| Mondros Mütarekesi | |
|---|---|
| Type | Armistice |
| Signed | October 30, 1918 (1918-10-30) |
| Location | HMSAgamemnon |
| Signatories | |
TheArmistice of Mudros (Turkish:Mondros Mütarekesi) ended hostilities in theMiddle Eastern theatre betweenOttoman Turkey and theAllies ofWorld War I. It was signed on 30 October 1918 by the Ottoman Minister of Marine AffairsRauf Bey and BritishAdmiralSomerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe, Commander-in-Chief of theBritish Mediterranean Fleet, on boardHMS Agamemnon (1906) inMoudros harbor on theGreek island ofLemnos.[1] It took effect at noon the next day. The table it was signed on is now on boardHMS Belfast in London Bridge, though it is not accessible to the public.
Among its conditions, the Ottomans surrendered their remaininggarrisons outsideAnatolia, and granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Straits of theDardanelles and theBosporus and any Ottoman territory "in case of disorder" threatening their security. TheOttoman Army (including theOttoman Air Force) was demobilized; and all ports, railways and other strategic points were made available for use by the Allies. In theCaucasus, the Ottomans had to retreat to within the pre-war borders between the Ottoman and the Russian Empires.
The armistice was followed by theoccupation of Istanbul and the subsequentpartitioning of the Ottoman Empire. TheTreaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920), which was signed in the aftermath of World War I, imposed harsh terms on the Ottoman Empire, but it was never ratified by theOttoman Parliament in Istanbul. The Ottoman Parliament was officially disbanded by the Allies on 11 April 1920 due to the overwhelming opposition of the Ottoman MPs to the provisions discussed in Sèvres. This was followed by theTurkish War of Independence which continued until 1923. TheGrand National Assembly of Turkey, established inAnkara on 23 April 1920 byMustafa Kemal Pasha and his followers (including former MPs of the closed Ottoman Parliament), became the new de facto government of Turkey. The Armistice of Mudros was superseded by theTreaty of Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923, following the Turkish victory in the War of Independence.
World War I took a chaotic turn in 1918 for the Ottoman Empire. WithYudenich'sRussian Caucasus Army deserting after the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Ottomans regained ground inArmenia and even pushed into formerly Russian-controlled Caucasus with, at first,Vehip Pasha'sOttoman 3rd Army and, later beginning in June 1918, withNuri Pasha'sArmy of Islam which excluded German officers and men. TheCaucasus Campaign put the Ottomans at odds with their ally, Germany, which had been hoping to purchase Caucasus oil from the Bolshevik government in Moscow,[a] while the Ottomans wanted to establish their eastern borders.[b] The Ottoman armies advanced far into Caucasus, gathering supporters as far away asTashkent, on the eastern side of theCaspian Sea. Additionally, with the Bolsheviks in power in Moscow, chaos spread inPersia, as the Russo-British favoring government ofAhmad Shah Qajar lost authority outside of the capital. In contrast, in Syria, the Ottomans were steadily pushed back by British forces, culminating in thefall of Damascus in October 1918. Hopes were initially high for the Ottomans that their losses inSyria might be compensated with successes in the Caucasus.Enver Pasha, one of the most influential members of the Ottoman government, maintained an optimistic stance, hid information that made the Ottoman position appear weak, and led most of the Ottoman elite to believe that the war was still winnable.[2]
Developments inSoutheast Europe quashed the Ottoman government's hopes. TheMacedonian front, also known as theSalonika campaign, had been largely stable since 1916. In September 1918 theAllied forces (under the command ofLouis Franchet d'Espèrey) mounted asudden offensive which proved quite successful. The Bulgarian army was defeated, andBulgaria was forced to sue for peace in theArmistice of Salonica. That undermined both the German and Ottoman cause simultaneously, as the Germans had no troops to spare to defendAustria-Hungary from the newly formed vulnerability in Southeastern Europe after thelosses it had suffered in France, and the Ottomans suddenly faced having to defendConstantinople against an overland European siege without help from the Bulgarians.[2]
Grand VizierTalaat Pasha visitedBerlin, Germany, andSofia, Bulgaria in September 1918. He came away with the understanding that the war was no longer winnable. With Germany likely seeking a separate peace, the Ottomans would be forced to do so as well. Talaat convinced the other members of the ruling party that they must resign, as the Allies would impose far harsher terms if they thought the people who started the war were still in power. He also sought out the United States to see if he could surrender to them and gain the benefits of theFourteen Points despite the Ottoman Empire and the United States not being at war; however, the Americans never responded, as they were waiting on British advice as to how to respond that never came. On 13 October Talaat and the rest of his ministry resigned.Ahmed Izzet Pasha replaced Talaat as Grand Vizier. Two days after taking office he sent the captured British GeneralCharles Vere Ferrers Townshend to the Allies to seek terms on an armistice.[2]
