Partition of the Ottoman Empire
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (May 2018) |
History of the Ottoman Empire |
---|
Timeline |
Historiography (Ghaza, Decline) |
Paris Peace Conference |
---|
The partition of the Ottoman Empire (30 October 1918 – 1 November 1922) was a geopolitical event that occurred after
The sometimes-violent creation of
After the Ottoman government collapsed completely, its representatives signed the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, which would have partitioned much of the territory of present-day Turkey among France, the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy. The Turkish War of Independence forced the Western European powers to return to the negotiating table before the treaty could be ratified. The Western Europeans and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey signed and ratified the new Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, superseding the Treaty of Sèvres and agreeing on most of the territorial issues.[5]
Background
The Western powers had long believed that they would eventually become dominant in the area claimed by the weak central government of the Ottoman Empire. Britain anticipated a need to secure the area because of its strategic position on the route to
French Mandates
Syria and Lebanon became a French
Mandate of Syria
Compared to the mandate of Lebanon, the situation in Syria was more chaotic.[how?] The Entities stated are the ones that are united.[clarification needed]
- Syrian Federation: Included State of Damascus, Alawite State, and State of Aleppo (including Sanjak of Alexandretta), which were the former territorial components of the briefly existing Arab Kingdom of Syria.
- State of Syria (1925–1930): Successor to the Syrian Federation era (Not including the Alawite State).
- First Syrian Republic: State of Syria (1925–1930) with the territories of Jabal Druze State and Alawite State incorporated (Hatay State later merged with Turkey).
Mandate of Lebanon
French intervention on behalf of the
British Mandates
The British were awarded three mandated territories, with one of
Mandate for Mesopotamia
Mosul was allocated to France under the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and was subsequently given to Britain under the 1918 Clemenceau–Lloyd George Agreement. Great Britain and Turkey disputed control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in the 1920s. Under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne Mosul fell under the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, but the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland.
A three-person League of Nations committee went to the region in 1924 to study the case. In 1925 they recommended the region remain connected to Iraq, and that the UK should hold the mandate for another 25 years, to assure the autonomous rights of the
Mandate for Palestine
During the Great War, Britain produced three contrasting, but feasibly compatible, statements regarding their ambitions for Palestine. Britain had supported, through British intelligence officer
The Arab Revolt, which was in part orchestrated by Lawrence, resulted in British forces under General
. The land was administered by the British for the remainder of the war.The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine by the
Independence movements and occupations
When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed
During the 1920s and 1930s Iraq, Syria and Egypt moved towards independence, although the British and French did not formally departed the region until after World War II. But in Palestine, the conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and Zionism created a situation from which the British could neither resolve nor extricate themselves from. The rise to power of Nazism in Germany created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to create a Jewish state in Palestine, leading to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Arabian Peninsula
On the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabs were able to establish several independent states. In 1916
Anatolia
The Russians, British, Italians, French, Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians all made claims to Anatolia, based on a collection of wartime promises, military actions, secret agreements, and treaties. According to the Treaty of Sèvres, all but the Assyrians would have had their wishes honoured. Armenia was to be given a significant portion of the east, known as Wilsonian Armenia, extending as far down as the Lake Van area and as far west as Mush.
Greece was to be given Smyrna and the area around it, and likely would have gained Constantinople and all of Thrace, which was administered as internationally controlled and demilitarized territory. Italy was to be given control over the south-central and western coast of Anatolia around Antalya. France was to be given the area of Cilicia. Britain was to be given all the area south of Armenia. The Treaty of Lausanne, by contrast, forfeited all arrangements and territorial annexations.
Russia
In March 1915, Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, Sergey Sazonov, told British and French Ambassadors George Buchanan and Maurice Paléologue that a lasting postwar settlement demanded Russian possession of "the city of Constantinople, the western shore of the Bosporus, Sea of Marmara, and Dardanelles, as well as southern Thrace up to the Enos-Media line", and "a part of the Asiatic coast between the Bosporus, the Sakarya River, and a point to be determined on the shore of the Bay of İzmit."[11]
The
United Kingdom
The British seeking control over the
Italy
Under the 1917
France
Under the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, the French obtained Hatay, Lebanon and Syria and expressed a desire for the part of South-Eastern Anatolia. The 1917 Agreement of St. Jean-de-Maurienne between France, Italy and the United Kingdom allotted France the Adana region.
The French army, along with the British, occupied parts of Anatolia from 1919 to 1921 in the Franco-Turkish War, including coal mines, railways, the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak, Karadeniz Ereğli and Constantinople, Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace and the region of Cilicia. France eventually withdrew from all these areas, after the Armistice of Mudanya, the Treaty of Ankara and the Treaty of Lausanne.
Greece
The western Allies, particularly
In May 1917, after the exile of
At the 1918 Paris Peace Conference, based on the wartime promises, Venizélos lobbied hard for an expanded Hellas (the Megali Idea) that would include the small Greek-speaking community in far Southern Albania, the Orthodox Greek-speaking community in Thrace (including Constantinople) and the Orthodox community in Asia Minor. In 1919, despite Italian opposition, he obtained the permission of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 for Greece to occupy İzmir.
