Robert L. Daniel was Emeritus Professor of American History at Ohio University and worked with Merle Curti on The Making of an American Community. He was a long-time resident of Athens, Ohio.

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The Armenian Question and American- TUrkish Relations, 1914-192 7 By ROBERT L. DANIEL

The abrogation by the Ottoman government in September, 1914, of its treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States marked the termination of an arrangement which had been in opera- tion since 1830 and created an opportunity to replace it with a new agreement which might provide a more modern framework for the official relationship between the two countries. Efforts to negotiate a new treaty, however, were prolonged over a period of approximately thirteen years because of the development of such problems as the uncertain status of relations between the United States and Turkey during World War I, the postwar proposals for a United States mandate over a part or all of the Ottoman Empire, the overthrow of the Sultanate by Mustapha Kemal’s Nationalists, and the rejection by the United States Senate of the Lausanne treaty draft. Moreover, common to all of these factors was the question of the minority rights of Armenians living within the Ottoman Empire. First interjected into American-Turkish relations in 1915, the Armenian question too frequently diverted American attention from basic issues to an extraneous one and thus further delayed a final diplomatic solution. Yet, despite the hostility of pro-Armenian elements and the emotional atmosphere they injected into all negotiations, the United States and Turkey, by 1927, had re-established a firm basis for cordial relations. To the Turks the most undesirable feature of the treaty of 1830 had been the so-called capitulations, or “immunities of jurisdic- tion,” which exempted American offenders in Turkey from arrest and imprisonment by Moslem authorities and provided for their trial before the American consul or minister under the laws of the United States. They had come to look upon this provision as a 252

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 253 humiliating infringement of their national sovereignty, and as Turkish nationalism matured in the wake of the Young Turk movement the demand that it be abolished had become too insistent to be ignored.1 Thus the primary motive behind the unilateral action of the government in abrogating the treaty was to bring about the negotiation of a new agreement which would give full recognition to Turkish sovereignty within its own domain. Before any steps could be taken, however, to bring about a change in the treatment of American interests in Turkey, the effects of a new Turkish policy toward Armenians came to be of greater interest and concern to the American popular mind as well as in official circles in the United States. Early in 1915 the Ottoman govern- ment inaugurated severe repressive measures against minority groups whose loyalty to the Empire was suspect. Chief targets of these oppressions were the Armenians, a Christian group with whom American missionaries the major American elements in Turkey -had close ties. First reports from the missionaries told of Armenian men and older boys being rounded up by Turkish soldiers to be massacred or deported. Some were allegedly “clubbed and beaten and lashed along as though they had been wild animals and their women and girls were daily criminally outraged by their guards and the ruffians of every village through which they passed.” 2 Supported by the American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the missionaries promptly organized relief committees in the United States, and these were consolidated in the fall of 1915 as the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief,3 which was incorporated under a charter from Congress in 1919 as Near East Relief. To aid in the process of raising funds this committee encouraged the creation of stereotypes of the Turk and the Armenian which had 1A. Rustem to William Jennings Bryan, September 10, 1914, United States De- partment of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1914 (Washington, 1922), 1090. For a good brief statement on the immunities accorded Americans in the Ottoman Empire, see Philip M. Brown, “The Capitulations,” Foreign Affairs (New York), I (June, 1923), 71-81. 2 Report of Leslie A. Davis (American consul, formerly at Harput, Turkey), February 9, 1918, State Department Records (National Archives), File No. 867.- 4016/392. See also Jesse B. Jackson to Henry Morgenthau, August 19, 1915, ibid., 867.4016/148. 3 Morgenthau to Robert, Lansing, September 3, 1915, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1915 Supplement (Washinrgton. 1928). 988.

254 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW a controlling effect on American attitudes toward American-Turkish relations for at least a decade. Defamation of the Turk was made simpler by his unsavory reputation, inherited from the time of the Crusades and confirmed by the nineteenth-century aversion to the “sick man of Europe.” Relief solicitors were quick to exploit this latent dislike of the Turk, and Ambassador Morgenthau himself helped to set the pattern in name calling. The ruthless Turk, he said, was “psychologically primitive,” and was “a bully and a coward.” 4 Newspaper stories supplied details by contrasting the Turk with the “250,000 homeless little children” he had orphaned, and by reporting that Turks had placed Christian girls in their harems; that fourteen- to eighteen-year-old girls were being sold into slavery or were compelled to live “naked for months”; and that others were being forcibly tattooed “on the forehead, lips, and chin to mark them as Moslem women.” The climax of such lurid charges came in a moving-picture version of the experiences of one refugee girl, suggestively titled “Ravished Armenia.” 6 Vilification of the Turk was matched by idealization of the Armenian. William H. Taft’s evaluation of the Armenians as “the backbone of the Ottoman Empire” was typical. In an otherwise unlovely place they had “made the valleys bloom as the rose.” 7 Much also was made of the point that the Armenians were the “oldest Christian nation.” They were identified with Noah and as the people who had given “more martyrs to the Christian faith than all the others combined.” 8 They were described as seekers of freedom, lovers of education. Abstract qualities were personified. At one instant the Armenian was a pathetic child: “Eager, burning- eyed boys and girls, in their shoeless feet, shivering with cold and often weak from hunger,” were proof of the “true quality and worth of this nation.” The next instant he was a romantic: “His sparkling black eyes bespeak resolution and intensity of purpose. A desperate man in an emergency when his honor or that of his nation is at stake, he is made of the metal which produces warriors and fighters.” 9 4 Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York, 1918), 236, 275. 5 New York Times, March 10, June 1, 1919; January 25, February 1, March 5, 1920. 16Ibid., February 15 and May 12, 1919; New York Tribune, February 17, 1919. ? New York Times, January 16, 1919. 8New Near East (New York), March, 1921, p. 3. 9iIbid., October, 1921, pp. 7, 12.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 255 The political implications of these images were quickly drawn. The Turks were considered incapable of self-government and un- worthy of being treated as equals.’0 Conversely, the Armenians were a people to whom Americans owed a political debt of grati- tude. Florence Kling Harding, wife of the President, praised their loyalty to the Allied cause, and Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York credited them with keeping the Turks out of the Baku oil fields and depriving the Central Powers of much-needed fuel.’1 Such a barrage of opinion from high places did much to foster popular feelings that the Armenians deserved independence and that the United States should champion their cause. Despite the nature of the relief committee’s early anti-Turkish propaganda and the Turkish repudiation of the capitulations, no crisis in American-Turkish relations occurred before the United States entered World War I. Neither issue seemed sufficiently im- portant to justify an official ultimatum to the Turkish authorities, and there were no compelling pressure groups in the United States before 1917 desirous of bringing about a break between the two governments. The American economic stake in Turkey was rela- tively small,’2 and any problems that it might present were com- pletely overshadowed by the war in Europe; the campaign of the missionaries and relief workers in behalf of the Armenians had not yet reached its full effectiveness; and the Armenian-American groups, composed largely of recent immigrants, were too unfamiliar with the English language and American political institutions and too divided in their objectives to formulate a clearly defined pro- gram. 10 Jam-nes L. Barton to Lord Bryce, January 25, 1917, American Board Papers (Houghton Library, Harvard University), File 3.2, Vol. 327. p. 450. 11 See New York Times, May 31, 1921, for Mrs. Harding’s statement, and June 1, 1920, for that of Governor Smith. 12 American commerce with Turkey, chiefly in tobacco and kerosene, was averaging $24,000,000 per year in the last five years before World War I. Leland J. Gordon, American Relations with Turkey, 1830-1930: An Economic Interpretation (Philadel- phia, 1932), 308. Investment by missionaries in churches, housing, schools, press, and hospitals was approximately $8,000,000, while the independent American colleges had property worth $20,000,000. Barton to Lansing, September 17, 1915, American Board Papers, File 1.1, Vol. 315, p. 60. 13 For the years 1900-1913 a total of 38,270 Armenians, 65,325 Syrians, and 72,443 Greeks entered the United States from the Ottoman Empire. Gordon, American Re- lations with Turkey, 308. Spokesmen for some of these immigrant groups were urged by the relief committee to tone down their more extreme attacks on the Turks lest the Ottoman government stop all relief work and intensify the persecutions. See, for

