Constantinople Agreement

This article is about the WWI agreement. For other agreements on, about, by, at Constantinople, see Constantinople Treaty.

Extract from a January 1919 British Foreign Office memorandum summarizing the wartime agreements regarding the Ottoman Empire - the Constantinople Agreement area ceded to Russia is in yellow.

The Constantinople Agreement (also known as the Straits Agreement) was a secret exchange of diplomatic correspondence between members of the Triple Entente from 4 March to 10 April 1915 during World War I. France and Great Britain promised to give Constantinople and the Dardanelles, at the time part of the Ottoman Empire, to the Russian Empire in the event of victory. ^[1] Britain and France put forward their own claims, to an increased sphere of influence in Persia (now named Iran) for Britain, and to the annexation of Syria (including Palestine) and Cilicia for France, all sides also agreeing that the governance of the Holy Places and Arabia would be under independent Muslim rule. ^[2] The Greek government was neutral, but in 1915 it negotiated with the Allies, offering soldiers and especially a geographical launching point for attacks on the Turkish Straits. Greece itself wanted control of Constantinople. Russia vetoed the Greek proposal, because its own main war goal was to control the Straits, and take control of Constantinople. ^[3]

Though the Allied attempt to seize the area in the Gallipoli Campaign failed, Constantinople was nevertheless occupied by the victorious Allies at the end of the war in 1918. By that time, however, the Russian Revolution had brought about Russian withdrawal from the war, and as it was no longer one of the Allied Powers the agreement was not implemented. Its existence had been revealed by the Bolshevik government in 1917.

Historical background

   Bosporus Strait

   Dardanelles Strait

See also: Ottoman entry into World War I

Access to the Turkish Straits was governed by the 1841 London Straits Convention which stipulated the closure of the straits to warships ^[4] and, after the Crimean War, by the Treaty of Paris (1856) which made universal the principle of commercial freedom at the same time as forbidding any militarization in and around the Black Sea, later amended by the Treaty of London (1871) and reaffirmed in the Treaty of Berlin (1878).

In early 1907, in the talks leading up to the Anglo-Russian Convention, Count Alexander Izvolsky, then Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, raised the question of the Straits, and talks were carried on in London through the Russian ambassador, Count Alexander Benckendorff. Little is known but the "suggestion appears to have been made that Russia should have free egress from the Black Sea through the Straits, while other powers should have the right to send their vessels of war into the Straits without going into the Black Sea" together with some talk of "Russia's occupying the Bosphorus and England the Dardanelles, after which the Straits might be opened to other warships as well." In the event, nothing came of the discussions at the time. ^[5]

On 12 October 1908, the Russian Ambassador to France, Aleksandr Nelidov in a conversation with the British Ambassador to France, Lord Bertie, said that since Japan would not allow Russia to keep a Pacific fleet, and since the Baltic was practically closed throughout the winter, it was essential for Russia that the Black Sea should be made "the home for the Russian fleet whence she can move to the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the Far East as necessity may require." ^[6]

Alexander Izvolsky, the Russian Foreign Minister, in the latter part of 1908 was able to get conditional support for a change in the Straits regime from Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Tommaso Tittoni and the German Ambassador to Paris, Wilhelm von Schoen as well as from Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Edward Grey, Grey on 14 October 1908 being clearest on the subject while indicating that Turkish agreement was a prerequisite. ^[7]

During the Bosnian Crisis of 1908, in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911/12 as well as during the Balkan Wars of 1912/13, Russia made attempts to obtain the opening of the straits for Russian warships but failed for want of support from the Great powers. ^[8] In April/May 1912, the straits were closed for some weeks, and in response to subsequent threats of closure Russia indicated that it would take action in the event of a prolonged closure. ^[9]

At the outbreak of war, the Ottoman Empire was diplomatically isolated; it had sought an alliance with Britain at the end of 1911, between May and July 1914 with France and Russia, and on 22 July with Germany, ^{[lower-alpha 1]} to no avail. ^[11] Russia was concerned about the potential arrival in the Black Sea of two modern warships being built by British shipyards for the Ottoman Navy, the Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel, which had been completed and was making preparations to leave, and the Reşadiye. On 30 July, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Sazonov instructed Benckendorff: ^{[lower-alpha 2]}

it is a matter of the highest importance for us that Turkey should not receive the two dreadnoughts..point out to the English government the immense importance of this matter for us, and energetically insist upon the retention of these two ships in England."

