Treaty of Sevres And The Founding of Modern Turkey Essay

Treaty of Sevres And The Founding of Modern Turkey - Essay Example On 12th February 1920, the Ottoman parliament was forced to shut down after their regular session ended. The parliament was thereby abolished a month later on 18th March 1920. Neither the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI Vahdeddin was able to ratify this agreement in parliament five months later, nor could the official newspaper (Takvim-i-Vakayi) publish its details. It was decided that the Ottoman Empire would be represented by four signatories during the signing at Sevres near Paris. However, prior to the ratification, the Turkish War of Independence forced the former wartime Allies to re-negotiate, re-sign and ratify the new Treaty of Lausanne 1923. The terms of the treaty broadly outlined changes to three different areas of land controlled by the Ottomans – Middle East, Anatolia and the Ottoman Empire. Armenia and Hejaz (now a part of Saudi Arabia) were given their independence. Kurdistan was to be given independence with Mosul (the Kurdish vilayet) joining independent Kurdistan. The wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement assigned Mesopotamia and Palestine to the United Kingdom as mandated states. Lebanon and most of Syria was given to France under a mandate as well. Nine-year Italian-occupied Dodecanese and Rhodes including portions of southern Anatolia were given to Italy completely. Greece was given Thrace and Western Anatolia including the crucial port of Izmir or Smyrna. The remaining Bosphorus, Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara were demilitarized and internationalized as part of the Sevres Treaty.