The British cabinet received word of the offer and were eager to negotiate a deal. The standing terms of the alliance was that the first member that was approached for an armistice should conduct the negotiations; the British government interpreted that to mean that Britain conduct the negotiations alone. The motives for this are not entirely clear, whether it was the sincere British interpretation of the alliance terms, fears that the French would insist on over-harsh demands and foil a treaty, or a desire to cut the French out of territorial "spoils" promised to them in theSykes–Picot Agreement. Townshend also indicated that the Ottomans preferred to deal with the British; he did not know about the American contact or that Talaat had sent an emissary to the French as well but that emissary had been slower to respond back. The British cabinet empoweredAdmiral Calthorpe to conduct the negotiations with an explicit exclusion of the French from them. They also suggested an armistice rather than a full peace treaty, in the belief that a peace treaty would require the approval of all of the Allied nations and be too slow.[2]
The negotiations began on Sunday, 27 October onHMSAgamemnon, a British battleship. The British refused to admit French Vice-AdmiralJean Amet, the senior French naval officer in the area, despite his desire to join; the Ottoman delegation, headed by Minister of Marine AffairsRauf Bey, indicated that it was acceptable as they were accredited only to the British, not the French.[2]
Both sides did not know that the other was actually quite eager to sign a deal and willing to give up some of their objectives to do so. The British delegation had been given a list of 24 demands, but were told to concede on any of them if pressed, except occupation of the forts on the Dardanelles and free passage through theBosphorus; the British desired access to the Black Sea for theRumanian front. Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George also wanted to make a deal quickly before the United States could step in; according to the diary ofMaurice Hankey:
[Lloyd George] was also very contemptuous of President Wilson and anxious to arrange the division of Turkey between France, Italy, and the United Kingdom before speaking to the USA. He also thought it would attract less attention to our enormous gains during the war if we swallowed our share of Turkey now, and the German colonies later.[2]
The Ottoman authorities, for their part, believed the war to be lost and would have accepted almost any demands placed on them. As a result, the initial draft prepared by the British was accepted largely unchanged; the Ottoman side did not know it could have pushed back on most of the clauses, and the British did not know they could have demanded even more. Still, the terms were largely pro-British and close to an outright surrender; the Ottoman Empire ceded the rights to the Allies to occupy "in case of disorder" any Ottoman territory, a vague and broad clause.[2]
The French were displeased with the precedent; French PremierGeorges Clemenceau disliked the British making unilateral decisions in so important a matter. Lloyd George countered that the French had concluded a similar armistice on short notice in theArmistice of Salonica with Bulgaria, which had been negotiated by French GeneralFranchet d'Espèrey, and that Great Britain (and Tsarist Russia) had committed the vast majority of troops to the campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The French agreed to accept the matter as closed. The Ottoman educated public, however, was given misleadingly positive impressions of the severity of the terms of the Armistice. They thought its terms were considerably more lenient than they actually were, a source of discontent later when it seemed that the Allies had violated the offered terms during theTurkish War of Independence.[2]
The Armistice of Mudros officially brought hostilities to an end between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire. However, incursions by the Italians and Greeks into Anatolia in the name of "restoring order" soon came close to an outright partition of the country. TheTreaty of Sèvres in 1920 officially partitioned the Ottoman Empire into zones of influence; however, theTurkish War of Independence (1919–23) saw the rejection of the treaty by Turkish nationalist forces based in Ankara, who eventually took control of the Anatolian Peninsula. Ottoman territory in Syria, Palestine, and Arabia stayed as distributed by the Treaty of Sèvres while the borders of the Turkish nation-state were set by theTreaty of Lausanne in 1923.
