by the authorities at Constantinople. The orders of the government were respected throughout Turkey while those of Constantinople had no force. There were signs that the Constantinople authorities really acquiesced in this state of affairs and on certain occasions they worked in harmony with the Angora government. As to relations with foreign Powers, the Angora government was on friendly terms with France and Italy and receiving their diplomatic support. Moreover, it had entered into an alliance with Bolshevist Russia and the Caucasus republics. In theory the National Assembly was the head of the state, both executive and legislative, but in the crisis of the Greek war, during the summer, the Assembly made Mustapha Kemal dictator and afterwards extended his term to January. A social reform programme was developed on paper, but in the disturbed conditions of the year it was not put into effect. The important point was the relations of the subject races in Turkey. Mustapha Kemal had been a leading member of the Young Turk party and he still cherished its ideals. These included the transformation of Turkey into a true national state in which citizens must think politically as Turks whatever their racial or religious differences. The policy of the Angora government in this respect involved theoretically the protection of the minorities of different race or religion. It recognized the principle of cultural autonomy and professed to give the racial and religious minorities the same protection that had been accorded under the Treaty of Versailles to these minorities in the states of eastern Europe. The national pact which lays down these principles refers to Anatolia and Thrace as "the part of the empire, peopled by a Mussulman and Ottoman majority united by religion, race, and origin, whose different elements nourished toward each other, sentiments of consideration and of reciprocal devotion." As parts of the regions included under this description contained Greeks, Armenians and others, who had suffered from Turkish massacres, the situation seemed less harmonious than the words implied and it was believed that the Turkish authority would be enforced without mercy as it had been in the past, if there was any attempt at resistance. The opponents of the Nationalist government argued that its intense nationalism would lead inevitably to cruelties toward the subject races in the future; in other words, that it would be based, as it had been in the past, on enforcement by massacre. FOREIGN RELATIONS. On February 5 Kemal declared that his government was the true government of Turkey, and in this he was supported by French and Italian influence. Both France and Italy favored recognition, but Great Britain was opposed. In March secret treaties were formed by France and Italy with the Angora government. The Nationalists were also on good terms with Soviet Russia with which, on March 16, a treaty was signed at Moscow, whereby Russia was to recognize Constantinople as the capital. Other terms were: The abandonment of Batum to Georgia by the Turks, and recognition of its autonomy; the division of Armenia among Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The Russian and Turkish governments each demanded an international arrangement in respect to the territories_bordering on the Black sea and the Straits. Treaties were also formed with the Y-B-21-23 Caucasus republics under Bolshevist control. There was a report which, however, was not substantiated though frequently credited, that the Turks had received $5,000,000 in gold from the Bolshevists. The alliance with Russia brought them effective aid in the matter of war material, while the alliance with the Caucasus republics strengthened them against possible agression from the western Powers. More important was the treaty with France described in the following paragraph. TREATY WITH FRANCE. On October 30 the French government ratified a treaty with the Turkish Nationalists at Angora, which provided for a state of peace and for economic coöperation between the two governments. According to the agreement France was to withdraw from Cilicia in return for various economic advantages, including the operation of the Bagdad railroad from the sea to the Tigris river and certain important mineral concessions. This agreement was significant as showing the friendship of France for the Nationalists and recognizing the government at Angora as the ruling power of Turkey. It had been ratified at Angora before it was submitted to Paris. Further details of the agreement were as follows: Exchange of prisoners; amnesty for political offenders; an understanding that Turkey should guarantee the protection of minorities; establishment of a mixed commission to draft customs regulations between Turkey and Syria. In the letter from Kemal Pasha addressed to the French government on this occasion, the desire was expressed that French specialists be supplied to the Turkish technical schools. France held Syria under the mandate of the League of Nations and the boundaries between Turkey and Syria were laid down in the Treaty of Sèvres, which treaty was subsequently disregarded. From the end of the war France had occupied Cilicia, claiming it as a zone of influence and there were frequent conflicts between the French and the Turks over the region. There had been criticism in France of this policy as wasteful, and it was decided that the attempt to keep Cilicia was not worth the sacrifice that France would have to make. About 15,000 French troops had been latterly engaged there, and would be set free as a result of the above agreement. The treaty was hailed in France as a victory over British dipomacy which had hitherto, according to the French, had the upper hand. In the Near East France had lost Mosul and in the division of Turkey England had received by far the greatest share; the British also held the leading place in Constantinople. The attitude of the British toward the French treaty was illustrated by Lord Curzon's complaint that France had stolen a march on her Allies. See WAR OF THE NATIONS. FRENCH AND BRITISH ATTITUDE. The elections of 1920 showed that the Greeks preferred their former king to M. Venizelos. In France the criticism of Greece on the ground of this preference and the hatred of Constantine were exceedingly bitter. In England there was no such general resentment against the course that Greece had taken. It was there generally understood that the departure of Venizelos did not mean that Greece had renounced her national ambitions. In this respect the British government was more clear-sighted than the French, for the Greeks continued their forward policy in Asia Minor. plaint that the matter had never been referred to the League of