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had by then already decided on requisition and when the Turkish ambassador protested on 1 August, he was informed that "in view of the serious situation abroad it was not possible to allow a battleship to leave these waters and pass into the hands of a foreign buyer". ^[12]

The pursuit of the two German warships Goeben and Breslau by the Royal Navy led to their being allowed to enter the Dardanelles on 10 August 1914. ^{[13] [lower-alpha 3]}

Details

Historian Dmitrii Likharev, analysing key contributions in the historiography of the subject points to contributions of C. Jay Smith who obtained access to the Asquith papers in the 1960s and to William Renzi in 1970 who made use of records released by the British National Archives to date Britain's promise of Constantinople to the Russians to November 1914 ^{[lower-alpha 4]} and its genesis to earlier in September ^{[lower-alpha 5]} , prior to the Ottoman entry into the war. ^[17]

From 4 March to 10 April 1915, the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia secretly ^[18] discussed how to divide up the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was to control an even larger zone in Persia, while Russia would get the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. The Dardanelles were also promised to Russia. The language of the agreement described the following boundaries:

...the city of Constantinople, the western bank of the Bosphorus, of the Sea of Marmara and of the Dardanelles, as well as southern Thrace to the Enez-Midye line... and... that part of the Asiatic shore that lies between the Bosphorus, the Sakarya River and a point to be determined on the Gulf of Izmit, and the islands of the Sea of Marmara, the Imbros and Tenedos islands.

The British and the French sought to limit Russian claims, but were not able to do so, and also had to contend with the possibility that Russia might make a separate peace with the Central Powers. ^[19] The agreement was one of a series of agreements regarding the partition of the Ottoman Empire by the Triple Entente and Italy following the war, including the Treaty of London (1915), the Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916) and the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (April to August 1917). The British Gallipoli Campaign (1915–16) was aimed at seizing the Dardanelles and Constantinople, but was defeated by the Ottomans, and the Allies did not gain control of the region until occupying it in November 1918, after the end of the war. By that time, the Communist Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia during the October Revolution of 1917 and had signed a separate peace with the Central Powers in March 1918, dropping out of the war. ^[20] As the Allies therefore no longer considered Russia among their number, and, indeed, did not even recognize the legitimacy of the Bolshevik government, the agreement was never implemented.

See also

• Diplomatic history of World War I

References

Footnotes

1. A secret alliance was concluded between the Ottoman Empire and the German Empire on August 2, 1914. ^[10]
2. Sazonov had made a similar request earlier in June but had been refused on the grounds that the government could not intervene in a commercial matter.
3. On 6 August 1914, at 0100 hours, Grand Vizier Said Halim summoned the German ambassador, Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, to his office to inform him that the Cabinet had decided "unanimously" to open the Straits to the Goeben and Breslau. ^[14]
4. "This affirmation was repeated in a memorandum dated November 14 which Buchanan delivered to the Russian Foreign Office. Again, Grey made the promised contingent on Germany's defeat." ^[15]
5. "This early [September 23], then, the inexorable logic of events clearly suggested an arrangement with Russia regarding Constantinople and the Straits." ^[16]

Citations

1. Cathal J. Nolan, ed. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations: A-E, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 350.
2. J. C. Hurewitz (1979). The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record. British-French supremacy, 1914-1945. 2. Yale University Press. pp. 16–21. ISBN   978-0-300-02203-2.
3. Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917 (1967) pp 706-7.
4. Chrēstos L. Rozakēs (31 August 1987). The Turkish Straits. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 25. ISBN   90-247-3464-9.
5. Langer 1929, p. 68.
6. Macfie 1981, p. 328.
7. Macfie 1981, pp. 323–324.
8. Macfie 1998, p. 183-184.
9. Macfie 1998, p. 184.
10. The Treaty of Alliance Between Germany and Turkey, Yale.
11. Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Owl. pp.  52. ISBN   978-0-8050-6884-9.
12. John W.Young (24 January 2019). "3:Winston Churchill and Britain's decision for war". In B.J.C. McKercher; Antoine Capet (eds.). Winston Churchill: At War and Thinking of War before 1939. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-0-429-63992-0.
13. Massie, Robert (2004). Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the winning of the Great War. Random House. p. 47. ISBN   0-224-04092-8.
14. Hamilton & Herwig 2005, p. 163.
15. Renzi 1970, p. 6.
16. Smith 1965, p. 1023.
17. Likharev 2019, pp. 273–275.
18. "He [Sir Edward Grey] had emphasized, too, that the Constantinople agreement they had just reached was to be kept secret". David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (2001), p.139
19. Kucherov, Samuel (1949). "The Problem of Constantinople and the Straits". Russian Review. 8 (3): 209. doi:10.2307/125120. JSTOR   125120.
20. Gordon Martel, ed. (2008). A Companion to International History 1900 - 2001. p. 132. ISBN   9780470766293.

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