Conference of London

This article is about Conference of London. For other uses, see Conference of London (disambiguation).

The Conference of London (21 February and 12 March 1921 and March 1922, London, Great Britain) was a conference convened in order to deal with the problems resulting from the peace treaties that ended World War I, most notably the Treaty of Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire, which was militarily opposed by the Turkish National Movement.

First stage

To salvage the Treaty of Sèvres, a diplomatic conference was held in London between 21 February and 12 March 1921. Triple Entente forced the nationalists to agree with the Constantinople government. Bekir Sami Kunduh, representative of Ankara, insisted that the delegate from Istanbul could not enter the negotiations, and rejected the use of Sêvres as the basis of the talks. Sêvres had been negotiated with the Ottoman Empire, not with the recently liberated Turkey.

Second stage

Another meeting in London was held in March 1922. The Allies, without considering the extent of Ankara's successes, hoped to impose modified Serves as a peace settlement on Ankara. The Entente foreign ministers proposed Ankara to establish an Armenian state in eastern Anatolia, removing Turkish troops from the Straits area. Also stipulated was the Turkish abandonment to the Greeks of Smyrna and eastern Thrace, including Adrianople. In return, the Allies offered to raise the Sèvres limits on the Turkish army to 85,000 men, eliminating the European financial controls over the Turkish government, but retaining the Capitulations and Public Debt Commission. These proposals were so incompatible with the National Pact that it was easy for the Ankara Assembly to reject them.