TheConstantinople Agreement (also known as theStraits Agreement) was asecret exchange of diplomatic correspondence between members of theTriple Entente from 4 March to 10 April 1915 duringWorld War I. France and Great Britain promised to giveConstantinople and theDardanelles, at the time part of theOttoman Empire, to theRussian 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 ofSyria (includingPalestine) andCilicia for France, all sides also agreeing that the governance of theHoly Places andArabia would be under independentMuslim 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 itselfwanted 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 theGallipoli Campaign failed,Constantinople was nevertheless occupied by the victorious Allies at the end of the war in 1918. By that time, however, theRussian 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 theBolshevik government in 1917.
Access to theTurkish Straits was governed by the 1841London Straits Convention which stipulated the closure of the straits to warships[4] and, after theCrimean War, by theTreaty 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 theTreaty of London (1871) and reaffirmed in theTreaty of Berlin (1878).
In early 1907, in the talks leading up to theAnglo-Russian Convention, CountAlexander 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 aPacific fleet, and since theBaltic 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 MinisterAlois Lexa von Aehrenthal, Italian Minister of Foreign AffairsTommaso Tittoni and the German Ambassador to Paris,Wilhelm von Schoen as well as from Secretary of State for Foreign AffairsSir Edward Grey, Grey on 14 October 1908 being clearest on the subject while indicating that Turkish agreement was a prerequisite.[7]
During theBosnian Crisis of 1908, in theItalo-Turkish War of 1911/12 as well as during theBalkan Wars of 1912/13, Russia made attempts to obtain the opening of the straits for Russian warships but failed for want of support from theGreat 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,[a] 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 theOttoman Navy, theSultân Osmân-ı Evvel, which had been completed and was making preparations to leave, and theReşadiye. On 30 July,Russian Minister of Foreign AffairsSergey Sazonov instructed Benckendorff:[b]
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 AdmiraltyWinston 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]
Thepursuit of the two German warshipsGoeben andBreslau by theRoyal Navy led to their being allowed to enter the Dardanelles on 10 August 1914.[13][c]
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[d] and its genesis to earlier in September[e], prior to the Ottoman entry into the war.[17]
From 4 March to 10 April 1915, theTriple 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 ofConstantinople, the western bank of theBosphorus, of theSea of Marmara and of theDardanelles, as well as southernThrace to theEnez-Midye line... and... that part of the Asiatic shore that lies between the Bosphorus, theSakarya River and a point to be determined on theGulf of Izmit, and the islands of the Sea of Marmara, theImbros andTenedos 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 theTreaty of London (1915), theSykes–Picot Agreement (1916) and theAgreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (April to August 1917).The BritishGallipoli 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 untiloccupying it in November 1918, after the end of the war. By that time, the CommunistBolsheviks had seized power in Russia during theOctober Revolution of 1917 and had signeda 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.