256 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW Furthermore, the Wilson administration was of no mind to take the initiative in advocating war with Turkey. From the beginning of the persecutions in 1915 Secretary of State Robert Lansing cited as extenuating circumstances the “well-known disloyalty” of the Armenians and the “fact that the territory which they inhabited was within the zone of military operations.” These, he said, “consti- tuted grounds more or less justifiable for compelling them to depart from their homes,” and it was not the deportations to which the State Department objected, but the “horrible brutality” with which they were carried out.”4 The Department did instruct Ambassador Morgenthau to inform the Ottoman government of American con- cern for the welfare of the Armenians; 15 and it underscored its interest by extending to the relief committee the privilege of using materials from consular and legation reports in its publicity work. Consular officials were also authorized to help administer relief funds abroad. When the United States entered the war in April, 1917, the administration had to reappraise its policy. Turkey, as one of the Central Powers, might properly have been included in the declara- tion of war. Armenian, Serbian, and Greek groups in the United States hoped for American intervention, but President Wilson was initially disposed to dismiss Turkey, along with Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, as mnere tools of the Germans, relatively blameless for their belligerency, and unable to harm the United States.’6 The British, French, and Italian governments, as well as the Supreme War Council, urged him to join them in the war against Turkey; and Lansing reported that all the Republican and many of the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations favored such a move.”7 In time, even the President admitted that it example, Barton to H. H. Khazoyan, April 26, 1917, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 329, p. 478, and Barton to Miran Sevasly, December 31, 1918, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 340, p. 159. 14 Lansing to Barton, July 19, 1915, State Department Records, File 367.116/341; Lansing to President Wilson, November 21, 1916, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Lansing Papers, 1914-1920 (2 vols., Washington, 1939-1940), I, 42. 15 Bryan to Morgenthau, April 27, 1915, Foreign Relations: 1915 Supplement, 980; Lansing to Morgenthau, October 4, 1915, ibid., 988. 16 See Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 104 (April 3, 1917). 17 Lansing to Wilson, May 2 and May 8, 1918, Foreign Relations: Lansing Papers, II, 121, 124-26.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 257 would be a logical step; 18 yet he never asked for a declaration of war on Turkey. Adherence to this course was unquestionably made easier by the absence of provocation from the Turks. Early in 1917, the Otto- man minister of foreign affairs expressed to Ambassador Abram I. Elkus, who had succeeded Morgenthau, the earnest desire of his government that Turkey and the United States might continue to enjoy friendly relations even if the United States should go to war with Germany.’ When Turkey did officially sever diplomatic re- lations with the United States, on April 20, 1917, it was clear that the step had been taken only under duress from Germany. Tlere- after the Turkish government was extremely careful to avoid any act that might give offense to the United States, and this fact was repeatedly stressed by American opponents of war with Turkey.2″ Within the United States one of the most important manifesta- tions of a desire to prevent a declaration of war against Turkey in 1917 and 1918 came from the leaders in the efforts to provide relief for the Armenian victims of Turkish persecution. Beginning in 1917, James L. Barton, foreign secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and director of the Ameri- can Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, carried on a quiet campaign to inform relief workers, the press, Congress, and the State Department that war with Turkey would bring no advantages and many disadvantages.” Militarily, it was pointed out, such a war would in no way hasten the end of the struggle in Europe, because a military attack on Turkey could not be undertaken with- out weakening the war effort against Germany. Diplomatically, a declaration of war would tend to bind Turkey and Germany closer at a time when the two seemed to be drifting apart. To these argu- ments was added the humanitarian consideration that adoption of 18Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd (eds.), The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (6 vols., New York, 1925-1927), V, 14. 19Abram I. Elkus to Lansing, March 2, 1917, Foreign Relations: Lansing Papers, I, 787. 20 Lansing to Wilson, May 2, 1918, ibid., II, 121 ff.; Elkus to Joseph P. Tumulty, March 30,1917, Woodrow Wilson Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress). 21 See, for example, a circular entitled “Worker’s Bulletin 11,” prepared by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, ca. January, 1918; also, Barton to Henry Cabot Lodge, December 10, 1917, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 333, p. 580; and Barton to Theodore Roosevelt, May 9, 1918, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 336, p. 258.

258 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW a war resolution would halt the American relief work and would subject American mission property in Turkey to destruction or expropriation. In the congressional debates on a proposed war resolution op- ponents of the measure echoed Barton’s arguments, without re- vealing his authorship, to show that war against Turkey would not further American interests.22 Secretary Lansing likewise followed the Barton argument in advising the chairman of the Senate Com- mittee on Foreign Relations that a declaration of war would have an adverse effect on the relief work and mission property in Turkey.23 Of greater significance, however, for the influence of the relief committee was its apparent ability to reach the ear of Presi- dent Wilson. Cleveland H. Dodge, a major figure in American philanthropy in the Near East, was a long-time personal friend of the President, and as American entry into the war became imminent Wilson confided to Dodge that he hoped to “manage things so prudently” that the lives of Americans in the Near East would not be endangered.24 Although this was no explicit pledge to avoid a Turkish war, it implied such a policy. In contrast, efforts to bring about a declaration of war on Turkey were never well organized. The periodical press made no comment on the issue and the newspaper press did little more than report such congressional debates as took place.25 The lack of public discussion would seem to suggest that most Americans felt that they had dis- charged their responsibilities toward the Armenians through the activities of the relief organizations. An attempt was made by members of Congress to include Turkey in the original declaration 22 For an example see speech of Representative Henry D. Flood, Cong. Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 52 (December 6, 1917). 23 Lansing to William J. Stone, December 6, 1917, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1917 Supplement (2 vols., Washington, 1932), II, 448-54. 24 Wilson to Dodge, February 6, 1917, Cleveland H. Dodge Papers (Firestone Library, Princeton University). There is also hearsay testimony that Dodge went directly to the President some time in April, 1917, to induce him to avoid war with Turkey and Bulgaria. See New York Times, June 25, 1926, and Stephen B. L. Penrose, That They May Have Life: The Story of the American University of Beirut, 1866-1941 (New York, 1941), 162-63. *25 For example, Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature for the years 1917 and 1918 carries no entries on the question of the war resolution, and no reference to the subject appears in the Literary Digest for those years. The New York Times re- ported discussions of the resolution in Congress from November 27 to December 8, 1917, and in April, May, and June. 1918.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 259 of war in April, 1917, but in the absence of a positive recommenda- tion from the President no action was taken, and the question re- mained dormant until the following November, when Wilson asked for a declaration of war against Austria-Hungary. In answer to proposals that Turkey be included, he explained that while a declaration of war against Turkey might appear logical, certain controlling reasons – which he did not state – made such a declaration undesirable.26 There was some grumbling in Congress, but the subject was quickly dropped. When the issue was revived in the spring of 1918, it was clear that the sponsors of the war resolution were using it mainly to attack Wilson. Charging that he had kept them in “as dense ignorance about our foreign relations as the Common Council of Keokuk,” 27 some members of the Senate demanded a statement as to whether the “controlling reasons” still obtained. When Secretary Lansing let it be known that they did,28 the resolution died in committee and was never revived. With the end of the war and the movement during the peace negotiations to have the United States assume a mandate over all or part of Turkey, the Armenian question quickly took on added significance. American missionaries and relief workers wanted guarantees of political stability in the Near East – the mission- aries that they might resume their work, the relief workers that they might cease operations. In programs formulated for Near Eastern recovery, interested parties usually thought in terms of a mandated state for the Armenians; but there was no agreement on the specific form such a mandate should take. Barton, whose re- flections on the problem antedated the American entry into the war, visualized a mandate for the entire Ottoman Empire with Armenia forming one of six federated states within the whole.29 Morgenthau also proposed a mandate over all of the Empire, but divided it into three territories: Constantinople, Anatolia, and Armenia.30 James 26 Baker and Dodd (eds.), Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, V, 136. 27 Speech of Senator Frank B. Brandegee, Cong. Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 5473 (April 23, 1918). 28 New York Times, May 3, 1918, reporting Lansing’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. 29 Barton to Frederick Dixon (editor of Christian Science Monitor), January 27, 1917, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 327, p. 473. A draft of Barton’s plan, entitled “Suggested Possible Form of Government for Area Covered by the Ottoman Empire at the Outbreak of the War, Exclusive of Arabia, but Inclusive of the Trans- caucasus,” is in American Board Papers, Turkey Missions, New Series, Vol. 4, p. 313. 30 Draft of a speech, December 2, 1918, Morgenthau Papers (Manuscript Division,

