Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- List of maps
- Note on transliteration and usage
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Dismemberment of the Ottoman empire, 1878–1913
- 2 Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, 1914
- 3 Partition plans for Anatolia, 1915–1917
- 4 Borders in the Caucasus, 1918
- 5 The Turkish Republic and the Soviet Union, 1923
- Introduction
- 1 The high politics of anarchy and competition
- 2 Troubles in Anatolia: imperial insecurities and the transformation of borderland politics
- 3 Visions of vulnerability: the politics of Muslims, revolutionaries, and defectors
- 4 Out of the pan and into the fire: empires at war
- 5 Remastering Anatolia, rending nations, rending empires
- 6 Brest-Litovsk and the opening of the Caucasus
- 7 Forced to be free: the geopolitics of independence in the Transcaucasus
- 8 Racing against time
- Epilogue
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
Epilogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- List of maps
- Note on transliteration and usage
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Dismemberment of the Ottoman empire, 1878–1913
- 2 Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, 1914
- 3 Partition plans for Anatolia, 1915–1917
- 4 Borders in the Caucasus, 1918
- 5 The Turkish Republic and the Soviet Union, 1923
- Introduction
- 1 The high politics of anarchy and competition
- 2 Troubles in Anatolia: imperial insecurities and the transformation of borderland politics
- 3 Visions of vulnerability: the politics of Muslims, revolutionaries, and defectors
- 4 Out of the pan and into the fire: empires at war
- 5 Remastering Anatolia, rending nations, rending empires
- 6 Brest-Litovsk and the opening of the Caucasus
- 7 Forced to be free: the geopolitics of independence in the Transcaucasus
- 8 Racing against time
- Epilogue
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
By entering the war, the Unionist leadership had gambled and had lost everything. Their one achievement in the war had been to outlast the Russian empire and oversee the emergence of a Caucasian buffer zone for their empire. The Mudros Armistice reversed that achievement and laid the groundwork for their empire's final dissolution. The armistice terms required the Ottoman army to withdraw all personnel from the Caucasus and Iran to behind the empire's prewar eastern borders and to surrender all garrisons in the Hijaz, Asir, the Yemen, Syria, Cilicia, and Iraq and all personnel and ports in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It recognized the right of the Allies to occupy the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, as well as Batumi, and forbade the Ottomans from raising objections to the occupation of Baku. The armistice also awarded to the Allies the prerogative to occupy the six Eastern Anatolian provinces claimed by Armenians, i.e., Van, Erzurum, Bitlis, Diyar-ı Bekir, Mamuret ül-Aziz, and Sivas, in the event of disorder there, and to occupy any point inside the empire in the event of any threat to their own security. The Unionist leadership fled Istanbul in disgrace. The triumvirs Talât, Cemal, and Enver all later fell to bullets: Talât in Berlin to an Armenian assassin exacting vengeance for the horrors inflicted on his people, Cemal in Tiflis to a Bolshevik or Armenian assassin, and Enver in Central Asia while fighting alongside a dwindling band of tribesmen after having doublecrossed his Bolshevik sponsors.
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- Information
- Shattering EmpiresThe Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908–1918, pp. 252 - 267Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011