Sevres imposed on Turkey: "Gaza Strip of Anatolia"

We always know, we always say, and from time to time we emphasise it, that the First World War, or the "Great War"as it is commonly known, ended empires. Let us say it without bending, without ifs, buts or buts, the Ottoman Empire had its share of this end. At the end of the Great War, just as the famous Romanof family's Russian Empire, the Hohenzollern dynasty's German Empire, the Habsburg dynasty's Austro-Hungarian Empire took their place in the depths of history, the 'Devlet-i Seniyye' of Ahl-i Osman was almost pushed into the dusty pages of history. Suffice it to say that the post-war Entente and Central States acted together in this expansion. Let us not forget that at the end of the war, the German Empire, which targeted Caucasian oil, fought a battle with its friend and ally Ottoman Empire on 10 June 1918 in Vorontsovka on the Caucasus Front for oil and lost the battle. An important detail should be mentioned here; After the Turkish-German clash in Vorontsovka, Germany decided to withdraw all its officers in the Ottoman army and instead the Ottoman army had to cancel the forward operation it had planned against the German troops holding Tbilisi (1)

Yes, dear readers, while the First World War brought empires to an end, the Second World War brought the nation states, which were only shaped as the Westphalian order of 1648, to an end. However, the foundation of modern international relations was laid with the Westphalia Peace Treaty signed in 1648. In other words, the Second World War ended the Westphalia approach and ushered in the era of pacts. NATO, CENTO, SEATO, WARSAW pacts or camps were the products of this expansion. In other words, the USA, led by capitalism, and the USSR led by Russia, led by communism, were trying to draw countries into their camps in order to spread capitalism and communism, and for this purpose, a period in which armaments were constantly armed in order to have a deterrent effect against hot conflicts that were feared to break out one day. In other words, we have entered the era of the "Cold War" in which deterrence is dominant.

Undoubtedly, the two most prominent actors of the "Cold War" period were NATO under the guidance of the USA and the Warsaw Pact monopolised by Russia. The Cold War, in which deterrence was seen as an intense arms race, ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Chronologically, 25 December 1991 was the official end of the Cold War, or more precisely, the date of its termination. This date once again constituted a breaking point for the global international system. The Soviet Union, which had existed for seventy-three years and challenged the system based on the liberal values of the West, could not continue the war any longer and lost the war. This great community of nations, which possessed enormous armed power during the Cold War and made new discoveries in the space race, was destroyed. (1) Capitalism pulled the rope, or rather the plug, on this state of defiance. So much so that it was not even allowed to live a vegetative life.

The rise of liberal democracy after the Cold War, or rather the rise of the USA from a superpower to a mega-power. While organising its mega-power position, the USA also benefited from the theory of " Eternal Peace" represented byImmanuelKant. Supporters of this idea were of the opinion that absolute peace prevails between states and that armies should exist to preserve peace.

One of the leading political scientists of the post-1990 period, Francis Fukuyama of the USA, has therefore put forward the thesis that humanity has not only entered a new stage in history, but has also reached the end of history. According to him, optimistically, human political evolution has reached its final point and Western liberal democracy has been and is being universalised as the ultimate form of government. Fukuyama not only argues that history should be seen as an evolutionary process, but in this sense he has also argued that liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. Do you think this approach is correct? I think not, but it can be argued. In fact, the winner of the war was the USA and the liberalism, human rights and the opening of freedom represented by the USA were imposed on the rest of the world with the US paradigm, and the international system evolved into a unipolar system. The Gulf War, which started on 2 August 1990 with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, was the first conflict of the "Unipolar System: USA" system.

The USA, which was declared the winner of the Cold War, became the dominant actor in the post-Cold War world. The USA, which has adopted a"I did it, I did it" mode, has now become an actor that sets the agenda of war and peace in the international system alone. The most typical example of this is the First Gulf War. In the First Gulf War, first an economic embargo was imposed against Iraq, and then the US, clinging to the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, launched Operation Desert Storm under its leadership and with the participation of many states under the umbrella of the UN. Forty-three days after the beginning of the operation, a ceasefire was declared and Iraq was expelled from Kuwait with a 'fait accompli'. The " Arab Spring", which aimed to change the political borders in the Greater Middle East and North Africa Project (GOKAP) region, was one of the important expansions of this perspective.

Following Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis, Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilisations" thesis suddenly raised the hand of the West. According to Huntington, the continuation of wars is inevitable. However, it is specifically stated that the new wars will be between different civilisations, not over the thoughts/ideas represented by the Cold War. The most typical example of this is seen as the confrontation of Islamic Civilisation and Western Civilisation. The West, which could not digest orientalism, imposed "orientalism"on the East as much as it could, so much so that it saw no harm in putting the whole East in the same category by saying, "either Russians or Muslims" .

