Turkey Emerges from World War I
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Most Western histories of World War I emphasize its importance in ending the so-
called old order in Europe—the political map of the continent in place at least since
the Congress of Vienna, which restructured Europe after the final defeat of Napoleon
a century earlier. World War I also demolished the considerably older order of the
Ottoman Empire, which had dominated much of the Middle East for six centuries
and parts of southeastern Europe for more than three centuries.
Ottoman rulers signed what turned out to be the death warrant of the empire by
aligning with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire in August 1914 at the start
of World War I. After the conflict concluded, the victorious Allies, notably Britain
and France, quickly implemented their plans to carve up the Ottoman Empire by
dividing the Arabic-speaking lands among themselves and splitting off key portions of
Anatolia, the empire’s Turkish-speaking heartland. The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in
August 1920, gave France the rights to Syria and much of the eastern Mediterranean
coast (including modern-day Lebanon and the southeastern coast of Anatolia); gave
Italy control of the southwestern coast of Anatolia and the Dodecanese Islands (includ-
ing Rhodes); awarded Greece the region of western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna
(present-day Izmir) and the southeastern European region of Thrace; placed Istanbul
and the strategic Dardanelles and the Bosphorus Strait under international control;
created an independent country for the Armenians; and promised an autonomous area
of eastern Anatolia for the Kurds (a non-Arab, Muslim people).
These harsh terms were intended to preserve the Ottoman Empire, though under
the virtual control of the Allies and stripped of its most economically and strategi-
cally important territories. The harshness of the postwar settlement also had the
unintended effect of stimulating an embryonic Turkish nationalist movement, which
found its champion in the person of Mustafa Kemal, a dynamic former Ottoman
general.
The specific events that led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the cre-
ation of the modern state of Turkey began before the Treaty of Sèvres was formally
signed. In May 1919, in anticipation of the treaty, a division of the Greek army landed
at the coastal city of Smyrna, which had a large Greek-speaking population. Backed
by the Allies, the Greek forces quickly conquered much of the surrounding country-
side, often massacring the Turkish inhabitants.
In September 1919, with this Greek conquest under way, Kemal convened Turk-
ish nationalist representatives in the town of Sivas. Delegates adopted a platform that
later developed into the National Pact (or Misak-i Milli). Based in large part on Pres-
ident Woodrow Wilson’s call for “self-determination” by the world’s nationalities, the
pact in essence asserted that Turks should rule over themselves but not over people of
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