260 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW W. Gerard, former American ambassador to Germany, assuming that the Armenians were ready for self-government, proposed a short-term mandate for Armenia alone and vigorously opposed any scheme that would place the Armenians and Turks in the same mandate.3″ In contrast, Oscar S. Straus, former ambassador to Turkey and now a trustee of the newly incorporated Near East Relief, denounced the idea of an American mandate for Con- stantinople or any other part of the Near East and contended that the United States should restrict itself to financial aid to the Armenians and leave the administration of a mandate to the League of Nations.32 It was President Wilson, however, who assumed the initiative for the acceptance by the United States of a mandate for Armenia. In the twelfth of his Fourteen Points he had declared for inter- national control of Constantinople, a national state for the Turks, and autonomy for Armenia, but it was not until he was in Paris that he began to consider the specific steps by which these objectives should be achieved. He went to the Peace Conference with a general proposal that the former colonial possessions of the defeated powers should be handed over to certain nations for administration under the supervision of the League of Nations; but because of the demands of the other Allied Powers he was forced to compromise by agreeing to a system in which each of them was given a direct mandate over territories which they desired to control. The ques- tion of mandates over parts of the Ottoman Empire was left open, and when it became apparent that the newly established Armenian Republic 3 would require protection against the Turks Wilson gave encouragement to the belief that the United States would assume at least a temporary mandate over Armenia. In order to obtain more adequate information he arranged for the appointment of two trustees of Near East Relief, Henry C. King and Charles R. Crane, to investigate conditions in the Near Library of Congress); also, Morgenthau, “Mandate or War ?” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1919, p. 12. 31 James W. Gerard, “Why America Should Accept Mandate for Armenia,” New York Times, July 6, 1919; reprinted in American Committee for the Independence of Armenia, America as Mandatary for Armenia ([New York], 1919), 3-10. 32 For Straus’s statements, see New York Evening Post, May 29, 1919, and May 8, 1920. 83 The provisional government for the Armenian Republic, set up in December, 1917, was reorganized into a permanent government in May, 1918.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 261 East and report upon the advisability of American acceptance of an Armenian mandate. Their report, made in August, 1919, sug- gested that the administration of such a mandate would entail serious responsibilities, partly because of questions which the Armenians themselves had not yet settled in connection with the establishment of their Republic. One of these, they pointed out, was the problem of carrying out a large-scale removal of non- Armenians from the new state and the relocation within its boundaries of Armenians from other parts of the Empire. Closely related to this problem was a conflict between those who desired to restrict the territory to the Armenian provinces in eastern Turkey and an important element which sought to expand the proposed boundaries to include the Armenian province of Cilicia. King and Crane made no specific recommendations on either question; but they advised that because of the situation in neighboring parts of the former Turkish dominions any government that accepted a mandate over Armenia should also assume responsibility for Con- stantinople and Anatolia.34 Before this report was completed, however, the Wilson ad- ministration had taken initial steps to establish an Armenian mandate. Henry Morgenthau and Herbert Hoover were charged with initiating the preliminary studies, and as a stop-gap they appointed Colonel William Haskell to direct relief work in the Caucasus, where famine and political chaos were rampant. Next they prevailed upon General James G. Harbord, chief of staff to General Pershing, to make an estimate of the cost of operating the proposed mandate. Harbord’s report, completed by mid-October, 1919, presented a realistic account of conditions in the Near East, estimated the cost at $750,000,000 during the first five years, and expressed an opinion that it was “imperative from the standpoint of peace, order, efficiency, and economy” for the whole of Anatolia to be included in the mandate.”5 The contents of both this and the King-Crane report were withheld from circulation until the follow- 34″Report of the American Section of the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey,” Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the Unsted States, 1919: Paris Peace Conference (13 vols., Washington, 1942-1947), XII, 751-863, especially 841-48. 35 James G. Harbord, “Conditions in the Near East: Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia,” October 16, 1919, Senate Docs., 66 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 266 (Serial No. 7671), 14, 24-29.

