The conference agreed upon at the time of the signing of the Mudania armistice opened at Lausanne on November 20, 1922. The Turks had been defeated in the World War. Their capital was still occupied by Entente soldiers and sailors. Within a decade the Ottoman Empire had suffered the most crushing humiliations on the field of battle in all its long history, followed by the loss of more than half its territory. Italy had taken Tripoli; the Balkan States had divided up the European provinces; Italy and Greece were in possession of the Ægean islands, including Rhodes and Crete; France held Syria; and Great Britain was organizing a new political status for Palestine, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, and Cyprus. The Sublime Porte had gone out of business, and the House of Osman had ceased to rule over what was left of Turkey. And yet the Turks came to Lausanne, inspired by their easy victory over the Greeks, to negotiate a treaty to take the place of the Treaty of Sèvres, which had been dictated to them as a conquered nation two years earlier by the victors of the World War.
Why the Treaty of Sèvres was going to be revised and how the Turks were able to demand a new treaty on the footing of equality we have already shown. We have pointed out, too, certain reasons, in connection with the problems of the Near East, that explain the failure of the Entente to enforce the peace settlement with Turkey in the same way that it was trying to enforce the other treaties of the Paris settlement.
The attitude of the Turkish Nationalist during the Mudania armistice negotiations and the six weeks that intervened until the peace conference opened was significant. It should have been a warning to Entente statesmen that they would never be able to make peace in the Near East, much less arrive at some practicable solution of the problems, unless they succeeded in getting together, and unless they were determined to lay down a common program of peace, rather than abandon which they would coerce Turkey. The Turks came to Lausanne assuming that the expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor and the reoccupation of Eastern Thrace put them in the position of victors, whose appeal to force to escape the consequences of their coöperation with Germany had been successful. They brought with them a mandate from the Angora Assembly to make a new treaty in conformity with the six articles of the National Pact of 1920. In the discussions with the Entente delegates and the American “unofficial observers” they referred constantly to this Pact and declared that they had no authority to accept any clauses in a new treaty contrary to the stipulations of the Pact.
No arguments or pleas could move them. Every modification of the original proposals of the Entente Powers was accepted as a matter of course. The Turkish delegates were pleased to observe, whenever the Entente delegates yielded a point, that the principles of the National Pact were being at last recognized.
The first test of the conference came on December 1, when Ismet Pasha, questioned about the reports from Asia Minor of an exodus of Christian minorities, admitted that these unfortunates had been given one month to quit the country. If they were dying on the roads from hunger or cold, it was because they were “unnecessarily panicky”; and if horrible conditions existed in Black Sea ports, it was because the Greek Government had not sent ships enough to transport the refugees. Venizelos, who was representing Greece, replied that it was a physical impossibility for Greece either to transport hundreds of thousands or take care of them on Greek soil. Greece had already some six hundred thousand refugees on her hands. Then Ismet Pasha proposed an exchange of Christians and Mohammedans between Turkey and the Balkan States. Had not Venizelos himself offered this solution to the Bulgarians at Bucharest when the Macedonian boundary-line was being fixed?
Lord Curzon spoke strongly in behalf of the Christians. He pointed out that the Turks had already done away with more than one million, that the Greeks of the interior of Asia Minor and the Black Sea coast could not suddenly find means of livelihood in a new country, that crossing the mountains in winter meant freezing to death, and that public opinion in Great Britain would react unfavorably to the deportation. The French and Italian delegates made no comment. Ismet Pasha calmly replied that the security of Turkey demanded the expulsion of revolutionary elements, that the country might have a homogeneous population. The new policy was a sane one, and the Turks would not yield their right to make their country secure. Had not Greece invoked the presence of a Christian population as her excuse for invading Turkey and attempting to detach the richest territories of the Turkish fatherland? A durable peace could not come until that temptation was removed! Ismet Pasha was naturally sorry for the sufferings of the Christians, but they had brought this measure upon their own heads by conspiring against Turkey. He was, however, willing to telegraph Angora recommending that a fortnight longer be given the remaining Christians to get out.
The protection of Christian minorities, which the European Powers had made a diplomatic issue with Turkey for a hundred years, was the first point yielded. Immediately the Turks announced that the Greek Patriarchate would have to be removed from Constantinople, and that probably measures would be adopted to expel the 400,000 Greeks and Armenians of the capital. Would not this be the best way to settle the minorities question?
When the various commissions of the conference got down to business and began to draft the clauses of the treaty, Entente experts discovered that the Turks refused point-blank to accept anything which, in their opinion, would imply a limitation upon Turkish sovereignty. Ismet Pasha and the other delegates proceeded on three assumptions: (1) Turkey has a right to equality; (2) Turkey is capable of ruling without limitations of any sort and of handling her own affairs; (3) Turkey has the force to resist any treaty stipulation, territorial or economic, that violates the terms of the National Pact. The National Assembly had instructed its delegates to proceed with the negotiations on the ground of non-recognition of past treaties and agreements and on the assumption that the status of regions of the Ottoman Empire occupied during the World War and held by British and French armies was still open to discussion. The gist of the Turkish contention was that the Angora Government inherited all the privileges and none of the obligations of the Ottoman Empire.