Nations, it was unfounded, for the League of Nations would only have had such means of dealing with it as the Allies could have placed at its disposal, and none of the Allies would have been ready to send an army into the country pending a decision. The war would have this advantage, in that it would bring both sides to a realization of its cost. On each side there had been over-confidence. As to the outcome of the war between Greece and Turkey British and French opinion was divided, the former inclining to the side of the Greeks, who it was believed would conquer, and the latter favoring the Turks. In Great Britain it was thought that a Greek victory would bring a clear and righteous solution of the Far Eastern question. The British had perhaps hoped that the question of Constantinople would be so regulated at Angora as to satisfy at the same time the nationalism of the Greeks and the British desire to control IRAK. A new division was constituted in 1921 indirectly the Straits of Dardanelle. But the out of the vilayets of Basra and Bagdad together year passed without a military decision in favor with a section of Mosul, with an area of about 140 of the Greeks, and Greece was obliged to give up square miles and a population of about 2,000,000. the hope of settling the question on her own terms This new state was placed under the rule of the with the support of England. The British press Emir Feisal, or Faisal, third son of the King of the began now to complain of the mistaken policy Hedjaz, who had been nominated by Lord Allenby followed by the government, saying that the at a conference at Cairo. The crowning of Feisal support that had been rendered to Greece was as King of Irak took place at Bagdad, August 23, causing great embarrassment in various parts of in the presence of the British High Commissioner the empire; that, for example, it had been the occa- for Mesopotamia and Mohammedan representasion of the disorders of the Malabar region in tives, and was followed by a personal message of India and that among the Moslems generally the congratulations from King George of England. British attitude toward Greece had aroused the Feisal was born in the Hedjaz, 1885, studied at bitterest resentment and had endangered British Constantinople, and became afterwards a member authority in the Indies, Afghanistan, and other of the Turkish Chamber of Deputies and a leader parts of the East. The British government was of the Arab Nationalist party at Damascus. He blamed because instead of renewing the bonds of was obliged by Djemal Pasha to accompany him friendship with the Turks after the war, it had when he was appointed Governor of Syria at the preferred to enter into the Treaty of Sèvres and to time when Turkey was about to side with Germany. ally itself with King Constantine. Thus in certain During the war he was virtually a prisoner. He quarters, British opinion inclined to the same side was taken into the confidence of Colonel Lawrence, as the French which had ever since the war been when the latter negotiated with Hussein concernsympathetic toward the Turks. Among French ing the setting up of a new kingdom of the Hedjaz, writers in 1921 the most amiable tone was em- and after the war Feisal was elected King of ployed in respect to the Turks and it was said that Syria by the Arab congress at Damascus. Then the war-like ideals of France were traditionally in followed the trouble with the French which harmony with the generous spirit of this essentially resulted in his being driven out by Gen. Gouraud, military people. There was much sentimental the French High Commissioner. (See preceding writing on this subject on the part of the French, YEAR BOOK.) Feisal presented his case at Rome but at the basis of it was of course the belief that and London where he passed much of the time supporting Turkey was to the best interests of between December, 1920, and April, 1921. The France in the Near East. At the end of the year, British secured his support for their projects in however, the French policy in respect to the Mesopotamia, and he undertook to make good his Treaty of Angora seemed likely to be modified claim there by putting down Arab disturbances. on the overthrow of the Briand ministry in Decem- He arrived at Basra, June 23, and began his camber as the new prime minister, Raymond Poincaré, paign which resulted in his choice as ruler of the had accepted certain of the British criticisms of it, new state of Irak. and disapproved it on the ground that it divided Allied Policy and that France was not justified in conceding to the Nationalists territories of which she had only a mandate. After the withdrawal of French troops began, November 28 the Christian minorities in Cicilia were reported to have suffered a series of savage outrages from the Turks. Many Greeks and Armenians withdrew at the same time as the French, but a considerable number remained and these petitioned the British and French governments and the League of Nations for relief from famine and for aid in removal to some other country. The British prime minister, Mr. Lloyd George, set forth the question of Turkey, Greece, and the Treaty of Sèvres, August 16. He said that it would have been better if, in accordance with the advice of Venizelos, the prime minister of Greece, the insurrection of the Nationalists in Turkey had been dealt with at once. It would have been possible then to suppress it, but now it was too late to use force for the purpose of bringing the Nationalists and the Greeks to terms, and they must be left to fight it out. As to the com SITUATION AT THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR. The state of war with Greece still continued at the close of the year. Difficulties with the Bolshevists in the rear of the Turkish forces were reported, and through the assistance of the Kurds arms were said to be supplied by Russia for the purpose of setting up a new state on the Black sea. The aggression of the Bolshevists was attributed to the transfer to France in the Angora treaty of economic concessions that had already been granted to the Soviet government. The problem of peace in the Near East was under discussion among the Allies at the close of the year and was one of the subjects to come before the approaching conferences. DEATH OF TALAAT PASHA. Former Grand Vizier and leader of the Young Turks was assassinated by an Amenian student, March 15, in Berlin where Talaat was engaged in the interest of the Turkish Nationalists. Owing to his association with the Armenian massacres during the war, the publication of his memoirs after his death caused a great sensation, especially in Turkey. They outlined the relations with Germany during Turkey's international isolation after the Balkan |