Treaty of Sevres And The Founding of Modern Turkey - Essay Example

Treaty of Sevres And The Founding of Modern Turkey The Treaty of Sevres (1920) A peace treaty signed by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Allies of World War I (Entente) and Associated Powers on the 10th of August 1920 came to be known as the Treaty of Sevres. The capital of the Ottomans, Istanbul, and several other Turkish areas were controlled by several of the Allied powers. The treaty was created to formally and permanently partition greater areas of the Ottoman Empire that had been planned at the Sanremo conference in April of the same year. Secret agreements followed by previously agreed outlines helped in laying the groundwork for the Sevres Treaty causing the Ottoman Empire to lose large areas of valuable territory. On 12th February 1920 the Ottoman parliament was forced to shut down after their regular session ended. The parliament was thereby abolished a month later on 18th March 1920. Neither the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI Vahdeddin was able to ratify this agreement in parliament five months later, nor could the official newspaper (Takvim-i-Vakayi) publish its details. It was decided that the Ottoman Empire would be represented by four signatories during the signing at Sevres near Paris. However, prior to the ratification, the Turkish War of Independence forced the former wartime Allies to re-negotiate, re-sign and ratify the new Treaty of Lausanne 1923. The terms of the treaty broadly outlined changes to three different areas of land controlled by the Ottomans – Middle East, Anatolia and the Ottoman Empire. Armenia and Hejaz (now a part of Saudi Arabia) were given their independence. Kurdistan was to be given independence with Mosul (the Kurdish vilayet) joining independent Kurdistan. The wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement assigned Mesopotamia and Palestine to the United Kingdom as mandated states. Lebanon and most of Syria was given to France under a mandate as well. Nine-year Italian occupied Dodecanese and Rhodes including portions of southern Anatolia were given to Italy completely. Greece was given Thrace and Western Anatolia including the crucial port of Izmir or Smyrna. The remaining Bosphorus, Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara were demilitarized and internationalized as part of the Sevres Treaty. The Ottoman Army was to be downsized to a total of 50,000 men only while the Navy could only retain seven sloops and six torpedo boats. The Ottoman could no longer retain an air force of its own. The reactions of the Turkish people to the Treaty of Sevres were far more than welcoming. The Turkish national movement aggressively rejected the treaty. In a bid to show their anger, the Turkish National Movement gathered around the Turkish Grand National Assembly at the time of the War of Independence by successfully resisting the Treaty. They also assured their supporters of their self-defined homeland in Misak-i-Milli which is very close to present-day Turkish territory. They were able to achieve this by evacuating Armenians, Frenchs and Greeks through wars which each one of them. Then the Turkish National Movement developed its own international relations with the Soviet Union through the Treaty of Moscow in March 1921. Other treaties were signed with France such as the Accord of Ankara ending the Franco-Turkish War, the Treaty of Alexandropol and the Treaty of Kars to establish relations with the eastern borders. Also, the Turkish revolutionaries headed by Mustafa Kemal Pasha split ties with the monarchy based in Istanbul (formerly known as Constantinople. The Ankaran government became the new legitimate representative for Turkey. Events leading to the Turkish War of Independence The World War I Allies had began to enforce their secret agreements over the Ottoman Empire during the Armistice of Mudros in October 1918. As a result, opposition factions with differing goals and aims appeared inside Anatolia – the Ottoman stronghold. After the Peace Agreement was signed, the allies began dismantling the Ottoman military, espousing their own views even though they were in conflict of each other. Mandates or Bolshevism was introduced first in the capital and then slow applied in the interior where the Turkish National Movement was being formed. A special body of the Paris Conference named ‘The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey’ was established by the allies to pursue their secret treaties signed from 1915 to 1917. Their visions included a new Hellenic Empire (Megali Idea) in which British Prime Minister David Lloyd George promised the Greeks territorial gains. The Italians wanted the southern part of Anatolia or the Mediterranean region that was previously promised to them. The French expected Hatay, Lebanon, Syria and desired a part of South-Eastern Anatolia discussed under the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British has control of Arabia, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and gaining control over the Straits. On the political front, Anatolia was fragmented with conflicting visions and differing parties. The common denominator was the Allies’ activities that were eliminating the Turkish peoples’ sovereignty from places they considered their homeland. With this perception in mind, the mainly Muslim inhabitants of Anatolia joined forces. The country was in a state of collapse with the Occupation of Istanbul and the state becoming a puppet government or military ruled. The Allies too were collapsing their alliances with each other as the Italian delegation left the Paris conference in April 1919 upon hearing of the Greek occupation of Izmir. Many critics claim the weakness of the Ottoman Government due to the Occupation of