Место издания:St. Kliment Ohridski University Press Sofia
Первая страница:227
Последняя страница:238
Аннотация:The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was one of the largest geopolitical shifts after the end of the First World War. The real force that the Entente countries had to deal with in Turkey was the Government of the Grand National Assembly under General Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), which in 1922 managed to achieve victory over Greece, and in 1923, after the signing of the equal Treaty of Lausanne, proclaimed Turkey a Republic. The border issue was one of the most acute in relations between the new Turkish state and the Entente countries. Turkey had the longest land border in the South, where it has become a neighbour of the two largest colonial empires in the world - France (in Syria) and Great Britain (in Iraq). Turkey's own interests in the southern direction were formally determined by the "National Pact" (1920), but there they were not clearly formulated. From the speeches of M. Kemal himself it was evident that Turkey's claims spread much further than the actual line of control and included vast territories in the North of Syria and Iraq. An agreement with France was reached already in 1921 (the Treaty of Ankara) and was confirmed in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. However, this did not mean that Turkey completely abandoned its interests in northern Syria, and the French mandate authorities had to constantly reckon with the “Turkish factor". The settlement of the dispute with Iraq over Mosul dragged on until 1926 and petty disputes with French authorities over Syrian frontier lasted until 1929 when the “final” frontier agreement was signed. Nevertheless, the last pre-war years have witnessed an acute dispute between France and Turkey over Alexandretta district which the French eventually had to cede to Turkey, fearing that she might make even greater territorial claims for the Aleppo and Jazeera areas, which France at that moment could not resist. Although after World Ear Two the southern borders of Turkey seemed finally settled, recent events in the same region show that the present Turkish government tends to revive some geopolitical ambitions, which Ankara seemingly abandoned about a hundred years ago.