The orientalist point of view, which is based on the image of the East created by the West in its own imagination, has pioneered imperialism, colonialism and expansionism at one point and is still doing so with increasing momentum. Orientalism is the West's way of seeing and interpreting the East, and in this act of interpretation, there is a one-sided order based on prejudices. Orientalism interacts with the concept of coercion and consent through hegemony and is directly concerned with the influence of power on the masses. On the other hand, the understanding of Orientalism by Prof. Edward Sait, the renowned Prof. Dr. Edward Sait of Columbia University in the USA, God bless him, is scientific and means to counter the West's creation of myths of domination with both historical and cultural resistance. At the root of today's conflicts, the resistance of orientalism against orientalism must be felt.

Undoubtedly, the first prototype practice based on force and coercion originating from "orientalism" was imposed on the Ottoman Empire, and the occupations and the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August 1920, which was attempted to be put into effect politically 104 years ago, were the icing on the cake. However, Mustafa Kemal, a young and courageous Turkish officer who set foot in the humble city of Samsun on the far shore of the Black Sea on 19 May 1919, succeeded in organising the resistance reflex of the people who had been facing extinction in the war for years. In other words, Mustafa Kemal started his liberation adventure, which began in Samsun, by gathering together those who opposed the partition of the lands left behind by the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire at the end of the Great War, as proposed by the Entente Powers. With the submission of the subjugated Ottoman Government, the Treaty of Sèvres at the international level condemned the defeated multinational Ottoman Empire to a partition that would satisfy the regional interests of the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Italy and Greece, and at the same time gave the multinational peoples of the former glorious State of the Ottoman Empire the right to establish their own states, in fact the satellite states that were motivated.

Let us recall that, according to the articles of the Treaty of Sèvres, Izmir and most of Western Anatolia and Thrace, together with its hinterland, were ceded to Greece. Turkey, a little larger than the Gaza Strip, was to recognise the independence of Armenia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, Syria, Jordan and Hejaz, the protection of Great Britain over Egypt, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Cyprus, of France over Tunisia and Morocco, and Italian sovereignty over Libya and the Dodecanese Islands. All that the Turks were left with was a poor scrap of the Black Sea coast, confined to an "Anatolian Gaza Strip". However, it should not be forgotten that, as it is clearly stated in all historical atlases, in the brackets under the details of the treaty in the famous "Philips New Handy General Atlas"of the USA, the following three words are written: "It never entered into force." (2) The Treaty of Sèvres, a document of 433 articles and 150 large pages, could not be put into practice thanks to the resistance reflex of Anatolia and Rumelia as a treaty aiming to completely remove Turks from Anatolia and Europe.

Yes, dear readers, the Treaty of Sèvres was never put into force, more precisely, it could not be put into force against all kinds of coercion, imposition and power. The reflex of resistance formed a Misak-ı Milli (National Pledge), a systematic of resistance, which was integrated with "19 May". The birth of Turkish nationalism and a long participatory resistance despite the disproportionate and great inequality and the almost mythological heroic story of standing and not being an "Anatolian Gaza Strip". It is safe to say that without Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey would have been a "Gaza Strip of Anatolia", harbouring all the evils of the West to this day. It was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who saved Turkey from being pushed and pushed around. He believed in his people and their synergy. Mustafa Kemal tested this in the field in 1915. Let us remember that when he said to his troops at Gallipoli, "I order you to die, not to fight," he was able to mobilise the noble blood in the DNA molecules of the Turkish people. As author Jeremy Seal emphasises:

"And in the end they went to heaven in such great numbers that the weight of their bodies alone prevented the Allied Powers from seizing the Dardanelles, the real key to Constantinople, now Istanbul."

Today, if Turkey is able to live in freedom in the midst of the jungle of fire around it, if Turkey is able to survive as an island of democracy in the Middle East, and if Turkey has not become "a Gaza Strip of Anatolia" as the West desires, then, without further ado, dear readers, all this is directly owed to the synergy of the Turkish nation, the nation of the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal.

Footnotes

(1) Emir Öngüner, "Ottoman-German Rivalry on the Caucasus Front: 10 June 1918 - The Battle of Vorontsovka - A Conflict between the Allies for Oil in World War I" 06.04.2015; https://www.academia.edu/36510657/Kafkasya_Cephesinde_Osmanl%C4%B1_Alman_Rekabeti_10_Haziran_1918_Vorontsovka_Muharebesi_I_D%C3%BCnya_Sava%C5%9F%C4%B1_nda_M%C3%BCttefikler_Aras%C4%B1_Petrol_U%C4%9Fruna_Ya%C5%9Fanan_Bir_%C3%87at%C4%B1%C5%9Fma / Access Date 29.06.2024/

(2) Merve Güllü Göktaş, "New World Order after the Cold War", Daktilo 1984, 12 December 2023; https://daktilo1984.com/yazilar/soguk-savas-sonrasi-yeni-dunya-duzeni/ Access Date 29.06.2024/

(3) Jeremy Seal, trans. Gül Greenslade, "Fes", Istanbul, April 2016, p.23