Trebizond Peace Conference
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The Trebizond Peace Conference was a conference held between 14 March and 13 April 1918 in Trebizond between the Ottoman Empire and a delegation of the Transcaucasian Diet (Transcaucasian Seim) and government. The opening session was on 14 March 1918. The representatives were Rear-Admiral Hüseyin Rauf Bey for the Ottoman Empire, and Akaki Chkhenkeli, Khalil bey Khasmammadov, Alexander Khatisian etc. as the Transcaucasian delegation.
The
Positions
The Ottoman delegation expressed the wish that ‘Transcaucasia should proclaim its independence and announce its form of government before the negotiations then under way were completed.' The Ottoman Empire wanted to break down the barrier between Anatolian Muslims and Caucasian Muslims and to ‘consolidate the unity between kindred nations.’ The Ottoman Empire’s special tasks in the Caucasus, Rauf Bey reassured, reflected links between the Empire and the Caucasian peoples that were "...not only historical and geographical, but rather ones of blood, flowing from their common past."
Aftermath
At the end of the negotiations, Enver Pasha offered to surrender all the Empire's ambitions in the Caucasus in return for recognition of the Ottoman reacquisition of the east Anatolian provinces at Brest-Litovsk.[2]
On April 5, the head of the Transcaucasian delegation Akaki Chkhenkeli accepted the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a basis for more negotiations and wired the governing bodies urging them to accept this position.
Hostilities resumed and the Ottoman troops overran new lands to the east, reaching prewar frontiers.
On May 11, a new peace conference opened at Batum.
Beginning on May 21, the Ottoman army moved ahead once again into areas of Russian Armenia that had not been under the Sultan’s control since the seventeenth century. The conflict led to the
On June 4, the First Republic of Armenia was forced to sign the Treaty of Batum.