Istanbul which did not allow it to enforce its own decisions and restore law and order in many agitated parts. Resistance to the government soon began after the first dictated orders came in from the Allied Forces. Their goal was to control the ammunition and distribution as their first goal. Secondly, they demanded disbanding smaller united to either bigger or more manageable units or send them home. With these goals publicized, many Ottoman officials began organizing secret Outpost Societies (Karakol Cemiyeti) to retaliate the Allies demands passively and with active resistance. The southern rim of Anatolia was mainly under the control of British warships and competing Greek and Italian troops. Therefore, the restoration of law and order had to be conducted from the north of Anatolia. Central Anatolia was beyond the control of the Allies directly except for the mostly British detachments and officers residing there along with some American Committee for Relief in the Near East units. There were also remnants of the Ottoman Forces and gangs of Ottoman Greek or Turkish criminal groups. It was therefore easier for the initial organization of the Turkish National Movement, headed by Mustafa Kemal, to be based in the north of Anatolia. Ataturk’s Rise To Power Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha (until November 1934) was an army officer and revolutionary statesman for Turkey. He was also the founder and the first President of the Republic of Turkey. Mustafa Kemal established himself as a successful military commander during the Battle of Gallipoli when he was serving as a division commander. He led the Turkish National Movement following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire through its partition by the World War I Allies. The national movement’s activities led to the successful execution of the Turkish War of Independence. Kemal’s successful military campaigns led to his country’s liberation and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Being the Republic’s first president, Mustafa Kemal introduced a range of revolutionary reforms that would enable Turkey to become a modern, democratic and secular state. On the 24th of November, 1934 the Turkish National Assembly presented Mustafa Kemal with the surname ‘Ataturk’, meaning ‘Father Turk’ or ‘Ancestor Turk’ through the Law on Family Names. During his early life as a young cadet, in military schools, were at the time centers of Greek discontent against the Ottoman administration. As the Sevres Treaty was signed, the occupation of the new territories was met with opposition by Turkish revolutionaries comprising several local militant resistance groups and organized unions of opposition. A number of public meetings were held where attendance totaled in thousands. One such meeting – the Sultanahmet Meetings of 1919 and 1920 – contained up to 200,000 people where Halide Edip Adivar addressed her famous speech. Favorable conditions led Mustafa Kemal to become the leading figure in several Kuva-i Milliye or National Force movements paved the way for the Turkish War of Independence. Ataturk’s rise to power began through the revolution he has started. He was on assignment in Samsun where he was given emergency powers as the Inspector of the Ninth Army. Anatolian Samsun allowed Kemal to create an autocratic and authoritative area for himself where he could use his powers liberally. He contacted and issued ordered provincial governors and military commander to resist the Occupation. It was in June 1919 when he and a group of his close friends used the Declaration of Amasaya which proved the authority in Istanbul to be illegitimate. The Young Turks aided the movement by politically promoting that a government-in-exile should be formed in Anatolia, stripping Istanbul of its powers. Therefore, Istanbul’s orders for Mustafa Kemal’s execution also came too late as he resigned from the Ottoman Army in Erzurum. The city has been the gateway and portal for the Turkish tribes migrating to Eastern Anatolia. This earned him an ‘Honorary Native’ and freeman of the city title, issuing him the first citizenship registration and certificate of the new Republic. He represented his new Republic rights in the first Grand National Assembly as the city’s deputy. The Grand National Assembly became the new parliament formed in Ankara in April 1920. The Assembly conferred the title ‘President of the National Assembly’ on Mustafa Kemal Pasha, disclaimed the Sultan’s government in Istanbul and rejected the Treaty of Sevres. On the other hand, the conflict between the nationalist movement and the Triple Entente continued on three different fronts. From one of these was the Western front with Greece in which the Turkish forces where defeated to the Sakarya River – eighty kilometers from the Grand National Assembly. Ataturk personally commanded the once-defeated battle and cunningly won in a twenty-day fighting during August and September of 1921. His final victory over the Greeks came during the Battle of Dumlupinar in August 1922. Ataturk’s Reforms Fifteen years after the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish National Movement leader, Mustafa Kemal, established a variety of political, economic and social reforms till his death in 1938. Through his reforms he was able to transform the Turkish society from a group of Muslim subjects of a vast Empire to a modern, democratic and secular nation-state. His reforms included mainly the proclamation of the new Turkish state as a republic (23rd of October, 1923). This gave the nation the right to exercise sovereignty by representative democracy. To pave the way for a republic nation, Mustafa Kemal abolished the powers of the Ottoman Dynasty that had rules from 1218 and ordered the last members of the dynasty to leave the