Treaty of Sèvres (1920); World War, 1914-1918 -- Territorial questions -- Turkey; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
About the same time it was announced that Enver Pasha had been
appointed commander-in-chief of the Bolshevist forces advancing towards
India, and the Bolshevist troops in Caucasus, Persia, Afghanistan,
and Turkistan had been put under his command. In this way the Soviets
probably sought to compel England to make peace with Russia at once.
At Tabriz a separatist movement was beginning to make itself felt with
a view to bringing about the union of Persian Azerbaïjan, of which this
town is the centre, with the Republic of Azerbaïjan, the capital of
which is Baku.
All this Bolshevist activity naturally caused much anxiety among those
who closely watched the development of Eastern events, for Soviet
Russia in another way and with different aims merely carried on the
work of Russian imperialism both in order to hold Great Britain in
check in the East and to give the whole world the benefit of the Soviet
paradise. As the Allied policy with regard to Turkey had roused the
whole of Islam, the union of the Bolshevist elements and the Turkish
Nationalists seemed inevitable when the question of the future fate of
Caucasus should be settled. It was only too much to be feared, after
what had just taken place in Azerbaïjan, that Soviet Russia, feeling
it necessary to get the start of the Turkish Nationalists, would try
to take possession of Georgia now she held Azerbaïjan, as a guarantee
both against the hostility of England and against the opposition that
might sooner or later arise on the Turkish side. It then appeared that
the Turkish Nationalists had come to a merely provisional agreement
with the Russian Bolshevists to disengage themselves on the Russian
side, and secure their help against Europe, which threatened Turkey;
and that, on the contrary, the Angora Government, some members of
which are Chechens and Ossetes, when brought face to face with the old
historical necessities, would be one day compelled to resort to the old
policy of defending the Moslem world against the Slavonic world. For
notwithstanding the inherent incompatibility between the minds of these
two peoples, the Allied policy, through its blunders, had achieved
the paradoxical result of making a Russo-Turkish alliance temporarily
possible, and to bring together the Moslems—so unresponsive as a rule
to the idle verbiage and subversive tendencies of revolutionists—and
the Bolshevist Slavs, who were still their political enemies. And so it
turned out that the attitude assumed by the various European Powers in
regard to the Turkish problem and the solution that was to eventuate
were prominent factors in the future relations between each of those
Powers and Asia. Now the Turks, who alone are able to bring about an
understanding between the Moslems of Caucasus and those of Asia, are
also the only people who can bring about a lasting peace in that part
of the confines of Europe and Asia, and settle the relations between
those Moslem populations and the West.
Footnote:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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