Treaty of Sèvres (1920); World War, 1914-1918 -- Territorial questions -- Turkey; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
“When the peace terms are published there is no friend of the
Turk, should there be any left, who will not realise that he has
been terribly punished for his follies, his blunders, his crimes,
and his iniquities. Stripped of more than half his Empire, his
country under the Allied guns, deprived of his army, his navy,
his prestige—the punishment will be terrible enough to satisfy
the bitterest foe of the Turkish Empire, drastic enough for the
sternest judge. My right hon. friend suggested that there was a
religious issue involved. That would be the most dangerous of all,
and the most fatal. I am afraid that underneath the agitation
there is not only the movement for the expulsion of the Turk, but
there is something of the old feeling of Christendom against the
Crescent. If it is believed in the Mohammedan world that our terms
are dictated by the purpose of lowering the flag of the Prophet
before that of Christendom, it will be fatal to our government
in India. It is an unworthy purpose to achieve by force. It is
unworthy of Britain, and it is unworthy of our faith.
“Let us examine our legitimate peace aims in Turkey. The first
is the freedom of the Straits. I put that first for two reasons,
which I shall refer to later on. It was put first by my right
hon. friend, and I accept it. The second is the freeing of the
non-Turkish communities from the Ottoman sway; the preservation
for the Turk of self-government in communities which are mainly
Turkish, subject to two most important reservations. The first
is that there must be adequate safeguards within our power for
protecting the minorities that have been oppressed by the Turk in
the past. The second is that the Turk must be deprived of his power
of vetoing the development of the rich lands under his rule which
were once the granary of the Mediterranean....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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