When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed
an independent state in Damascus, but were too weak, militarily and economically, to resist the European powers for long, and Britain and France soon re-established control. During the 1920s and 1930s Iraq, Syria and
Egypt moved towards independence, although the British and French did not formally depart the region until after World War II. But in Palestine, the conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and Zionism created a situation from which the British could neither resolve nor extricate themselves. The rise to power of
Nazism in Germany created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to create a Jewish state in Palestine, leading to the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Arabian Peninsula On the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabs were able to establish several independent states. In 1916
Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, established the
Kingdom of Hejaz, while the
Emirate of Riyadh was transformed into the
Sultanate of Nejd. In 1926 the
Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz was formed, which in 1932 became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The
Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen became independent in 1918, while the
Arab States of the Persian Gulf became
de facto British protectorates, with some internal autonomy.
Anatolia The Russians, British, Italians, French, Greeks,
Assyrians and Armenia all made claims to
Anatolia, based on a collection of wartime promises, military actions, secret agreements, and treaties. According to the Treaty of Sèvres, all but the Assyrians would have had their wishes honoured. Armenia was to be given a significant portion of the east, known as
Wilsonian Armenia, extending as far down as the
Lake Van area and as far west as
Mush.
Greece was to be given
Smyrna and the area around it, and likely would have gained Constantinople and all of
Thrace, which was administered as internationally controlled and demilitarized territory. Italy was to be given control over the south-central and western coast of Anatolia around
Antalya. France was to be given the area of
Cilicia. Britain was to be given all the area south of Armenia. The Treaty of Lausanne, by contrast, forfeited all arrangements and territorial annexations.
Russia In March 1915, Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire,
Sergey Sazonov, told British and French Ambassadors
George Buchanan and
Maurice Paléologue that a lasting postwar settlement demanded Russian possession of "the city of
Constantinople, the western shore of the
Bosporus,
Sea of Marmara, and
Dardanelles, as well as southern Thrace up to the Enos-Media line", and "a part of the Asiatic coast between the Bosporus, the
Sakarya River, and a point to be determined on the shore of the Bay of İzmit." The
Constantinople Agreement was made public by the Russian newspaper
Izvestiya in November 1917, to gain the support of the Armenian public for the
Russian Revolution. The revolution effectively ended the Russian plans.
United Kingdom The British seeking control over the
straits of Marmara led to the
Occupation of Constantinople, with French and Italian assistance, from 13 November 1918 to 23 September 1923. After the
Turkish War of Independence and the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, the troops left the city.
Italy Under the 1917
Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne between France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, Italy was to receive all southwestern Anatolia except the
Adana region, including İzmir. However, in 1919 the Greek Prime Minister
Eleftherios Venizelos obtained the permission of the
Paris Peace Conference to
occupy İzmir, overriding the provisions of the agreement.
France Under the secret
Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, the French obtained
Hatay, Lebanon and Syria and expressed a desire for the part of South-Eastern Anatolia. The 1917 Agreement of St. Jean-de-Maurienne between France, Italy and the United Kingdom allotted France the Adana region. The French army, along with the British, occupied parts of Anatolia from 1919 to 1921 in the
Franco-Turkish War, including coal mines, railways, the
Black Sea ports of
Zonguldak,
Karadeniz Ereğli and Constantinople,
Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace and the region of
Cilicia. France eventually withdrew from all these areas, after the
Armistice of Mudanya, the
Treaty of Ankara and the Treaty of Lausanne.
Greece The western Allies, particularly
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, promised Greece territorial gains at the expense of the
Ottoman Empire if Greece entered the war on the Allied side. The promised territories included eastern
Thrace, the islands of
Imbros (
Gökçeada) and
Tenedos (
Bozcaada), and parts of western Anatolia around the city of İzmir. In May 1917, after the exile of
Constantine I of Greece, Greek prime minister
Eleuthérios Venizélos returned to Athens and allied with the Entente. Greek military forces (though divided between supporters of the monarchy and supporters of Venizélos) began to take part in military operations against the Bulgarian army on the border. That same year, İzmir was promised to Italy under the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne between France, Italy and the United Kingdom. At the 1918 Paris Peace Conference, based on the wartime promises, Venizélos lobbied hard for an expanded Hellas (the
Megali Idea) that would include the small Greek-speaking community in far Southern Albania, the Orthodox Greek-speaking community in Thrace (including Constantinople) and the Orthodox community in Asia Minor. In 1919, despite Italian opposition, he obtained the permission of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 for Greece to occupy İzmir.
South West Caucasian Republic The South West Caucasian Republic was an entity established on Russian territory in 1918, after the withdrawal of Ottoman troops to the pre-World War I border as a result of the
Armistice of Mudros. It had a nominally independent
provisional government headed by
Fakhr al-Din Pirioghlu and based in
Kars. After fighting broke out between it and both Georgia and Armenia, British High Commissioner Admiral
Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe occupied Kars on 19 April 1919, abolishing its parliament and arresting 30 members of its government. He placed Kars province under Armenian rule.
