enemy, whose principal port and the railways leading to it were in the hands of the Greeks, and which had no fleet to challenge the Greek and Allied mastery of the sea, to realize this ambitious program? The declarations of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his followers seemed to be absurd, in view of the military situation. The Nationalists were well officered, and the Turks are natural fighters. But they had no artillery and no airplanes, and lacked both transportation facilities and factories to manufacture war materials. Certainly the Angora Government could hope for no miracles of valor to offset the handicap of a lack of the tools of modern warfare. The era had passed when the willingness and ability to fight and the possession of fighting men could influence, without other contributing factors, the course of history. Had the Turks been treated by the Entente Powers as the other enemies were treated, the Angora movement would have had no significance, and the National Pact would never have been important enough to be quoted in full in an English book. The star of Turkish Nationalism arose and attracted attention, and was able finally to twinkle impudently at every one at Lausanne, because Russia, France, and Italy were quick to see the opportunity the Mustafa Kemal Pasha group afforded for advancing their own interests in the Near East and in world politics generally.
Russian emissaries appeared at Angora soon after the movement started, and the Nationalist leaders found how much they really had in common with the Bolshevists: bitter hatred of the capitalist countries whose exploitation of Turkey had led to her enslavement and virtual dismemberment. The Turks joined the Bolshevists in invading Armenia. Russian Armenia had to accept a Soviet form of government, and renounce the hope of annexing any part of the Ottoman Armenian provinces. The Turks recognized Soviet Armenia and the Soviet Republic of Adjaristan. The latter were nothing more than the port of Batum and its immediate hinterland. The Turkish frontier was twelve miles from Batum, which became the principal port for Moscow aid to Angora.