THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE 131eral Townshend, the British commander, attempted an advance on Bagh-
dad, but it failed after heavy losses. The Anglo-Indian army then withdrew
to Kut where the Turks, under Feldmarschal von der Goltz, who had su-
preme command of the Ottoman forces in Mesopotamia, surrounded and
besieged the Empire forces on December 8, 1915. Despite several attempts
to relieve them, the Allied forces in Kut were forced to surrender on April
24, 1916. The garrison of 9,000 British and Indian troops was taken
prisoner.
A new British commander, General Maude, arrived and took over the
British forces to the south and launched a massive attack on December
13, 1916. He drove the Turks from Kut and pushed farther northward. In
December 1916 this Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, advanced from
Sannayiat to Mosul, fighting bitter battles against outnumbered Turkish
rear guards the entire length of its advance. Though the Allied advance
was eventually successful, the Turks had sold victory to the British at a
heavy price. Of the 415,000 troops committed to the Mesopotamian Ex-
peditionary Force, 92,000 were casualties.
Overall, the Turkish army fought the war about as well as could have
been asked. They had held their central position at Gallipoli and slowly
given ground against larger forces with vastly superior equipment and
supplies. Altogether the Turks had tied down 1,200,000 allied troops and
had inflicted 340,000 causalities on them in the Dardanelles, Egyptian,
and Mesopotamian theaters.
Though the war ended for Germany on November 11, 1918, it did not
end for the Turks. A Greek army was landed at Smyrna, under the pro-
tection of the British, American, and French fleets. On May 15, 1919, the
Greeks began a wave of massacres committed in full view of the combined
fleet. The 1917 interallied agreement of St. Jean de Maurienne had allo-
cated Smyrna and Adalia to Italy, and the Italians landed troops in Adalia
in April 1918 to take possession of their new territory. The Greek mas-
sacres continued in Smyrna and aroused the anger of the Turkish people.
The Turkish army was incapable of action, so popular organizations for
the national defense sprang up in western Anatolia. In eastern Anatolia
they prepared to block any attempt by the Allies to create an Armenian
state. The war ground on.
It was then proposed at the Lausanne Peace Conference that self-
determination be granted to the Arab provinces south of the armistice line.
The strait would open to commerce, and non-Turkish minorities would
receive the same rights as they had secured in Europe under various post-
war treaties. The pact also demanded, either explicitly or implicitly, that
the Turks should retain all territories inhabited by non-Arab Ottoman Mus-