262 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW ing year, and Wilson seems to have continued to think in terms of a mandate for Armenia alone. Official action to undertake a mandate was delayed, however, while the Senate debate over the peace settlement with Germany and acceptance of the League Covenant dragged on through the closing months of 1919 and the early part of 1920; and when on March 19, 1920, the Senate finally rejected the Versailles Treaty, the United States was no longer in a position to deal with the Armenian question on the basis of membership in the League of Nations. But the way was still open for direct official action, and efforts were already being made to induce the government to supple- ment the work of the relief organizations and to provide financial and material assistance toward the maintenance of an independent Armenian state. As early as the summer of 1919, for example, a group of prominent Americans, including Charles E. Hughes, Elihu Root, and Henry Cabot Lodge, telegraphed the President, expressing their concern over the “prevailing insecurity of life and intense want in the major portion of Armenia,” and urging him to dispatch “requisite food, munitions, and supplies for 50,000 men and such other help as they may require,” to support the Armenian Republic.3″ No mention was made of employing American troops, but by the end of the summer Wilson himself expressed the opinion that the only way to help the Armenian Republic effectually would be the sending of armed forces. But in view of the “temper of Con- gress,” he added, such action seemed impossible.37 To Wilson, however, this congressional opposition to military intervention in Armenia did not necessarily constitute an insur- mountable obstacle to the establishment of a mandate. Congress could still be influenced to approve the mandate, he believed, if it could be shown that the American people demanded it. He also believed that the concern for the Armenians revealed in the wide- spread response to the unofficial appeals for relief funds meant that 3 Acting Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace, June 28, 1919, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919 (2 vols., Wash- ington, 1934), II, 824. Other signers included Alfred E. Smith, James W. Gerard, Charles W. Eliot, and Senator John Sharp Williams. 37 Wilson to John Sharp Williams, August 12, 1919, and Wilson to Dodge, August 14, 1919, Woodrow Wilson Papers; Wilson to William Phillips, September 23, 1919, State Department Records, File 860J.01/92. A congressional resolution to authorize the President to use American military forces in the Armenian Republic was later defeated in committee.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 263 the American public desired official action by the United States to protect the new Armenian state and assist it in achieving political and economic stability. He undertook, therefore, to enlist the aid of the relief and missionary groups in bringing pressure to bear upon Congress,38 but soon ran into unexpected difficulties. While these groups generally favored a mandate for Armenia, they preferred not to use their publicity agencies to carry their views to the public from which they solicited funds; and this, together with the desire of some of their leaders to avoid involvement in political issues, made it difficult for them to use the Armenian question directly to stir up public support for a mandate.39 As a result, the active sponsor- ship of American acceptance of the proposed mandate was assumed by American interests not directly concerned with relief work, operating in conjunction with the leading organizations of Armenian immigrants in the United States. One of these groups, the Armenia-America Society, worked closely with some of the missionaries and with the leaders of the Cilician Armenians in urging American protection and nurture of the Armenian Republic and in seeking to obtain an expansion of its boundaries to include Cilicia.i The affairs of the Society were in the hands of George R. Montgomery, whose long residence in the Near East and participation in the King-Crane investigations there in 1919 made him an especially well-informed leader. A second important group, less moderate in policy and more vocal than the Armenia-America Society, was the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia. Nominally, this organization was headed by James W. Gerard and a sponsoring committee of American political, religious, and educational leaders who were favorably disposed to Armenian aspirations; but in reality neither 38 See, for example, Wilson to Dodge, April 19, 1920, Cleveland H. Dodge Papers, for an appeal to Near East Relief to exert pressure on Congress. 39 For Barton’s opposition to the use of the relief committees for political purposes, see Barton to the Reverend H. G. Benneyan, November 27, 1918, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 339, p. 399. In 1918, however, two pamphlets of a political nature, emphasizing what ought to be done with Turkey but not arguing the case for American acceptance of a mandate, were printed and given meager circulation by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. See William H. Hall (ed.), Reconstruction i’n Turkey ([New York], 1918), and Harold A. Hatch and William H. Hall, Recommendations for Political Reconstruction in the Turkish Empire ([New York], 1918). 40 George R. Montgomery to Wilson, February 7, 1921, Woodrow Wilson Papers.

264 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW Gerard nor the sponsors exerted much influence on its policies.4 Instead, it became largely the instrumentality of Vahan Cardashian, long the American representative of the Caucasus-oriented Ar- menians, and under his leadership it usually took a more extreme position than the missionary and relief groups.42 The fact that these two immigrant organizations differed sharply on the question of boundaries for the new Armenian state and were never in complete agreement on other important issues prevented them from working together, and the conflicts between their re- spective demands served to confuse rather than consolidate the efforts to persuade Congress to approve a mandate. Evidence of other organized support was lacking, and even the administration failed to take steps to inform the public on the issues. The Harbord report was not published until April, 1920, and only the gist of the King-Crane report had been made available. Without benefit of these reports the advocates of the mandate were not able to es- tablish a case grounded in the national interest and had to rely heavily on whatever sympathy could be created for the Armenians.43 Support for the mandate, therefore, remained scattered and un- organized. Thus when on May 24, 1920, the President presented to Con- gress his official proposal that he be granted “power to accept for the United States a mandate over Armenia,” he had only the “free will offering” raised by the relief committees to cite as evidence that the proposal had the support of the American people. One week later the Senate, unencumbered by popular pressure, rejected the proposal by a vote of 52 to 24.4 Ironically, it was from the Harbord report that the Senate opponents of the mandate drew their principal arg,ument against its acceptance. Ignoring the moral 41- Barton to W. T. Ellis, December 18, 1923, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 371, p. 306, states that Gerard seldom went to the Committee headquarters. 42 In May, 1920, for example, the Cardashian group presented through Gerard a request that the American authorities deliver military equipment for 40,000 to 50,000 men to Erivan and send a cadre of officers to train and direct the Armenian army, and that the new Armenian government be permitted to recruit men for its army and sell $75,000,000 of its bonds in the United States. Gerard to Secretary of State, May 21, 1920, quoted in Cong. Record, 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 7876 (May 29, 1920). 43 For examples of periodical discussions of the merits and liabilities of the mandate see “United States as Mandatory for Armenia,” World’s Work (New York), XXXVII (April, 1919), 610-11, and Lewis Einstein, “Armenian Mandate,” Nation (New York), CX (June 5, 1920), 762-63. 44Cong. Record, 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 7533 (May 24, 1920), and 8073 (June 1. 1920).

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 265 imperatives of Harbord’s recommendations, they focused attention on his estimate of the cost and argued that American interests and prospects in Armenia were not sufficient to justify an expenditure of $750,000,000 to insure peace and stability for the Armenians.45 But their vote against making the Armenian question an official American problem did not close the case. Despite the failure to receive congressional approval of a man- date, friends of the Armenians continued to wage a quiet but per- sistent campaign to secure aid for their cause. The missionary group urged a unilateral commitment by the President to regard any attack on Armenia as an unfriendly act against the United States.46 An effort to obtain a loan of government funds to Armenia received support from Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and President Wilson, but the President’s request to Congress for authorization of the loan was not granted.47 Following the succession of Warren G. Harding to the presidency, the Near East Relief organization, abandoning for the moment its policy of non-participation in po- litical activities, urged its constituency to write to members of Congress about conditions in Turkey. Its board of trustees, pro- fessing to act “in behalf of at least 20,000,000 of the people of the United States who have contributed to American relief work in the Near East,” appealed to Congress to exert pressure on the Allies and on Turkey to end the “state of anarchy” in Anatolia.48 Shortly afterward the missionary group, Near East Relief, and the Ar- menia-America Society made common cause in an unsuccessful effort to bring about the recall of Admiral Mark L. Bristol as American High Commissioner at Constantinople on the grounds that his pro-Turkish viewpoint made him unacceptable to the friends of the Armenians.49 Meanwhile, some of the leaders in the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia lhad ap- pealed to Harding as president-elect to bring about Republican endorsement of a mandate for Armenia; 5 and in July, 1922, 45Ibid., 7877 (May 29, 1920). 46 Barton and others to Wilson, June 18, 1920, Woodrow Wilson Papers. 47Wilson to Dodge, December 2, 1920, Cleveland H. Dodge Papers; Baker and Dodd (eds.), Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, VI, 520. 48 New York Times, May 26, 1921. 4) Barton to George R. Montgomery, December 19, 1921, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 358, p. 543. 60 James W. Gerard and Henry Jessup, “A Memorandum to Warren Harding,” December 17, 1920, copy in Woodrow Wilson Papers.

