Treaty of Sèvres

Treaty of Sèvres

The Treaty of Peace Between the Allied Powers and the Ottoman Empire
Partition of the Ottoman Empire according to the Treaty of Sèvres and the Greco-Italian treaty
Signed	10 August 1920
Location	Sèvres, France
Condition	Ratification by Ottoman Empire and the four principal Allied Powers.
Signatories	1. Principal Allied Powers[1]  France  United Kingdom  Italy  Japan Other Allied Powers  Armenia  Belgium  Greece  Hejaz  Poland  Portugal  Romania  Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes  Czechoslovakia 2. Central Powers  Ottoman Empire
Depositary	French Government
Languages	French (primary), English, Italian[2]
Full text
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Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha, the Ottoman education minister Mehmed Hâdî Pasha and ambassador Reşat Halis

.

Paris Peace Conference
League of Nations Covenant of the League of Nations Members Organisation Minority Treaties Little Treaty of Versailles Mandates
Treaty of Versailles "War Guilt" clause Reparations Dawes Plan Hague conference on reparations Young Plan Lausanne Conference Locarno Treaties Possible cause of World War II International Opium Convention
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
Treaty of Trianon Treaty of Trianon Millerand letter
Treaty of Sèvres Partition of the Ottoman Empire Conference of London (1920) San Remo conference Turkish National Movement Turkish War of Independence Treaty of Lausanne
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The Treaty of Sèvres (French: Traité de Sèvres) was a 1920 treaty signed between the Allies of World War I and the Ottoman Empire. The treaty ceded large parts of Ottoman territory to France, the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, as well as creating large occupation zones within the Ottoman Empire. It was one of a series of treaties^[3] that the Central Powers signed with the Allied Powers after their defeat in World War I. Hostilities had already ended with the Armistice of Mudros.

The treaty was signed on 10 August 1920 in an exhibition room at the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres porcelain factory^[4] in Sèvres, France.^[5]

The Treaty of Sèvres marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The treaty's stipulations included the renunciation of most territory not inhabited by Turkish people and their cession to the Allied administration.^[6]

The ceding of

The terms stirred hostility and

.

Summary

Signed between Allied and Associated Powers and Ottoman Empire at Sèvres^[9]

	Parts	Articles
I	The Covenant of the League of Nations	1-26
II	Frontiers of Turkey	27-35
III	Political Clauses	36-139
IV	Protection of Minorities	140-151
V	Military, Naval and Air Clauses	152-207
VI	Prisoners of War and Graves	208-225
VII	Penalties	226-230
VIII	Financial Clauses	231-260
IX	Economic Clauses	261-317
X	Aerial Navigation	318-327
XI	Ports, Waterways and Railways	328-373
XII	Labour (Part XIII of Versailles Treaty)	374-414
XIII	Miscellaneous Provisions	415-433

Parties

George Dixon Grahame signed for the United Kingdom, Alexandre Millerand for France and Count Lelio Longare for Italy. One Allied power, Greece, did not accept the borders as drawn, mainly because of the political change after the 1920 Greek legislative election and so never ratified the treaty.^[10] There were three signatories for the Ottoman Empire:

1. Ex-Ambassador Hadi Pasha,
2. Ex-Minister of Education Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı,
3. Second secretary of the Ottoman embassy in Bern, Reşat Halis.

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was not a party to the treaty because it had negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed with the German Empire before the Treaty of Sèvres and annulled German concessions in the Ottoman sphere, including economic rights and enterprises.

Also, France, Britain, and Italy signed a Tripartite Agreement on the same date.^[11][12] It confirmed Britain's oil and commercial concessions and turned the former German enterprises in the Ottoman Empire over to a tripartite corporation.

The United States, having refused in the Senate to assume a League of Nations mandate over Armenia, decided not to participate in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.^[13] The US wanted a permanent peace as quickly as possible, with financial compensation for its military expenditure. However, after the Senate rejected the Armenian mandate, the only US hope was its inclusion in the treaty by the influential Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos.^[14]

Provisions

The treaty imposed a number of territorial losses on Turkey and had a number of provisions that applied to the territory recognised as belonging to Turkey.

