Ottoman Empire's End
It took several international treaties and five years to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and redraw the borders in one of the most tumultuous regions of the world.
From Sudan to Georgia and from Iraq to Greece, the collapse of the empire gave rise to new countries, installed new masters in old ones and fueled conflicts that are still with us.
The key treaty dismantling the former Ottoman Empire was signed in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1923. By that point, Turkey was already an independent republic and a signatory of the treaty. Groundwork on how to deal with a host of new countries emerging from the empire’s breakup had started in 1918 with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. A second treaty, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, also dealt with the Ottoman legacy, but eventually was rejected and replaced by Lausanne.
Turkey became the successor state to the empire and to this day is the biggest and most powerful country in the region. To its east, Armenia and Georgia were given international recognition.
In the case of Armenia, this came at the end of a long and bloody struggle, culminating in the deaths of more than a million Armenians in 1915. Turkey doesn’t recognize the killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as “genocide.” Germany, France and several other countries have denounced it as such but it remains an issue that can create animosity in Turkey’s relations with other countries.
To the south, Lebanon and Syria were handed to the French to administer and remained under French rule until 1943 and 1946, respectively. French continues to be spoken widely in the two countries and the colonial power’s influence led to Beirut’s nickname, “Paris of the East,” for its cosmopolitanism.
Britain’s de facto control over a number of countries that belonged to the Ottoman Empire was legally mandated: Cyprus, Egypt and Sudan became colonies while Iraq and Palestine were declared “British Mandates.”
Greece received guarantees that its minorities living in Turkey would be protected and vowed the same for the Turks living in Eastern Thrace. The two countries agreed to a population exchange that would see people identifying as Turkish leave parts of Greece for Turkey, and Greeks leaving the Turkish heartland of Anatolia for Greece.
This process, too, was bloody, particularly for the Greeks fleeing Izmir on the Aegean Sea. Immortalized in popular culture—especially literature and music—the aftermath of the population exchange dogs Greek-Turkish relations to this day.
The Treaty of Sèvres had foreseen the creation of an independent Kurdistan, but this was dropped in the revised Treaty of Lausanne. The question of Kurdish independence continues to haunt not just Turkey, as that country’s Kurds have defended their secessionist aspirations, but other nations with sizable populations of Kurds, most notably Iraq.
As the World War I victors carved up the centuries-old empire that bridged East and West, Turkey emerged as the key state in the former Ottoman Empire. The strains of Turkey’s relationships with neighbors that it once ruled over have kept diplomats busy since.
Source:
The Wall Street Journal, Updated October 31, 2018