The striking of this snag, which affected vitally the political balance of power in the Near East and the economic interests of the Entente Powers, caused the conference to waste weeks in futile discussion. A recess was taken for Christmas, in the hope that the Turks might be willing to compromise. The Entente experts went ahead with the work of drafting the treaty. But on January 3, 1923, Reouf Bey, Chief of Commissars of the Angora Government, told the National Assembly that the full powers of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne had been given to conclude peace, but with the following reservations:
(1) Karagach is inseparable from Adrianople.
(2) A plebiscite is demanded for Western Thrace.
(3) Turkey cannot recognize any Armenian State outside the Armenian Republic in the Caucasus, whose capital is Erivan.
(4) Before conceding freedom of the Straits, Turkey must obtain full guarantees in regard to the security of the Sea of Marmora and Constantinople.
(5) Turkey refuses to accept any foreign control on Turkish territory.
(6) Mosul is within the limits of Turkey as outlined in the National Pact, because the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants are the sons of Turkey.
(7) If Turkey cannot obtain a war indemnity or reparations at Lausanne, she must be allowed to settle this matter with the Greeks alone.
(8) In the question of the capitulations, Turkey will remain true to the National Pact, by which they are abrogated.
(9) Yemen is a part of our country, and the Hedjaz Railway is the property of the Evkaf (Religious Foundations).
The British and French could not for a time believe that the Turks were in earnest. It was preposterous to suppose that the British would give up the Mosul region, rich in oil, which had been the underlying motive of the stupendous sacrifices they made to conquer and hold Mesopotamia. The Yemen is a province of Arabia, and the claim to it and to a proprietary right in the Hedjaz Railway was a challenge to the British and French mandates. A plebiscite for Western Thrace and Turkish claims for indemnity against Greece might easily lead to a new Balkan war, with unlimited possibilities; for the Little Entente was already showing itself restless over the failure of the Big Entente delegates to maintain the attitude they had adopted at Mudania, where a strict limitation of the forces Turkey was to be allowed in Thrace had been insisted upon. The most alarming of all the claims of the Turks was their assertion of the right to abrogate the capitulations.
The Mosul oil question seemed to be the primary cause for the break. But that was a difference between Turkey and Great Britain alone, and was not as serious as it appeared on the surface. The British were in possession of Mosul. Having possession, they enjoyed the diplomatic advantage; there was little for Turkey to do but accept the postponement of the decision on this question or its reference to arbitration. The capitulations, on the other hand, brought out a fundamental disagreement, in which all the parties to the conference, including the Americans, were involved.
Mustafa Kemal Pasha telegraphed to Lausanne a statement calculated to appeal to public opinion, in which he referred directly to Mosul, but with the intention of linking Mosul with the capitulations in the perfidious chain he accused the Entente Powers of foregoing in the Treaty of Lausanne to keep Turkey under European exploitation. He said in part:
It is evident that enslavement of a people in order to appropriate the natural resources of their country is contrary, not only to the spirit of the century, but also to the most elementary principles of humanity. We think the oil riches of Mosul, which, moreover, are within the frontiers defined by our National Pact, ought to be exploited freely for the common benefit of that region’s population and all humanity without monopoly of any sort.
There is no doubt of the force of the Turkish appeal against the capitulatory régime and the limitations upon sovereignty established by former concessions. Liberal public opinion has long felt that Turkey, like China and other non-European countries, was a victim of European imperialism. Had it not been for the bloody history of massacres, in which the Kemalists shared, the stand of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne would have met with sympathy and wide support in the British and American press. The capitulations, the Turks asserted, were unjust and a source of weakness, making the rehabilitation of Turkey impossible. How could the new constitutional Government develop a strong and progressive national life so long as foreign business houses and foreigners individually enjoyed extra-territorial privileges and immunity from taxation? Why should the Europeans and Americans possess in Turkey privileges that they would never dream of granting Turks in their countries? At Lausanne Ismet Pasha maintained that territorial questions and problems arising from the pre-war debts could be settled by compromise or arbitration. The minorities question was solving itself. But New Turkey could sign no treaty containing a reaffirmation, under another form, of the humiliating capitulatory principle.
