Straits Area

The creation of the zone was partly planned, partly spontaneous. Plans to recreate in the straits zone of an independent Orthodox state (after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 ) were bearing more than one generation of Russian rulers . First, the great Orthodox kingdom conceived to restore Catherine the Great . Although England , Austria-Hungary and France sympathized with the local Christians, they still did not want to strengthen Russia at the expense of the gradually weakening Ottoman Empire, leading a constant backstage game in the Balkans. Despite the opposition, the Russian-Turkish wars ultimately led to the growth of national self-consciousness, and after him the national-territorial ambitions of the liberated Balkan peoples. The Balkan wars of the beginning of the twentieth century were rather complex, passing through two main stages in general. At the first stage, the Christian powers quickly and successfully joined forces to partition the still extensive Western-Turkish possessions inhabited mainly by the eponymous national minorities. The problems began in Macedonia and Rumelia , where a significant, and in Thrace - a large, part of the local population were Turks or Turkish Muslims , who began to resist. With the decline of the Ottoman possessions and the growth of Muslim resistance in the Balkans, the former Christian allies began to fight each other for the redistribution of already occupied lands.

Geographically, the Greek-Bulgarian border region became the most conflict. Bulgaria sought to annex Adrianople (Edirne), which was actually the key to Constantinople, as well as to break through to the Aegean Sea. Greece wanted the speediest annexation of Constantinople itself, the most important medieval Greek center, within the Great Idea of ​​Venizelos and the enosis plan of all Greek lands.

The situation in Thrace strained to the limit, in the Balkans, the war of all against all began. At any moment ethnic massacres could begin in mixed ethno-linguistic regions. In Istanbul itself, Muslims made up only about 55% of the city’s population; in Edirne, no more than 40%. The Western powers were so afraid to simply give way to the straits of the new Balkan states, fearing their sudden increase, the introduction of unexpected conditions or their sudden shift towards communist Russia. On the initiative of Great Britain, the zone of the straits was occupied by the Allied forces on November 10, 1918 . The Sevres Peace Treaty of August 10, 1920 secured the “internationalization” of the straits zone that had actually occurred, and also carried out the actual division of the Ottoman lands into several colonial “zones of influence”. Part of the Turkish lands inhabited by ethnic minorities, was transferred to the relevant neighboring states (Greece, Armenia), and part was to be an independent Kurdistan . By its outlines, the zone of the straits somewhat resembled the Latin Empire that had existed in the 13th century, which had arisen on the ruins of Byzantium. From the west, the Greek possessions, which were separated from the Marmara Sea and their cherished goal — only a narrow strip of land 15-20 km wide separated it from Constantinople. ^[3]

The western boundary of the straits zone ran along the line Midia - Enos . The Greeks sincerely hoped that the created Straits Zone would become only a transitional, preparatory stage for the Greek annexation of Constantinople, and therefore they made every effort to effectively occupy all the territories adjacent to it in order to take the zone into a ring. In addition, the creation of the zone was considered by them as a kind of return of Constantinople into the hands of the Christian powers. Great powers had different attitudes to what is happening. France supported the Greek offensive. Italy considered Greece as its main competitor. Great Britain, which determined the “weather” in the Straits Zone, was afraid of Greek ambitions, because earlier (in 1878) she had occupied the island of Cyprus , inhabited mainly by Greeks. In British political circles, the saying “It's easier to negotiate with a thousand Turks than deal with one stubborn Greek.” Fearing the annexation of Cyprus by Greece, the British entered into an alliance with the Turkish minority (18%) of the island. The United States as a whole was neutral to the actions of the Greek authorities, as a strong Greek-Armenian diaspora lobby began to take shape in the country.

The capital of Ottoman Turkey under the contract remained in Istanbul , but the sultan lost the real power. Taking advantage of the neutralization of Sultan Turkey, the Greek troops began to advance from their re-created Anatolian enclave in Ionia with the center in Izmir deep into Asia Minor in order to completely subjugate the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, before Italy did that which South Anatolia had to go. However, having fallen on the new powerful Kemalist movement of national resistance, the Greek troops were driven back and suffered a crushing defeat. The Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923 canceled the terms of the Treaty of Sevres, as a result of which the Straits Zone and other territorial concessions were canceled. The zone of the straits was eliminated, and with it the local Christians also lost support. Despite the fact that the Treaty of Lausanne secured the rights of the Christian population of Istanbul not to leave its native city, Republican Turkey ignored it. Virtually all Christians left the city after the 1955 pogroms .