Armenia according to the Treaty of Sèvres In the later years of World War I, the
Armenians in Russia established a provisional government in the south-west of the Russian Empire. Military conflicts between the Turks and Armenians both during and after the war eventually determined the borders of the state of Armenia.
Administration for Western Armenia In April 1915, Russia supported the establishment of the Armenian provisional government under Russian-Armenian Governor
Aram Manukian, leader of the resistance in the
Defense of Van. The
Armenian national liberation movement hoped that Armenia could be liberated from the Ottoman regime in exchange for helping the Russian army. However, the Tsarist regime had a secret wartime agreement with the other members of the
Triple Entente about the eventual fate of several Anatolian territories, named the
Sykes–Picot Agreement. In the meantime, the provisional government was becoming more stable as more Armenians were moving into its territory. In 1917, 150,000 Armenians relocated to the provinces of
Erzurum,
Bitlis,
Muş, and
Van.
Armen Garo (known as Karekin Pastirmaciyan) and other Armenian leaders asked for the Armenian regulars in the European theatre to be transferred to the Caucasian front. The Russian revolution left the front in eastern Turkey in a state of flux. In December 1917, a truce was signed by representatives of the Ottoman Empire and the
Transcaucasian Commissariat. However, the Ottoman Empire began to reinforce its
Third Army on the eastern front. Fighting began in mid-February 1918. Armenians, under heavy pressure from the Ottoman army and Kurdish irregulars, were forced to withdraw from
Erzincan to
Erzurum and then to
Kars, eventually evacuating even Kars on 25 April. As a response to the Ottoman advances, the Transcaucasian Commissariat evolved into the short-lived
Transcaucasian Federation; its disintegration resulted in Armenians forming the
Democratic Republic of Armenia on 30 May 1918. The
Treaty of Batum, signed on 4 June, reduced the Armenian republic to an area of only 11,000 km2.
Wilsonian Armenia At the
Paris Peace Conference, 1919, the Armenian Diaspora and the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation argued that Historical Armenia, the region which had remained outside the control of the
Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1918, should be part of the
Democratic Republic of Armenia. Arguing from the principles in Woodrow Wilson's "
Fourteen Points" speech, the
Armenian Diaspora argued Armenia had "the ability to control the region", based on the Armenian control established after the Russian Revolution. The Armenians argued that the dominant population of the region was becoming more Armenian as Turkish inhabitants were moving to the western provinces.
Boghos Nubar, the president of the Armenian National Delegation, added: "In the Caucasus, where, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Imperial Russian Army, more than 40,000 of their volunteers contributed to the liberation of a portion of the Armenian vilayets, and where, under the command of their leaders, Antranik and Nazerbekoff, they, alone among the peoples of the Caucasus, offered resistance to the Turkish armies, from the beginning of the Bolshevist withdrawal right up to the signing of an armistice." The conference agreed with his suggestion that the
Democratic Republic of Armenia should expand into present-day eastern Turkey.
Georgia After the fall of the Russian Empire, Georgia became an
independent republic and sought to maintain control of
Batumi as well as
Ardahan,
Artvin, and
Oltu, the areas with Muslim Georgian elements, which had been acquired by Russia from the Ottomans in 1878. The Ottoman forces occupied the disputed territories by June 1918, forcing Georgia to sign the
Treaty of Batum. After the demise of the Ottoman power, Georgia regained Ardahan and Artvin from local Muslim militias in 1919 and Batum from the British administration of that maritime city in 1920. It claimed but never attempted to control Oltu, which was also contested by Armenia. Soviet Russia and Turkey launched a
near-simultaneous attack on Georgia in February–March 1921, leading to new territorial rearrangements finalized in the
Treaty of Kars, by which Batumi remained within the borders of now-
Soviet Georgia, while Ardahan and Artvin were recognized as parts of Turkey.
Republic of Turkey Between 1918 and 1923, Turkish resistance movements led by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk forced the Greeks, Armenians, and Italy out of Anatolia. The
Turkish revolutionaries also suppressed Kurdish attempts to become independent in the 1920s. After the Turkish resistance gained control over Anatolia, there was no hope of meeting the conditions of the
Treaty of Sèvres. Before joining the Soviet Union, the
Democratic Republic of Armenia signed the
Treaty of Alexandropol, on 3 December 1920, agreeing to the current border between the two countries, though the Armenian government had already collapsed due to a concurrent Soviet invasion on 2 December. Afterwards Armenia became an integral part of the Soviet Union. This border was ratified again with the
Treaty of Moscow (1921), in which the
Bolsheviks ceded the already Turkish-occupied provinces of
Kars,
Iğdır,
Ardahan, and
Artvin to Turkey in exchange for the
Adjara region with its capital city of
Batumi. Turkey and the newly formed Soviet Union, along with the
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, ratified the
Treaty of Kars on 11 September 1922, establishing the north-eastern border of Turkey and bringing peace to the region, despite none of them being internationally recognized at the time. Finally, the
Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, formally ended all hostilities and led to the creation of the modern Turkish Republic. ==See also==