country in November 1922. He also removed the post of Caliphate – the leader of Muslims worldwide – from the Ottoman Sultan who held it from 1517 in March 1924. There were several leading legal reforms which he introduced namely the complete separation of the government and religious affairs and the adoption of a strong interpretation of the principle of laicite (secularism) in the constitution. Islamic courts were closed and replaced by the Islamic Canon Law with a secular civil code modeled from Switzerland. The penal code was modeled after the Italian Penal Code. Other reforms included the recognition and equality between the sexes and granting of complete political rights to women on 5th of December 1934; a pioneer in reforms as compared to several other European nations. The Turkish ‘fes’ introduced by the Sultan in the Ottoman’s dress code was regarded as a symbol of feudalism and banned it altogether; promoting the Turkish men to don themselves in more modern European attires. A very important reform Ataturk introduced was his emphasis on the Turkish language and history which instituted the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical society for research in these two disciplines during 1931/1932. In November 1928, Mustafa Kemal introduced the new Turkish alphabet through the Language Commission by replacing the previously used Arabic script. The new alphabet was immediately adopted through the establishment of Public Education Centers throughout the country. Ataturk himself was actively encouraging and promoting the language by taking several trips to the countryside to teach the alphabet. The public literacy rate jumped from 20% to over 90% through this reform. Other reforms included promotion of domestic production of alcohol by establishing a state-owned spirits industry manufacturing the national beverage – raki. Economic reforms were seen in the establishment of many state-owned factories throughout the country for agriculture, machine and textile industries and later privatized in the latter half of the 20th Century. The national rail network was given great important by Ataturk as an important step for industrialization. The foundation of the Turkish State Railways in 1927 set up an extensive rail network in a very short time span. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was a peace treaty created to settle the part of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire that was a consequence of the Turkish War of Independence between the Allies of World War I and the Turkish National Movement. The agreement delimited the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, formally abandoned all Turkish claims on Cyprus, Iraq and Syria and along with the Treaty of Ankara settled the boundaries of Iraq and Syria. It was also a stepping stone for the international recognization of the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey. The Treaty of Sevres was rejected by the newly-founded Turkish government, led by Mustafa Kemal, after the Greek forces were expelled by the Turkish army. On 20th of October 1922, the peace conference was reopened through a string of heated and strenuous debates and was again interrupted by a Turkish protest once again. After almost two months of closure, the conference was reopened on 23rd April and protested again by the Ataturk’s government this time. The treaty was finally signed on the 24th of July after eight months of negotiations by the Allies and the Turkish parties. The provisions of the treaty provided complete independence for the Republic of Turkey and protection of the ethnic minority in Turkey. Likewise, the mainly ethnic Turkish Muslim minority in Greece was given protection and exchanges between the two populations were carried out. The Turkish Greeks were a total of 270,000 in Istanbul alone with the Muslim population of Western Thrace at 86,000 in 1922 and were excluded from the treaty. Article 14 of the treaty permitted the islands of Imbros and Tenedos autonomy through a special administrative organization. This right was later revoked by the Turkish government in February 1926. The province of Mosul was left to be determined by the League of Nations. It must be mentioned that since the signing of the treaty, both Turkey and Greece have claimed each other have violated its provisions. Greece, seeing its ethnic minority diminished from several hundred thousands in 1923 to a couple of thousand today, claim that a systematic enforcement of anti-minority measures were implemented. To prove this claim, it was later discovered that Turkey closed the Halki seminary that was in complete contradiction to the signed treaty professing religious freedom. The Lausanne Treaty was cited in the Palestinian State proclamation in 1988 by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Eventually Turkey aggressed to pay 40 percent of the Ottoman debts whilst the rest would be taken from the former Ottoman territories. Conclusion Turkey, the area previously ruled and controlled by the Ottoman Empire from 1218 needed to see a change in not only its political framework but also social, economic and religious settings. People were oppressed and rights taken away from them until the post-Allied Forces of the World War I secretly devised agreements and mandates to break the Ottoman Empire territorially at first and then through military tactics. It resulted in a revolution within the people, mainly led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who was an army man himself. The republic of Turkey was thereby established in a span of three years – between two peace treaties – and stability for all religious, political, social and economic benefits. Work Cited: Wikipedia. 2006. Retrieved on January 4, 2006 from the website: http://www.wikipedia.org Read More