For a month after the Franco-Belgian invasion of the Ruhr had come to complicate the international political situation, the Lausanne Conference continued to debate the question of the future relations of Turkey with business concerns, educational institutions, and individuals of European and American origin in Turkey. On February 7, 1923, Ismet Pasha and the principal members of the Turkish delegation left for Angora. This was the Turkish answer to a warning against renewed haggling that had been put in the form of an ultimatum to the Turks. Lord Curzon testily said:
I hope that Ismet Pasha will not imagine that we are willing to commence the whole procedure over again, and that by further haggling and chaffering he will succeed in upsetting the work of the past three months, and starting a new conference either here or at some other spot. In such a conference I at least could take no part. We are not buying or selling a carpet in an Oriental bazaar, but are dealing with the destinies of nations and the lives of men.
Ambassador Child had urged Ismet Pasha to sign the treaty, and Lord Curzon waited, at great loss of personal dignity, in the hope that the Turks would give in. The Turks did not give in. Ismet Pasha did not take the trouble to say good-by to Lord Curzon. On the day the delegates left Lausanne the French Foreign Office received an alarming report from its consul at Smyrna, begging for war-ships and stating that the evacuation of French subjects was imperative. France acceded to the request and joined Great Britain in sending more troops and war-ships to the Dardanelles and Constantinople.
Mustafa Kemal Pasha retaliated by giving the powers twenty-four hours to withdraw their war-ships from Smyrna Harbor and declaring that in the future no armed vessel of more than a thousand tons could enter Turkish ports. The ultimatum was ignored. The Entente Powers remained at Smyrna; and during the late winter and spring they refused numerous requests to get out of Constantinople, although they did agree to turn over the administration of the city to representatives of the Angora Government. Without waiting for a treaty, the Turks at Constantinople and elsewhere began to enforce the observance of Turkish laws by foreign business houses, educational institutions, missionary enterprises, and individuals. The United States joined the Entente and neutral Powers in protests, which were unheeded.
In the meantime negotiations concerning the treaty had been carried on by notes exchanged between Angora and the Entente chancelleries. They led to no result. In the hope of arriving at some agreement and putting an end to an intolerable situation, which might at any moment lead to a new war in the Near East, the Entente Powers decided to renew the Lausanne Conference, which met again at the end of April.
The conference resumed its sessions at Lausanne on April 22 in an atmosphere that had not changed during the recess. Quite the contrary! During the fortnight preceding the reopening, several events had complicated the diplomatic situation in the Near East. The Greeks had seemingly been able to reconstitute an army of 100,000, mobilized on the Thracian frontier. On April 15 the deposed sultan, who, through British aid, had gone to the Hedjaz, issued a proclamation from Mecca, declaring null and void the decree of the Angora Assembly, deposing him from the double office of sultan and khalif and naming a new khalif. On April 10 the Turkish Government announced that it had granted a sweeping concession in Asia Minor to a supposedly American group, headed by Admiral Chester, U. S. Navy, retired. More than a thousand miles of railways, with ports, and a modern city at Angora, were to be built by the Chester group at an estimated cost of $300,000,000, in return for which the right to minerals and oil was granted the Americans from Mosul to Samsun, a country believed to be abounding in undeveloped wealth.
Although the Chester group did not seem to have financial backing to cope with a concession of this magnitude, and was not taken seriously by financiers in New York, London, and Paris, the French Government made a vigorous protest, through General Pellé at Constantinople, refusing to recognize the validity of the part of the concession relating to the railway outlet to the Black Sea. The French claimed that the Samsun Railway concession had already been granted to a French group in 1914, before the outbreak of the war, in return for a loan on which heavy instalments had been paid by Paris to Constantinople. The British Government declared that Turkey had no authority to grant a concession involving the oil and minerals and projected railways of the Mosul region. The feeling aroused over the Chester concession, and the subsequent attempt of British and French bankers to have it set aside and a trade monopoly in Asia Minor granted to them, indicated that the negotiators of the Entente Powers at Lausanne were primarily representing the commercial interests of their countries.
The Turks fished so well in these troubled waters that they secured many more modifications of the proposed treaty—until it came to the point that Mustafa Kemal Pasha, through the greed of the European Powers, was securing their acquiescence on every point that did not involve directly their pocketbooks. Only on the capitulations—or rather the underlying principle of the capitulations—did the Entente Powers hold out. They wanted some sort of protection for foreign business interests in Turkey. France waived every moral issue. She stood firm only on the one point that French holders of the Ottoman public debt should receive interest in gold, not paper as the Turks insisted.
Because of the new Greek army Venizelos was able to win the abandonment by Turkey of claims to a war indemnity. Greece agreed to admit that she owed an indemnity, and to give Turkey control of the railway station of Adrianople at Karagatch on the left bank of the Maritza; in return, Turkey admitted that Greece was too poor to pay an indemnity. It was a typical Oriental bargain.
But the Eastern Question was not solved. The Lausanne Conference did not even mark a distinct forward step. This was seen when the Bulgarians overthrew Stambulisky. The Turks are back in Thrace.