266 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW Bishop James Cannon, Jr., an active member both of this com- mittee and of Near East Relief, asked the State Department to intervene – even to the extreme of sending an army if necessary to stop a new wave of Turkish persecutions in Armenia.” While these efforts were being made to keep alive the question of American aid for the Armenians, the situation in Turkey was undergoing a radical change. In the early fall of 1922 the Nationalist forces of Mustapha Kemal emerged triumphant and unchallenged, and their success marked a turning point in American- Turkish relations. Between 1919 and 1922 the Nationalists had helped destroy the infant Armenian Republic, had repudiated the Treaty of Sevres in which the Allies had established spheres of influence in the Ottoman Empire in accordance with secret wartime agreements, had expelled the French, Italians, Greeks, and British from Turkey, and had overthrown the Sultanate. Undisputed mas- ters of a new Turkey, they were in no mood to tolerate further out- side influence in their affairs, and the Western Powers agreed to a conference at Lausanne to negotiate a new settlement. In the course of the negotiations the European powers abandoned their claims to spheres of influence, agreed to the abrogation of the ca- pitulations, and in effect recognized the restoration of Turkey to a position of equality as a sovereign state. At the same time Turkey gave assurance that the life and liberty of all inhabitants would be protected without distinction of nationality, race, or religion and guaranteed that British, French, and Italian philanthropic, educational, and religious institutions would be placed on a foot- ing of equality with similar Turkish institutions. Both sides ac- cepted the principle of “freedom of transit and navigation” of the Straits; and the treaty did not mention the question of a homeland for the Armenians within Turkish territory.”2 Although the United States was not to be a party to the treaty, the State Department sent a delegation consisting of Joseph C. Grew, Richard W. Child, and Admiral Mark L. Bristol to act as 51 See Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes to President Harding, July 24, 1922, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1922 (2 vols., Wash- ington, 1938), II, 931. 52 For a convenient summary of the developments in Turkey and a more detailed account of the Lausanne Conference, see Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplo- matic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945, ed. by Walter Johnson (2 vols., Boston, 1952). I, 475-587.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 267 observers in the conference and to prevent so far as they could any Allied-Turkish settlement at the expense of American interests. In addition to performing this duty, the American delegates were frequently able to offer constructive suggestions on some of the questions at issue; but their most important service was the es- tablishment of a sympathetic contact between Turkey and the United States government. When the Turkish delegation indicated an interest in negotiating a treaty, Grew advised the State Depart- ment that the United States would “gain a great advantage by beginning as soon as possible,” and Secretary Hughes authorized him to proceed with formal negotiations after the Allied-Turkish settlement had been completed.53 Informal discussions based on a draft treaty sent to Grew by the State Department were begun in May, 1923, and in June the two delegations began to hold more formal meetings, with the result that by the time the Allied agree- ment was signed in July many of the provisions had been tentatively agreed upon. Throughout the negotiations Grew was aware that the terms of the treaty would be conditioned by the Allied settlement, and he was further constrained by numerous requirements laid down by the State Department, which also passed upon the wording of key provisions as the negotiations proceeded.”4 Determined to conclude a treaty, he made concessions of form in order to safeguard princi- ple, and when faced with getting less than everything the State Department wanted he chose to accept what he could get rather than break off negotiations. Hence the treaty which he signed on August 6, 1923, was “far from what I should have wished to have,” as he reported to Secretary Hughes; and except for the omission of the question of spheres of influence it was not substantially dif- ferent from the one negotiated by the Allies.55 The capitulations were “completely abrogated.” In commercial matters most-f avored- nation treatment was secured. A separate declaration guaranteed American religious, philanthropic, educational, and medical in- 53Grew to Hughes, January 12, 1923, and Hughes to Grew, January 13, 1923, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1923 (2 vols., Wash- ington, 1938), II, 1043-44. 54 For the extensive correspondence between Grew and the State Department in June and July, 1923, see ibid., II, 1065-1133. Grew’s own account is in Grew, Turbu- lent Era, I, 586-605. 65 Grew to Hughes, August 6, 1923, Foreian Relations. 1923. IL. 1148-50.

268 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW stitutions treatment equal to that accorded similar Turkish institu- tions; and another declaration guaranteed that foreigners appearing before Turkish courts would be assured all the safeguards of a good judicial system. Again, as in the Allied settlement, the Armenian question was not mentioned.56 These results would seem to indicate that American public opinion had little direct effect on the terms of the treaty. It was strong enough to prompt the State Department to seek guarantees for minorities, but not sufficiently active to prevent Grew from accepting the general provision of the Allied settlement instead of insisting on a special statement for the American treaty. Likewise, an invitation to the missionary interests and the Armenia-America Society to present their views on the Armenian question to the Lausanne Conference did not bring a response strong enough to deter the Americans from signing a treaty lacking provisions for an Armenian homeland.57 It was in the debate over ratification of the American-Turkish treaty, however, rather than in its negotiation, that the Armenian question played a decisive role. The treaty was not submitted to the Senate until May 3, 1924, and by that time it was clear that among those groups which had been most concerned about the fate of the Armenians opinion was sharply divided on the question of its acceptability. In general, the missionary and relief groups, together with the Armenia-America Society, favored ratification, while the Gerard-Cardashian Committee for the Independence of Armenia had begun an aggressive campaign to bring about its rejection. For the missionaries, acceptance of the Nationalist regime and abandon- ment of the capitulations was not easy, but it remained the only practicable course open to them. In achieving their victory the Na- tionalists had expelled or killed most of the Armenians with whom the missionaries had worked, and in the last months of hostilities relief workers had evacuated the surviving Armenian orphans to areas outside Turkey. Since there was no possibility of a return to the prewar situation, they considered it more desirable to take up work among the Turks than to abandon their missions, schools, and hosDitals. In contrast, the Gerard-Cardashian group, still de- 56 For the full text of the treaty and the declarations, see ibid., II, 1153-71. 67 Grew to Hughes, June 21, 1923, ibid., II, 1092, and, for the invitation, American Mission to Hughes. December 30. 1922. izbid.. II, 940-41.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 269 termined to obtain the establishment of an Armenian homeland, could gain nothing by accepting this treaty; and since the Armenian population had been killed or expelled, they did not even risk Armenian lives in tenaciously demanding that the creation of an Armenian state must precede recognition of the Kemal government by the United States. In the battle to influence the Senate’s decision on ratification the advocates of the treaty had the more difficult task. Not only did they have to gain two votes for each one required by the op- ponents, but some of them faced the necessity of overcoming the effect of their own previous efforts to defame the Turk. They must now reverse their position and work for American approval of the new Turkey. To this task James L. Barton, a leading spokesman since 191S for the missionary and relief groups, devoted much of his time and energy throughout the period during which the treaty was before the Senate. He began in an apologetic fashion to point out errors and exaggerations which had appeared in the earlier propaganda, proceeded to challenge more recent charges against the Nationalists, and professed to see in the Kemal government the beginning of a modern political state.58 In numerous articles in relatively obscure journals he heralded the westernization of Turkey as manifested in the adoption of the Latin alphabet, the dropping of the fez and veil, and the introduction of western legal concepts; 5 and in an effort to reach a larger group of readers he urged the editors of the New York Times to run feature stories on Turkish progress under the new regime.60 His most tangible ac- complishment was probably the bringing together of a group of missionary, church, philanthropic, and other organizations into a general committee to sponsor the preparation of a small book de- signed to promote the ratification of the treaty.6″ t58 Barton to Mark L. Bristol, July 11, 1923, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 369, p. 28; Barton to Eliot G. Mears, April 12, 1924, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 373, p. 140. 59 See especially Barton, “Changing Turkey: Political and Religious Revolution,” Envelope Series of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston), XXVIII (January, 1926). He also wrote for Missionary Review (Princeton), and International Review of Missions (Edinburgh). 60 Barton to John H. Finley, March 12, 1926, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 383, p. 67; Barton to Lester Markel, May 28, 1926, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 384, p. 376. The fact that the Times supported the treaty cannot, of course, be attributed to Barton’s activities. 61 General Committee of American Institutions and Associations in Favor of Ratification of the Treaty with Turkey, The Treaty with Turkey: Statements, Resolu-

