Treaty of Sevres with Turkey:
The Allied Powers concluded the Treaty of Sevres with Turkey on August 10, 1920. Through this treaty, Greece got the territory of Thrace and all the islands in the Aegean Sea. Symrna was also placed under Greek rule with the rider that a plebiscite would be held there after 5 years and if the people wanted to remain with Greece, it would be permanently handed over to Greece. The Dodecanese Archipelago and the territory of Rhodes were given to Italy. Britain got Mesopotamia and Palestine and French rule was established over Syria. Armenia and Hejjagi were declared independent states.
The Strait of Dardanelles was declared an international area but the Sultan of Turkey was permitted to hold Constantinople and its suburbs.
According to these new arrangments Turkey lost 440000 square miles of her land. Her population was reduced to 8 million and 12 million people got rid of her subjection. Her army was restricted to a force of 50,000 soldiers. She was converted into a small powerless state. But now a revolution was in progress there. The people of Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha were trying to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. The revolutionaries were not willing to accept the Treaty of Sevres. Therefore the Allied Powers had to conclude a separate treaty- the Treaty of Lausanne– with the nationalist government in 1923. According to it-
(1) Turkish sovereignty over Anatolia was accepted. The idea of giving independence to Armenia and Kurdistan was dropped.
(2) Turkey again got back Constantinople, eastern Thrace, Gallipoli, Silecia, Adalia, and Symrna.
(3) The areas of Dardanelles and the Bosphorus straits were internationalized.
(4) Turkey renounced her claims over her older provinces of Mesopotamia, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Sudan, and Cyprus which lay outside her boundary.
(5) The speakers of Greek and Turkish languages were voluntarily exchanged between Greece and Turkey.
To force the Allied powers for the Treaty of Lausanne in place of the Treaty of Sevres was a great achievement for the Turkey of Kemal Pasha.
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