1920-8-10 Treaty of Sèvres

Greco-Turkish War - Treaty of Sèvres - August 1920 - tgw > .

23-9-23 How Erdoğan's Turkey is Rebuilding the Ottoman Empire - Real > .

Long Shadow & Impossible Peace → Global Conflicts - BePr >> .

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920, was one of a series of treaties that the Central Powers signed with the Allied Powers after their defeat in WW1. Hostilities had already ended with the Armistice of Mudros.

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. In that treaty, at the insistence of Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman Empire regained the lands the Russian Empire had captured in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), specifically Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi.

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

France, Great Britain and Italy signed a secret "Tripartite Agreement" in September 1936. The Tripartite Agreement 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. The U.S. wanted a permanent peace as quickly as possible, with financial compensation for its military expenditure. However, after the American Senate rejected the Armenian mandate, its only hope was its inclusion in the treaty by the influential Greek prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos.

..

The Sèvres treaty marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and its dismemberment. The terms it stipulated included the renunciation of all non-Turkish territory and its cession to the Allied administration. Notably, the ceding of Eastern Mediterranean lands allowed the creation of new forms of government, including the British Mandate for Palestine and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.

The terms of the treaty stirred hostility and nationalist feeling amongst Turks. The signatories of the treaty were stripped of their citizenship by the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and this ignited the Turkish War of Independence. In that war, Atatürk led the Turkish nationalists to defeat the combined armies of the signatories of the Treaty of Sèvres, including the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. In a new treaty, that of Lausanne in 1923, Turkish sovereignty was preserved through the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. 

Chokepoints - Turkish Straits ..