• PugJesus@piefed.socialOP
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    6 days ago

    Explanation: The Treaty of Sevres was the treaty imposed upon the defeated Ottoman Empire after WW1. While the creation of theoretically-independent ‘mandates’ of much of the Ottoman Empire’s foreign holdings was probably inevitable, the proposed butchery of the heartlands of Anatolia, where the Turkish population of the Empire actually lived, was ridiculous and far beyond what the victors of WW1 had imposed even upon Imperial Germany and Austro-Hungary - both objectively far more at fault for the war than the Ottoman Empire. But such affairs are conducted according to the (im)balance of power, not justice.

    That considerable territory was to be ceded to the Greeks, whom held long-lasting enmity with the Turks, was additional salt on the wound. The Ottoman Sultan felt that, as a defeated power, he had no choice but to sign it if he wished to keep his throne.

    However, the wellspring of outrage was so total that a hero of WW1, one Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later known as Ataturk) managed to rally the people and remaining military forces of Turkiye to oppose the treaty, leading to the expulsion of occupying forces and the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire in the Turkish War of Independence. The resulting Turkish Republic would renegotiate the peace with the victors of WW1 after several years of fighting, leading to the roughly modern (and unoccupied) borders of Turkiye we see today.