ARMENIAN - Erevangala500

It is quite remarkable - and undoubtedly painful - that the
Ottoman delegation signed this absurd dictate. There is
one excuse: The capital o f the Ottoman Empire was occupied
by the Allies, and the Sultan was entirely at the
mercy o f the victors. Nevertheless, the Ottoman delegation
should never have put their signature to this dictate.
A refusal could not possibly have worsened the Sultan's
predicament. In the eyes o f the imperial people (the
Turks) and the faithful (meaning all the Moslems o f the
world - the Sultan was, after all, still the Caliph!), it could
only improve. Losing was worse than nothing. At any
rate, the dictate o f Sevres, like the earlier one signed at
Brest-Litovsk, never took effect. Independently o f the
Ottoman government in Istanbul, which in its state o f de
facto imprisonment could no longer speak for the people,
a new Turkish leadership had been formed in central
Anatolia under Mustafa Kemal, who would later be given
the honorary title "Father o f the Turks" -Ataffirk.
The Struggles for Survival o f Turkey
and Armenia:
Both Nations Salvage Their Existence -
The Turks in the
Form o f Traditional Independence; the
Armenians in the Equally Customary
Form o f Lim ited Sovereignty
Following the peace dictates o f Versailles, St. Germain,
Neuilly, and Trianon, a struggle for survival began. It was
the struggle o f a drained, impoverished populace, but for
the states o f the defeated Central Powers this struggle
could at least be carried on within new, "safe" borders.
For the Turks, on the other hand, it was not just a struggle
for the bare survival o f each individual, it was also a
struggle for a piece o f land somewhere where they could
survive. According to the plans o f the Allies, not much
more than the region around Ankara was to be left to the
Turks . . . Everything else was reduced to colonies and
occupied territories o f the Allies.
Two zones o f power promptly appeared on the territory
o f the time-honored Imperial Ottoman commonwealth.
First, there was Istanbul with the Sultan and his government.
They had been condemned to impotence by the
victorious Allies, whose forces occupied Istanbul. There
was still, however, the Turkish heartland - Anatolia. It
was here that the resistance formed . . . "thanks" not least
of all to the invasion o f Greek troops, who were hoping
to inherit the defeated Ottoman Empire. On May 15,
1919, more than half a year after the Armistice o f Mudros,
a mighty Greek expedition corps landed in Izmir,
with the approval o f the A llies. Their objective was to
An Ottoman delegation appointed by the Sultan and led by
Damad Ferid Pasha left Istanbul on June 6,1920 aboard the
French warship "D em ocratic". They were on their way to
Sevres, where on August 10 they would obediently accept the
"peace" dictated by the Allies in much the same way as the
Austrians and Germans had done in Versailles and St. Germain.
The dictate never went into effect, however, because the
Turkish National Assembly refused to accept it.
"finally" realize the megali idea, the "grand idea o f a
Great Greek Empire". Who was to defend Anatolia
against this new, unexpected enemy?
On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, disembarked in
Samsun. He was determined to organize and lead the
national resistance. On September 11, 1919 a congress
was held in Sivas. The delegates made it their objective to
maintain the integrity o f "the parts o f the Ottoman Empire
within the borders as they stood at the conclusion o f the
Armistice o f Mudros, October 30, 1918":
" I . The Ottoman Empire which is within the borders o f
October 30, 1334 (1918), the date when the truce between
the Great Ottoman State and the Allied States was signed,
and every part o f which has an overwhelming majority o f
Muslims, constitutes a whole, which will not be divided
for any reason ..."
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