Non-territorial

Financial restrictions

The Allies were to control the Ottoman Empire's finances, such as approving and supervising the national budget, implementing financial laws and regulations and totally controlling the Ottoman Bank. The Ottoman Public Debt Administration, instituted in 1881, was redesigned to include only British, French, and Italian bondholders. The Ottoman debt problem had dated back to the time of the Crimean War (1854–1856) during which the Ottoman Empire had borrowed money from abroad, mainly from France. Also the capitulations of the Ottoman Empire, which had been abolished in 1914 by Talaat Pasha, were restored.

The empire was required to grant

were to pass from German control.

Military restrictions

The

. The Ottoman Empire was prohibited from creating an air force. The treaty included an interallied commission of control and organisation to supervise the execution of the military clauses.

International trials

The treaty required determination of those responsible for the

Foreign zones of influence

France

Within the territory retained by Turkey under the treaty, France received Syria and neighbouring parts of southeastern

, were declared a zone of French influence.

Greece

The Greek government administered the occupation of Smyrna from 21 May 1919. A protectorate was established on 30 July 1922. The treaty transferred "the exercise of her rights of sovereignty to a local parliament" but left the region within the Ottoman Empire. The treaty had Smyrna to be administered by a local parliament, with a plebiscite overseen by the League of Nations after five years to decide if Smyrna's citizens wished to join Greece or to remain in the Ottoman Empire. The treaty accepted Greek administration of the Smyrna enclave, but the area remained under Turkish sovereignty. To protect the Christian population from attacks by the Turkish irregulars, the Greek army expanded its jurisdiction also to nearby cities creating the so-called "Smyrna Zone".

Italy

Italy was formally given possession of the

Territorial provisions

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Date	States Square miles (km²)
1914	Ottoman Empire 1,589,540 km2 (613,724 sq mi)
1918 (Sèvres Treaty)	Ottoman Empire 453,000 km2 (174,900 sq mi)	Wilsonian Armenia 160,000 km2 (60,000 sq mi)	Syria 350,000 km2 (136,000 sq mi)	Independent Kurdish State 370,000 km2 (143,000 sq mi)	Hejaz 260,000 km2 (100,000 sq mi)	Asir 91,000 km2 (35,000 sq mi)	Yemen 190,000 km2 (75,000 sq mi)

Zone of the Straits

A Zone of the Straits was proposed to include the

. Navigation would be open in the Dardanelles in times of peace and war alike to all vessels of commerce and war, regardless of flag. That would effectively lead to the internationalisation of the waters, which were not to be subject to blockade, and no act of war could be committed there except to enforce decisions of the League of Nations.

Free zones

Certain ports were to be declared to be of international importance. The League of Nations insisted on the complete freedom and the absolute equality in treatment at such ports, particularly regarding charges and facilities, to ensure that economic provisions in commercially-strategic places were carried out. The regions were to be called "free zones". The ports were

Batum

.

Thrace

Eastern Thrace (up to the Chatalja line), the islands of Imbros and Tenedos and the islands of the Sea of Marmara were ceded to Greece. The waters surrounding the islands were declared international territory and left to the administration of the "Zone of the Straits".

Kurdistan

The

, was scheduled to have a referendum to decide its fate.

There was no general agreement among Kurds on what the borders of Kurdistan should be because of the disparity between the areas of Kurdish settlement and the political and administrative boundaries of the region.

. He defined the region's boundaries as follows:

The frontiers of Turkish Kurdistan, from an ethnographical point of view, begin in the north at

Persia as far as Mount Ararat.^[19]

That caused controversy among other Kurdish nationalists, as it excluded the

Neither proposal was endorsed by the treaty of Sèvres, which outlined a truncated Kurdistan on what is now Turkish territory (leaving out the Kurds of Iran, British-controlled

The current Iraqi–Turkish border was agreed upon in July 1926.

Article 63 explicitly granted the full safeguard and protection to the Assyro-Chaldean minority, but that provision was dropped in the Treaty of Lausanne.

Armenia

Armenia was recognised as a "free and independent" state in Section VI "Armenia", Articles 88-93. By Article 89, "Turkey and Armenia, as well as the other High Contracting Parties agree to submit to the arbitration of the President of the United States of America the question of the frontier to be fixed between Turkey and Armenia in the vilayets of Erzerum, Trebizond, Van and Bitlis, and to accept his decision thereupon, as well as any stipulations he may prescribe as to access for Armenia to the sea, and as to the demilitarisation of any portion of Turkish territory adjacent to the said frontier".