270 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW While Barton was seeking to promote ratification by removing the effects of the agitation over the Armenian question, other groups worked toward the same end in different ways. Most notable among them were certain American businessmen whose interest in investment possibilities in Turkey made the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the two governments especially de- sirable. Because of earlier conflicts with the missionaries and relief workers, they were now unwilling to co-operate with Barton or the groups he led, and their methods sometimes tended to nullify the effect of his work. The most active of these businessmen were Colby and Arthur Chester, father and son, whose Ottoman-American De- velopment Company, chartered in 1908 to build railroads in Turkey, had become a controversial issue in American political circles.”2 To them, as to Barton, the effects of the Armenian ques- tion had to be minimized; but they undertook to accomplish this by denouncing the missionary and relief groups for the part they had played in stirring up sympathy for the Armenians. The Near East Relief organization, one of them said, had issued “false or deliberately biased reports” in order to spur contributions, and thus had helped build up a distorted image of the Turk which should no longer be accepted.63 Such evidence of the inability of the advocates of ratification to present a united front was sure to weaken their effectiveness. Leading the opposition to the treaty was the Gerard-Cardashian group, now reorganized as the American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty. The strategy of this group was to capitalize on the tremendous ill-will toward the Turk which had been whipped up by the relief workers. Since the image of the “Terrible Turk” was firmly fixed in the minds of most Americans, little effort was tions, and Reports in Favor of Ratification of the Treat) of Lausanne (New York, 1926). Among the sponsoring organizations were the Congregational Mission Board, the YMCA, the YWCA, and several chambers of commerce. 62 By 1923 the Chesters had obtained railroad and petroleum concessions in Turkey which called for over $300,000,000 in capital. A subsequent public stock flotation in the United States barely raised a million dollars, and the proposals failed. Hedley V. Cooke, Challenge and Response in the Middle East (New York, 1952), 267. 63 Arthur T. Chester, “Angora and the Turks,” Current History (New York), XVII (February, 1923), 758-64. See also Colby M. Chester, “Turkey Reinterpreted,” ibid., XVI (September, 1922), 944-45, and, for a similar attack by a freelance journal- ist, Clair Price, “Mustapha Kemal and the Americans,” ibid., XVII (October, 1922), 117.92

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 271 required to perpetuate it or to create a climate of opinion hostile to the treaty. Relying on the image of the saintly, innocent Armenian maltreated by the Turk, the Committee attacked the treaty advo- cates by imputing unworthy motives to their actions. In general terms the missionaries were accused of “selling out” or “betraying’” the Armenians. President Wilson’s espousal of self-determination of peoples was interpreted as a unilateral assumption of responsi- bility of the United States for securing Armenian independence. The Committee assumed further that whether or not an Armenian state was to be a reality could be determined solely by United States policy, thus ignoring the role of Italian, Greek, French, British, and Russian policies, to say nothing of Turkish politics, as factors in the Near East situation.64 This argument did not rest only on generalities. In one of the first speeches in the Senate against ratification, Senator William H. King charged that the United States had participated in the Lausanne Conference “for the sole purpose of securing and con- firming the Chester oil concession, and that in pursuance of that purpose, vested and essential rights of American nationals in Turkey were sacrificed and Armenia forsaken, if not betrayed.” 65 Some three weeks later the Democratic national convention sought to make the treaty an issue in the 1924 presidential campaign by including in the party platform a plank which expressly condemned it on the ground that “It barters legitimate American rights, and betrays Armenia, for the Chester Oil Concession.” 66 Obviously made for political purposes, these accusations were not accompanied by supporting evidence, but the fact that the specific information needed to refute them could not be made public at the time enabled them to be circulated with no other challenge than a general denial.67 Senator King returned to the subject shortly after the assembling of the new Congress in 1925 and, in a long speech filled with the read- 64 American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty, The Missionaries and the Lausanne Treaty (n.p., n.d.), 15-21. 65 Cong. Record, 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 10292 (June 3, 1924). 66 Quoted in Grew, Turbulent Era, I, 678 n. 67 Secretary Hughes had explicitly denied the charge in a speech to the Council ,on Foreign Relations of New York on January 23, 1924, but this denial was ignored both by Senator King and by the Democratic national convention. For Hughes’s speech, see Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1924 (2 vols., Washington, 1939), II, 709-15. For evidence that the State Department was secretly hostile toward the Chester interests, see a manuscript entitled “History of the Chester Project,” Series C, Sec. 52, Turkey, No. 10, State Department Archives.

272 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW ing of resolutions and petitions inspired for the most part by the activities of the American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty, summed up the arguments against ratification. The Turks, he maintained, are a “cruel and degenerate people,” and by ratify- ing the treaty the United States would give up the capitulations, which were still necessary for the protection of American citizens in Turkey; and he repeated the charge that in order to protect the Chesters the Armenians were being betrayed.68 Meanwhile the Committee also sought to counteract the possible effect of the Congregational Mission Board’s support of the treaty by encouraging other denominational groups to announce their op- position. As early as 1923, the Presbyterian mission groups had denounced the treaty in general terms as unjust and unrighteous.69 More significant, however, was a memorial which Bishop William T. Manning of the Protestant Episcopal Church induced 110 bishops to sign early in 1926, in which the treaty was condemned for permitting the Turkish government to establish the educational standards to which mission schools in Turkey must conform and to prohibit the teaching of religion.70 It was implied that this state- ment also represented the sentiments of the Northern Baptists, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Reformed Church. Since none of these churches had mission stations within the borders of Nationalist Turkey, they thus insinuated that in favoring the treaty the Congregational Mission Board was selling its soul to preserve its property in Turkey.71 This brought a spirited reply from the Congregationalists, branding the assertions as “misleading and misconstrued,” and pointing out that “legitimate American interests are protected by [the] treaty and moral obligations can be discharged more effectively by America after diplomatic rela- tions are resumed.” 72 This exchange of charges was the closing act in the competition 68 Cong. Record, 69 Cong., Special Sess., 290-96 (March 17, 1925). 69 Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, Annual Report, 1923 (Philadelphia, 1923), 261. 70 See Grew, Turbulent Era, I, 675-78, for Grew’s answer to this memorial. 71 A condensed form of the statement, signed by Manning, S. Parkes Cadman (Church of Christ), and James Cannon, Jr. (Southern Methodist), was sent to the Senate shortly before the vote on ratification was taken. Telegram to Senator Cole L. Blease, January 7, 1927, Cong. Record, 69 Cong., 2 Sess., 1266 (January 8, 1927). 72Cleveland E. Dodge and others to Senator Hiram Bingham, January 10, 1927, ibid., 1412 (January 11, 1927).

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 273 between the conflicting points of view on the Armenian question to influence the Senate’s decision on the treaty. When the vote was taken a few days later (January 18, 1927), the result was 34 against ratification and 50 in favor – six votes short of the neces- sary two-thirds majority. Thus only a minority of the Senate followed Senator King’s leadership and supported the position of the champions of Armenian independence, but their number was sufficient to prevent the acceptance of the treaty. Some of them, of course, had other reasons for voting against ratification; but the victory had gone to the American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty. That it could carry the day, however, was per- haps less a tribute to its effectiveness as a molder of political opinion than to the lasting power of the image of the “Terrible Turk” built up by the missionaries and relief workers. Under the existing circumstances the Senate’s failure to approve ratification created an untenable situation. As the New York Herald Tribune observed, “Seldom has a decision in foreign affairs been taken with more irrelevant emotion and greater disregard for realities.” 7 The United States had no intention of going to war to restore an independent Armenian state or to re-establish the ca- pitulations, and until diplomatic relations could be renewed it could not discuss directly with the Turkish government questions involving the protection of American missionary and commercial interests in that country. Fearful that the Turks would resent the rebuff implied in the rejection of a treaty negotiated in good faith, the State Department immediately instructed the American High Commissioner at Constantinople to explain to the Turkish authori- ties that the vote against ratification did not reflect the sentiment of the President, or of the great majority of the American people, or even of a majority of the Senate itself.74 Accepting this explana- tion, the Turkish government agreed to a proposal for the resump- tion of relations by an official exchange of notes, and on February 17, one month after the defeat of the treaty, regular diDlomatic 73New York Herald Tribune, January 19, 1927. For excerpts from other adverse newspaper comments, see Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1927 (3 vols., Washington, 1942), III, 769-70. 74For the correspondence between Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and Com- missioner Mark L. Bristol, January 18 to February 17, 1927, see Foreign Relations, 1927, III, 765-98.

