Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Then followed the attack against the Greek front at the end of August, the panic in the Greek army, and the sensational collapse of the Greeks. The victory was as easy for the Turks, virtually unopposed, as it was sudden and unexpected. Within a few weeks the Nationalists had overrun all the territories the Greeks had taken two years to conquer, and were marching on Constantinople. The Italians had already got out of Asia Minor. Paris wired orders to the commander of the French troops in Constantinople to withdraw to the European side of the Bosphorus. The British Government, however, decided that the armistice of Mudros must be respected until a new treaty was made to replace the Treaty of Sèvres. Reinforcements, naval and military, were hurried to the Dardanelles. General Harington was given full powers to prevent the violation of the armistice terms. Chanak, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, was hastily fortified. Lloyd George appealed to the British dominions for support and warned Mustapha Kemal Pasha that an overt act on the part of the Nationalists would mean war.

The French Government, alarmed at the turn events had taken, and urged by French holders of Turkish bonds not to allow the Kemalists to provoke the British, tried to persuade Lloyd George and Curzon to meet the Turks half-way. London answered that His Majesty’s Government was willing to recognize the new conditions created by the Turkish victories in Asia Minor and to agree to let the Turks have back Eastern Thrace after the new treaty was signed, but no concession could be made in regard to the Straits. Poincaré then sent Franklin Bouillon to convince Kemal Pasha of the folly of attacking the British; for by this action he would certainly lose all he had gained. After days of suspense during which the British held firm, the Turks agreed to meet the Entente Powers and the Greeks in an armistice conference at Mudania, on the Sea of Marmora.

The Turks wanted to reoccupy Constantinople and Thrace immediately. The British refused. After long discussion a compromise was made. The Greeks should evacuate Eastern Thrace; and Turkish gendarmes, with civilian functionaries, should be allowed to take over the administration of Thrace, pending the decision of the Peace Conference. The Nationalists might also send functionaries to Constantinople. But the Entente Powers should remain in control of the Straits, and the garrisons at Constantinople should not be withdrawn until after peace was signed. This was the situation when the delegates of the Entente Powers, the Little Entente, Greece, and Turkey—all of whom had signed the defunct Treaty of Sèvres—met at Lausanne on November 20, 1922, to try again to establish peace in the Near East.

The Turkish Nationalists had numerous friends in Europe and America ever since the beginning of the movement. It is not open to question that the Treaty of Sèvres was as bad a treaty as the other four treaties of the Paris peace settlement. It transferred Turks and other Moslems to the rule of their former subjects. It contained economic fetters and intolerable limitations of sovereignty. But there is no objection to the Treaty of Sèvres that would not hold with equal force in regard to the other treaties. In fact, its injustices were less, and the provocation for its punishments and guarantees for the future were as great as that which explained the Treaty of Versailles, if not greater. Morally or logically speaking, protagonists for the Turks have no more ground to stand upon than protagonists for the Germans.

The movement for the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres, which was begun before the treaty was signed, had its origin in the economic rivalry and the mutual suspicions of the victors. Had not this conflict of interests, which we attempt to explain in discussing the question of the Straits, became acute enough for Italy and France to decide to give encouragement and aid to the Turkish Nationalist movement, there need not have been a Lausanne Conference.

The sentimentalists, who see in Mustapha Kemal Pasha “the George Washington of his country,” had not studied the Young Turk movement of a decade ago and experienced its bitter disillusionment. The influences that are contributing to the success of Mustapha Kemal Pasha are as numerous and seemingly contradictory as those that brought to the fore Lenin and Mussolini. Because of the ignorance of the Anatolian Turks, their lack of knowledge and appreciation of Occidental political institutions, and their indifference or actual hostility to the economic and social impulses guiding and directing European and American life, the attempt to find an analogy between the Turks and ourselves in similar circumstances is futile.[24]

All we can safely do is to point out that the Kemalists are inexperienced in the art of governing and are military masters of the situation only in a defensive sense. They live in a country without roads and railways, into which, as the Greeks learned, penetration is costly and dangerous. The Nationalists seem to realize this advantage, and talk of making Angora the capital of New Turkey. Constantinople and Brusa, as recent events have proved, are so situated that any Turkish Government would be at the mercy of the Greeks, not to mention the great powers. Despite the threats at Mudania and Lausanne, the Kemalists were not in a position to break off the negotiations. Such a course would have again lost them Eastern Thrace. Lacking sea-power, they would not have been able to take the offensive against the Greeks in Europe. Even if they had succeeded in doing so, they would have had the Little Entente to reckon with. As potential foes, however, they worried the Entente Powers because of the uncertainty of the attitude of Russia and the apprehension of Mohammedan unrest in British, French, and Italian colonies.

The strength of the Turkish Nationalist movement has not been, as some people have imagined, in the invincible patriotism of the Turkish people, the leadership of the Mohammedan world, or the threat of Mustafa Kemal Pasha to band together the Turanian peoples of Western and Central Asia against European overlordship. Volumes have been written on each of these supposed sources of strength. None of them is convincing.

There are hardly more than 6,000,000 Turks, scattered over a vast territory and living under primitive conditions. That they know what patriotism is in our Occidental connotation of that term is impossible. The educated younger generation of Turks are patriots, and sincerely love and believe in their country. But they are a handful. Caught between the older generation of the upper class, which is still Hamidian in spirit and methods, and the apathetic and ignorant Anatolian peasantry, there is something pathetic about the enthusiasm and incredible credulity of earnest and highminded young people of both sexes.

The Turkish Nationalist movement, like most nationalist movements, is anti-clerical. The Angora Turks have gone as far as they dared, in view of the advantages of religious fanaticism in their internal policy and of Mohammedan solidarity in their foreign policy, to put the worship of race and country in the place of the worship of God through the intermediary of the Mohammedan faith and practice. The decree of the National Assembly on November 1, 1922, terminating the temporal power of the House of Osman, and assuming the right of the Angora Assembly to elect a new Khalif for the Mohammedan world, illustrates how the Nationalists regard their internal interests and the triumph of their party as transcending religious considerations and the sentiments of the Mohammedan world. The assumption that “the Turkish Government will be the principal rampart of the Khalifate” (to quote the decree) is a revelation of the state of mind of the Nationalist leaders, obsessed by the idea that a few million Turks, having destroyed the historic Sultanate, could expect to dominate Islam and to capitalize it for their particular interests. The Sultan fled from Constantinople to Malta on a British warship, and later proceeded to Mecca, where he was received as Khalif by the Arabs. He has not abdicated and refuses to recognize the validity of the Angora Assembly’s decree abolishing the temporal power of the House of Osman and removing him from his position as spiritual head of those who profess the orthodox Mohammedan faith.