The treaty specified that the frontiers between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Georgia were to be determined by direct negotiation between those states, with the Principle Allied Powers making the decision if those states fail to agree.^[23]

British Mandate for Iraq

The details in the treaty regarding the

" (IPC) and granted a full and complete concession for 75 years.

British Mandate for Palestine

The three principles of the British Balfour Declaration regarding Palestine were adopted in the Treaty of Sèvres:

Article 95: The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on 2 November 1917 by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon

The French Mandate was settled at the San Remo Conference: it comprised the region between the basin of the

the same year. The next year, he became king of Iraq.

Kingdom of Hejaz

The

vilayet of Hejaz

, but during the war, it became an independent kingdom under British influence.

Abandonment

The Treaty of Sèvres imposed terms on the Ottoman Empire that were far more severe than those imposed on the German Empire by the Treaty of Versailles.

Treaty of Lausanne

in 1923 and 1924.

While the Treaty of Sèvres was still under discussion, the Turkish national movement under

, which resulted in a Turkish victory.

On 18 October, the government of

Eventually, Mustafa Kemal succeeded in his War of Independence and forced most of the former wartime Allies to return to the negotiating table.

Aside from Mustafa Kemal's armed opposition to the treaty in Anatolia, Arabs in Syria were unwilling to accept French rule, the Turks around Mosul attacked the British, and Arabs were up in arms against British rule in Baghdad. There was also disorder in Egypt.

Subsequent treaties

During the

.

The Turkish national movement developed its own international relations with the

to fix the eastern borders.

Hostilities with Britain over the neutral zone of the Straits were narrowly avoided in the Chanak Crisis of September 1922, when the Armistice of Mudanya was concluded on 11 October, leading the former Allies of World War I to return to the negotiating table with the Turks in November 1922. That culminated in 1923 in the Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the Treaty of Sèvres and restored a large territory in Anatolia and Thrace to the Turks. Under the Treaty of Lausanne, France and Italy had only areas of economic interaction, rather than zones of influence. Constantinople was not made an international city, and a demilitarised zone between Turkey and Bulgaria was established.^[28]

See also

• Sèvres syndrome
• Paris Peace Conference
• Treaty of Versailles
• Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
• Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
• Treaty of Trianon
• Minority Treaties
• Sykes–Picot Agreement
• Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne

References

• Treaty of Peace between the British Empire and Allied Powers and Turkey UK Treaty Series No. 11 of 1920; Command paper Cmd.964

Notes

Further reading

• Darwin, John, and Beverley Nielsen. Britain, Egypt and the Middle East: Imperial policy in the aftermath of war 1918–1922 (Springer, 1981). ^{[ISBN missing]}
• ISBN 0-8050-0857-8
  .
• Helmreich, Paul C. From Paris to Sèvres: the partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference of 1919–1920 (Ohio State UP, 1974).^[ISBN missing]
• Howard, Harry N. (1931), The Partition of Turkey, U of Oklahoma Press, online
• Karčić, Hamza. "Sèvres at 100: The Peace Treaty that Partitioned the Ottoman Empire." Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (Sept 2020) 40#3 pp 470–479.
  doi:10.1080/13602004.2020.1813988
• Macfie, A. L. “The British Decision Regarding the Future of Constantinople, November 1918–January 1920.” Historical Journal 18#2 (1975), pp. 391–400.
  JSTOR 2638494
• Montgomery, A. E. "The Making of the Treaty of Sevres of 10 August 1920." Historical Journal 15#4 (1972): 775–787.
  JSTOR 2638042
• Sion, Abraham. To Whom Was the Promised Land Promised? (Mazo, 2020)^[ISBN missing]
• Toynbee, Arnold Joseph (2009). The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (PDF). Martino Fine Books.
  ISBN 978-1-57898-747-4
  .
• Tusan, Michelle Elizabeth (2023). The Last Treaty. Cambridge University Press.
  S2CID 259038932
  .

External links

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Treaty of Sèvres

• Text of the Treaty of Sèvres
• Treaty text and maps
• Treaty of Sevres borders
• Tripartite Agreement between the British Empire, France and Italy Respecting Anatolia 10 August, 1920
• Newspaper clippings about Treaty of Sèvres in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW