CHAPTER IX—Lessons from Abroad - Page 233

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208 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES

war on the rest of the Balkan League and Rumania declared war on Bulgaria in the hope of extending her territory. Turkey also did the same. By the Treaty of Bukharest (1913), which ended the second Balkan War, Turkey recovered Adrianople and got Thrace from Bulgaria. Serbia obtained Northern Macedonia and Greece obtained Southern Macedonia (including Salonika), while Montenegro enlarged her territory at the expense of Turkey. By 1914 when the Great European War came on, the Balkans had won their independence from Turkey and the area in Europe that remained under the Turkish Empire was indeed a very small area round about Constantinople and her possessions in Asia. So far as the African continent is concerned, the Sultan’s power over Egypt and the rest of North Africa was only nominal; for the European Powers had established real control therein. In the Great War of 1914 the overthrow of Turkey was complete. All the provinces from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf were overrun, and the great cities of Baghdad, Jerusalem, Damascus and Alleppo were captured. In Europe the allied troops occupied Constantinople. The Treaty of Sevres, which brought the war with Turkey to a close, sought to deprive her of all her outlying provinces and even of the fertile plains of Asia Minor. Greek claim for territory was generously allowed at the expense of Turkey in Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor and Italy was to receive Adalia and a large tract in the South. Turkey was to be deprived of all her Arab provinces in Asia, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Hedjaz and Nejd. There was left to Turkey only the capital, Constantinople, and separated from this city, by a “ neutral zone of the straits,” part of the barren plateau of Anatolia. The treaty though accepted by the Sultan was fiercely attacked by the Nationalist Party under Kamal Pasha. When the Greeks advanced to occupy their new territory, they were attacked and decisively beaten. At the end of the war with Greece, which went on from 1920 to 1922, the Turks had reoccupied Smyrna. As the allies were not prepared to send armies to help the Greeks, they were forced to come to terms with the Nationalist Turks. At the conference at Mudiania the Greeks agreed to revise the terms of the Treaty of Sevres, which was done by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923