274 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW intercourse was formally renewed, with the unratified Lausanne agreement constituting the basis of relations.” The only serious objection to this renewal of relations came from the same group that had so vigorously opposed ratification. Since the Armenian question had not been mentioned in the Lausanne agreement, it was now obvious that it was not likely to be considered in any future relations between the United States and Turkey. Members of the old Committee for the Independence of Armenia, realizing that they had been circumvented, gave expression to their rage in bitter but fruitless protests against the State Department’s action.” The Senate, on the other hand, tacitly acceding to the resumption of diplomatic relations, quietly confirmed the appoint- ment of Joseph C. Grew, the negotiator of the Lausanne agreement, as the first ambassador to the new Turkey; and during the next seven years it voted – sometimes without debate – to approve a series of treaties which established piecemeal most of the provisions which had failed to receive its approval as a group in 1927. And in this process the soundness of the original Lausanne agreement as the basis for restoring cordial relations between the United States and Turkey was recognized. In a larger sense, the process also marked the recognition of the basic changes which had taken place in American relations with Turkey in the period from 1914 to 1927. Before World War I, Near Eastern peoples were rarely accorded the status of full sovereignty in world affairs. By 1927, it was apparent that they could be treated only as equals by the West. Yet American vision, befogged by images of the decrepit Sultanate of the nineteenth century, could not easily grasp the idea that a non-occidental and non-Christian people could create a modern political state and develop a modern commercial-industrial economy. To the Turk, the capitulations, requiring concessions that would never be re- ciprocated by the United States, were incompatible with Turkish nationalistic pride, and their removal was the obvious first step toward the attainment of full equality. But the intrusion of the Armenian question at almost the same 7{51ibid., nill, 799-800. 76New York Times, May 16, May 30, June 23, November 28, and December 1, 1927. Vahan Cardashian and James W. Gerard were still protesting a year after the renewal of diplomatic relations. Ibzd., April 11 and May 15, 1928.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 275 moment as Turkey’s abrogation of the capitulations made difficult any clear-headed search for mutual understanding. This question plagued all subsequent American-Turkish negotiations, diverting attention from the main issues and prolonging a final settlement of more basic problems. While sympathetic to the Armenians, the United States could in no way officially guarantee their safety with- out infringing upon Turkish sovereignty. Unofficially, interested parties in America thus found vilification of the Turk their only weapon in creating sympathy and support for the Armenians. Naturally, this compromised any official American-Turkish rela- tions. But by the mid-1920’s it was obvious that the United States must treat with the Nationalist Turks. Again negotiations were hindered by the Armenian question – this time because of Ameri- can difficulties in overcoming the myth of the “Terrible Turk” which had been expediently exploited during earlier Armenian persecutions – and it was not until 1927 that the United States found a way to eliminate it from official consideration in the ne- gotiations with Turkey. Its influence on American-Turkish re- lations is perhaps best indicated, therefore, in the fact that its removal from the diplomatic picture cleared the way for the prompt restoration of full-scale relations between the two countries on the new basis of equality and mutual respect.

The Armenian Question and American-Turkish Relations, 1914-1927Author(s): Robert L. DanielSource: The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Sep., 1959), pp. 252-275Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: : 16/11/2010 00:58Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oah.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toThe Mississippi Valley Historical Review.http://www.jstor.org

The Armenian Question and American- TUrkish Rekations, 1914-192 7 By ROBERT L. DANIEL The abrogation by the Ottoman government in September, 1914, of its treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States marked the termination of an arrangement which had been in opera- tion since 1830 and created an opportunity to replace it with a new agreement which might provide a more modern framework for the official relationship between the two countries. Efforts to negotiate a new treaty, however, were prolonged over a period of approximately thirteen years because of the development of such problems as the uncertain status of relations between the United States and Turkey during World War I, the postwar proposals for a United States mandate over a part or all of the Ottoman Empire, the overthrow of the Sultanate by Mustapha Kemal’s Nationalists, and the rejection by the United States Senate of the Lausanne treaty draft. Moreover, common to all of these factors was the question of the minority rights of Armenians living within the Ottoman Empire. First interjected into American-Turkish relations in 1915, the Armenian question too frequently diverted American attention from basic issues to an extraneous one and thus further delayed a final diplomatic solution. Yet, despite the hostility of pro-Armenian elements and the emotional atmosphere they injected into all negotiations, the United States and Turkey, by 1927, had re-established a firm basis for cordial relations. To the Turks the most undesirable feature of the treaty of 1830 had been the so-called capitulations, or “immunities of jurisdic- tion,” which exempted American offenders in Turkey from arrest and imprisonment by Moslem authorities and provided for their trial before the American consul or minister under the laws of the United States. They had come to look upon this provision as a 252

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 253 humiliating infringement of their national sovereignty, and as Turkish nationalism matured in the wake of the Young Turk movement the demand that it be abolished had become too insistent to be ignored.1 Thus the primary motive behind the unilateral action of the government in abrogating the treaty was to bring about the negotiation of a new agreement which would give full recognition to Turkish sovereignty within its own domain. Before any steps could be taken, however, to bring about a change in the treatment of American interests in Turkey, the effects of a new Turkish policy toward Armenians came to be of greater interest and concern to the American popular mind as well as in official circles in the United States. Early in 1915 the Ottoman govern- ment inaugurated severe repressive measures against minority groups whose loyalty to the Empire was suspect. Chief targets of these oppressions were the Armenians, a Christian group with whom American missionaries the major American elements in Turkey -had close ties. First reports from the missionaries told of Armenian men and older boys being rounded up by Turkish soldiers to be massacred or deported. Some were allegedly “clubbed and beaten and lashed along as though they had been wild animals and their women and girls were daily criminally outraged by their guards and the ruffians of every village through which they passed.” 2 Supported by the American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the missionaries promptly organized relief committees in the United States, and these were consolidated in the fall of 1915 as the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief,3 which was incorporated under a charter from Congress in 1919 as Near East Relief. To aid in the process of raising funds this committee encouraged the creation of stereotypes of the Turk and the Armenian which had 1A. Rustem to William Jennings Bryan, September 10, 1914, United States De- partment of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1914 (Washington, 1922), 1090. For a good brief statement on the immunities accorded Americans in the Ottoman Empire, see Philip M. Brown, “The Capitulations,” Foreign Affairs (New York), I (June, 1923), 71-81. 2 Report of Leslie A. Davis (American consul, formerly at Harput, Turkey), February 9, 1918, State Department Records (National Archives), File No. 867.- 4016/392. See also Jesse B. Jackson to Henry Morgenthau, August 19, 1915, ibid., 867.4016/148. 3 Morgenthau to Robert, Lansing, September 3, 1915, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1915 Supplement (Washinrgton. 1928). 988.

