Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [238]
Although the Greek commission finally recommended giving both parts of Thrace to Greece, the Peace Conference postponed making any decision at all on the grounds that it was premature, since the fate of Constantinople had not yet been settled. (There was talk of the United States taking a mandate.) When Thrace came up before the Peace Conference again in the summer of 1919, the United States had given up the idea of the mandate and was now also firmly opposed to giving western Thrace to Greece. Instead, the Americans argued for leaving it with Bulgaria, much to the irritation of the British, who pointed out that if one of Greece’s claims were denied, the whole lot would have to be reviewed. Venizelos was coming under attack at home; he told Lloyd George that his position would be very dangerous unless he could show some solid gains.46
The gradual withdrawal of the United States from Europe made it possible for the European powers to ignore its wishes. In the Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria, which was signed in November 1919, Bulgaria lost western Thrace. The Bulgarian delegation made one last futile appeal: “The exclusion of Bulgaria from Western Thrace, of which even our enemies the Greeks and the Serbians, who were our conquerors in the war of 1912–1913, did not have the courage to deprive us, . . . will further separate Bulgaria geographically from France and the great sea powers.”47 In 1920, western and eastern Thrace, which had by now been taken from Turkey, were handed over by the Allies to Greece. The Greeks were to enjoy their new acquisition in peace for precisely two years. Far to the south, in Asia Minor, the “great idea” was crashing rudely against reality. Greece had stretched too far; in doing so it had awoken the forces of Turkish nationalism.
26
The End of the Ottomans
FAR AWAY FROM PARIS, at the southeast tip of Europe, another great city had been lamenting the past and thinking uneasily about the future. Byzantium to the Greeks and Romans, Constantinople to the peacemakers, Istanbul, as it was to the Turks, had once been the capital of the glorious Byzantine empire and then, after 1453, of the victorious Ottoman Turks. Now the Ottoman empire in its turn was on a downward path. The city was crammed with refugees and soldiers from the defeated armies, short of fuel, food and hope. Their fate—indeed, that of the whole empire—appeared to depend on the Peace Conference.
Layers of history had fallen over Constantinople, leaving churches, mosques, frescoes, mosaics, palaces, covered markets and fishing villages. The massive city walls had seen invaders from Europe and the East, Persians, Crusaders, Arabs and finally the Turks. The last Byzantine emperor had chosen death there in 1453, as the Ottoman Turks completed their conquest of his empire. Underneath the streets of Istanbul lay the shards of antiquity; walls, vaults, passageways, a great Byzantine cistern where Greek and Roman columns held up the roof. Above, the minarets of the mosques—some of them, such as the massive Santa Sophia, converted from Christian churches—and the great tower built by the Genoese brooded over the city’s hills. Across the deep inlet of the Golden Horn, the old city of Stamboul, with its squalor and its magnificence, faced the more spacious modern quarter where foreigners lived. It was a city with many memories and many peoples.
All around was the water. To the northwest, the Bosphorus stretched up into the Black Sea toward Russia and central Asia; southwest, the Sea of Marmara led into the Dardanelles