South West Caucasian Republic
The South West Caucasian Republic was an entity established on Russian territory in 1918, after the withdrawal of Ottoman troops to the pre-World War I border as a result of the Armistice of Mudros. It had a nominally independent provisional government headed by Fakhr al-Din Pirioghlu and based in Kars.
After fighting broke out between it and both Georgia and Armenia, British High Commissioner Admiral
Armenia
In the later years of World War I, the Armenians in Russia established a provisional government in the south-west of the Russian Empire. Military conflicts between the Turks and Armenians both during and after the war eventually determined the borders of the state of Armenia.
Administration for Western Armenia
In April 1915, Russia supported the establishment of the Armenian provisional government under Russian-Armenian Governor
In the meantime, the provisional government was becoming more stable as more Armenians were moving into its territory. In 1917, 150,000 Armenians relocated to the provinces of Erzurum, Bitlis, Muş and Van.[14] Armen Garo (known as Karekin Pastirmaciyan) and other Armenian leaders asked for the Armenian regulars in the European theatre to be transferred to the Caucasian front.
The Russian revolution left the front in eastern Turkey in a state of flux. In December 1917, a truce was signed by representatives of the Ottoman Empire and the
Wilsonian Armenia
At the
Boghos Nubar, the president of the Armenian National Delegation, added: "In the Caucasus, where, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Imperial Russian Army, more than 40,000 of their volunteers contributed to the liberation of a portion of the Armenian vilayets, and where, under the command of their leaders, Antranik and Nazerbekoff, they, alone among the peoples of the Caucasus, offered resistance to the Turkish armies, from the beginning of the Bolshevist withdrawal right up to the signing of an armistice."[16]
President Wilson accepted the Armenian arguments for drawing the frontier and wrote: "The world expects of them (the Armenians), that they give every encouragement and help within their power to those Turkish refugees who may desire to return to their former homes in the districts of
Georgia
After the fall of the Russian Empire, Georgia became an independent republic and sought to maintain control of Batumi as well as Ardahan, Artvin, and Oltu, the areas with Muslim Georgian elements, which had been acquired by Russia from the Ottomans in 1878. The Ottoman forces occupied the disputed territories by June 1918, forcing Georgia to sign the Treaty of Batum.
After the demise of the Ottoman power, Georgia regained Ardahan and Artvin from local Muslim militias in 1919 and Batum from the British administration of that maritime city in 1920. It claimed but never attempted to control Oltu, which was also contested by Armenia. Soviet Russia and Turkey launched a
Republic of Turkey
Between 1918 and 1923, Turkish resistance movements led by
Before joining the
Turkey and the newly formed Soviet Union, along with the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, ratified the Treaty of Kars on 11 September 1922, establishing the north-eastern border of Turkey and bringing peace to the region, despite none of them being internationally recognized at the time. Finally, the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, formally ended all hostilities and led to the creation of the modern Turkish Republic.
See also
Notes
- ISBN 0-8142-0170-9
- ^ Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (1989), pp. 49–50.
- ^ Roderic H. Davison; Review "From Paris to Sèvres: The Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference of 1919–1920" by Paul C. Helmreich in Slavic Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Mar. 1975), pp. 186–187
- ^ Baer, Robert. See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. Broadway Books.[page needed]
- ^ P. Helmreich, From Paris to Sèvres (Ohio State University Press, 1974)
- ^ P. Helmreich, From Paris to Sèvres (Ohio State University Press, 1974)
- ^ Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (1989), pp. 26–28.
- ^ Herbert Henry Asquith (1923). The Genesis of the War. p. 82
- ^ Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (1989), pp. 436–437.
- ^ Quilliam, Syria and the New World Order (1999), p. 33. "To inhibit Arab nationalism from developing potency and challenging their administration, the French authorities operated an imperial policy of divide and rule. The dismemberment of 'Historical Syria' into artificial statelets signified a policy that sought to thwart the appeal of Arab nationalism. As the region is full of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities, the dismemberment followed a logical pattern that generated structural problems for the future. Mount Lebanon was detached from Syria with the surrounding Muslim environs of Sidon, Tripoli, and Beqa'. The remaining territory was subdivided into four mini-states: Aleppo, Damascus, Latakia, and Jabal al-Druze, thus disrupting the coherence of Arab nationalism within Bilad al-Sham."
- ^ a b Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1967, p. 59
- ^ Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia[page needed]
- ^ Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia[page needed]
- ^ Richard G. Hovannisian, The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times: Foreign Dominion to Statehood[page needed]
- ^ letter to French Foreign Office – 3 December 1918
- ^ letter to French Foreign Office – 3 December 1918
- ^ President Wilson's Acceptance letter for drawing the frontier given to the Paris Peace Conference, Washington, 22 November 1920.
Bibliography
- ISBN 0-8050-0857-8
- Quilliam, Neil. Syria and the New World Order. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press (Garnet), 1999. ISBN 0-86372-249-0