Treaty of Sèvres

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The Treaty of Sèvres of August 10, 1920, was a peace treaty between the Entente and Associated Powers<ref>The Entente and the Associated Powers were the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan (Principal Allied Powers), Greece, Belgium, Armenia, the Hejaz, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) and Czecho-Slovakia</ref> and the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The treaty was signed in Sèvres (near Paris) by the representatives of the Ottoman Government, while the Ottoman capital, İstanbul, as well as other parts of Turkey, was under the occupation of several Allied powers. In the absence of the Ottoman Parliament forced to close in April of the same year, the treaty was not ratified by the sultan Mehmed VI Vahdeddin. It was vigorously rejected by the Turkish republican movement, and never came into effect. That movement, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, at the time president of the Turkish Grand National Assembly based in Ankara, had already split with the monarchy based in Istanbul (Constantinople). In the course of the Turkish War of Independence, Ankara governments emerged as the legitimate representatives for Turkey, and notwithstanding efforts made by the Allies to revise of its some parts and conditions, including by inviting representatives from Ankara, the Treaty remained stillborn.

The Ottoman Empire would have lost a great deal of territory by the terms of this treaty, which followed the outlines of earlier agreements between the Allies at the Sanremo conference in April 1920. Hejaz (now part of Saudi Arabia) and Armenia were to become independent. Kurdistan was to be given independence, according to Section III Articles 62–64, the Kurdish vilayet of Mosul would also be able to join the independent Kurdistan. In accordance with the wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement, Mesopotamia and Palestine were assigned under mandate to the tutelage of the United Kingdom; Lebanon and an enlarged Syria to that of France. The Dodecanese and Rhodes (already under Italian occupation since 1911), with portions of southern Anatolia, were to pass to Italy, while Thrace and Western Anatolia, including the key port of İzmir/Smyrna would become part of Greece. The Bosphorus, Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara were to be demilitarized and internationalized. The Ottoman Army was to be restricted to a strength of 50,000 men, Ottoman Navy could only preserve 7 sloops and 6 torpedo boats, and the Ottoman state was prohibited to obtain air force.

The Turkish National Movement, gathered around the Turkish Grand National Assembly succesfully resisted and successively assured the evacuation of, Armenian, French and Greek forces from the present-day territory of Turkey, all at the time developping its own international relations by notably by concluding the Treaty of Moscow with the Soviet Union on 16 March 1921, Accord of Ankara with France putting an end to the Cilicia War, and the Treaty of Alexandropol and the Treaty of Kars fixing the eastern borders. These developments enabled the Grand National Assembly to repel and defeat the Greek forces by September 1922. The events forced the former wartime Allies to return to the negotiating table, and the terms of Sèvres were cancelled in Turkey's favor by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.