254 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW a controlling effect on American attitudes toward American-Turkish relations for at least a decade. Defamation of the Turk was made simpler by his unsavory reputation, inherited from the time of the Crusades and confirmed by the nineteenth-century aversion to the “sick man of Europe.” Relief solicitors were quick to exploit this latent dislike of the Turk, and Ambassador Morgenthau himself helped to set the pattern in name calling. The ruthless Turk, he said, was “psychologically primitive,” and was “a bully and a coward.” 4 Newspaper stories supplied details by contrasting the Turk with the “250,000 homeless little children” he had orphaned, and by reporting that Turks had placed Christian girls in their harems; that fourteen- to eighteen-year-old girls were being sold into slavery or were compelled to live “naked for months”; and that others were being forcibly tattooed “on the forehead, lips, and chin to mark them as Moslem women.” The climax of such lurid charges came in a moving-picture version of the experiences of one refugee girl, suggestively titled “Ravished Armenia.” 6 Vilification of the Turk was matched by idealization of the Armenian. William H. Taft’s evaluation of the Armenians as “the backbone of the Ottoman Empire” was typical. In an otherwise unlovely place they had “made the valleys bloom as the rose.” 7 Much also was made of the point that the Armenians were the “oldest Christian nation.” They were identified with Noah and as the people who had given “more martyrs to the Christian faith than all the others combined.” 8 They were described as seekers of freedom, lovers of education. Abstract qualities were personified. At one instant the Armenian was a pathetic child: “Eager, burning- eyed boys and girls, in their shoeless feet, shivering with cold and often weak from hunger,” were proof of the “true quality and worth of this nation.” The next instant he was a romantic: “His sparkling black eyes bespeak resolution and intensity of purpose. A desperate man in an emergency when his honor or that of his nation is at stake, he is made of the metal which produces warriors and fighters.” 9 4 Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York, 1918), 236, 275. 5 New York Times, March 10, June 1, 1919; January 25, February 1, March 5, 1920. 16Ibid., February 15 and May 12, 1919; New York Tribune, February 17, 1919. ? New York Times, January 16, 1919. 8New Near East (New York), March, 1921, p. 3. 9iIbid., October, 1921, pp. 7, 12.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 255 The political implications of these images were quickly drawn. The Turks were considered incapable of self-government and un- worthy of being treated as equals.’0 Conversely, the Armenians were a people to whom Americans owed a political debt of grati- tude. Florence Kling Harding, wife of the President, praised their loyalty to the Allied cause, and Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York credited them with keeping the Turks out of the Baku oil fields and depriving the Central Powers of much-needed fuel.’1 Such a barrage of opinion from high places did much to foster popular feelings that the Armenians deserved independence and that the United States should champion their cause. Despite the nature of the relief committee’s early anti-Turkish propaganda and the Turkish repudiation of the capitulations, no crisis in American-Turkish relations occurred before the United States entered World War I. Neither issue seemed sufficiently im- portant to justify an official ultimatum to the Turkish authorities, and there were no compelling pressure groups in the United States before 1917 desirous of bringing about a break between the two governments. The American economic stake in Turkey was rela- tively small,’2 and any problems that it might present were com- pletely overshadowed by the war in Europe; the campaign of the missionaries and relief workers in behalf of the Armenians had not yet reached its full effectiveness; and the Armenian-American groups, composed largely of recent immigrants, were too unfamiliar with the English language and American political institutions and too divided in their objectives to formulate a clearly defined pro- gram. 10 Jam-nes L. Barton to Lord Bryce, January 25, 1917, American Board Papers (Houghton Library, Harvard University), File 3.2, Vol. 327. p. 450. 11 See New York Times, May 31, 1921, for Mrs. Harding’s statement, and June 1, 1920, for that of Governor Smith. 12 American commerce with Turkey, chiefly in tobacco and kerosene, was averaging $24,000,000 per year in the last five years before World War I. Leland J. Gordon, American Relations with Turkey, 1830-1930: An Economic Interpretation (Philadel- phia, 1932), 308. Investment by missionaries in churches, housing, schools, press, and hospitals was approximately $8,000,000, while the independent American colleges had property worth $20,000,000. Barton to Lansing, September 17, 1915, American Board Papers, File 1.1, Vol. 315, p. 60. 13 For the years 1900-1913 a total of 38,270 Armenians, 65,325 Syrians, and 72,443 Greeks entered the United States from the Ottoman Empire. Gordon, American Re- lations with Turkey, 308. Spokesmen for some of these immigrant groups were urged by the relief committee to tone down their more extreme attacks on the Turks lest the Ottoman government stop all relief work and intensify the persecutions. See, for

256 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW Furthermore, the Wilson administration was of no mind to take the initiative in advocating war with Turkey. From the beginning of the persecutions in 1915 Secretary of State Robert Lansing cited as extenuating circumstances the “well-known disloyalty” of the Armenians and the “fact that the territory which they inhabited was within the zone of military operations.” These, he said, “consti- tuted grounds more or less justifiable for compelling them to depart from their homes,” and it was not the deportations to which the State Department objected, but the “horrible brutality” with which they were carried out.”4 The Department did instruct Ambassador Morgenthau to inform the Ottoman government of American con- cern for the welfare of the Armenians; 15 and it underscored its interest by extending to the relief committee the privilege of using materials from consular and legation reports in its publicity work. Consular officials were also authorized to help administer relief funds abroad. When the United States entered the war in April, 1917, the administration had to reappraise its policy. Turkey, as one of the Central Powers, might properly have been included in the declara- tion of war. Armenian, Serbian, and Greek groups in the United States hoped for American intervention, but President Wilson was initially disposed to dismiss Turkey, along with Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, as mnere tools of the Germans, relatively blameless for their belligerency, and unable to harm the United States.’6 The British, French, and Italian governments, as well as the Supreme War Council, urged him to join them in the war against Turkey; and Lansing reported that all the Republican and many of the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations favored such a move.”7 In time, even the President admitted that it example, Barton to H. H. Khazoyan, April 26, 1917, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 329, p. 478, and Barton to Miran Sevasly, December 31, 1918, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 340, p. 159. 14 Lansing to Barton, July 19, 1915, State Department Records, File 367.116/341; Lansing to President Wilson, November 21, 1916, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Lansing Papers, 1914-1920 (2 vols., Washington, 1939-1940), I, 42. 15 Bryan to Morgenthau, April 27, 1915, Foreign Relations: 1915 Supplement, 980; Lansing to Morgenthau, October 4, 1915, ibid., 988. 16 See Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 104 (April 3, 1917). 17 Lansing to Wilson, May 2 and May 8, 1918, Foreign Relations: Lansing Papers, II, 121, 124-26.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 257 would be a logical step; 18 yet he never asked for a declaration of war on Turkey. Adherence to this course was unquestionably made easier by the absence of provocation from the Turks. Early in 1917, the Otto- man minister of foreign affairs expressed to Ambassador Abram I. Elkus, who had succeeded Morgenthau, the earnest desire of his government that Turkey and the United States might continue to enjoy friendly relations even if the United States should go to war with Germany.’ When Turkey did officially sever diplomatic re- lations with the United States, on April 20, 1917, it was clear that the step had been taken only under duress from Germany. Tlere- after the Turkish government was extremely careful to avoid any act that might give offense to the United States, and this fact was repeatedly stressed by American opponents of war with Turkey.2″ Within the United States one of the most important manifesta- tions of a desire to prevent a declaration of war against Turkey in 1917 and 1918 came from the leaders in the efforts to provide relief for the Armenian victims of Turkish persecution. Beginning in 1917, James L. Barton, foreign secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and director of the Ameri- can Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, carried on a quiet campaign to inform relief workers, the press, Congress, and the State Department that war with Turkey would bring no advantages and many disadvantages.” Militarily, it was pointed out, such a war would in no way hasten the end of the struggle in Europe, because a military attack on Turkey could not be undertaken with- out weakening the war effort against Germany. Diplomatically, a declaration of war would tend to bind Turkey and Germany closer at a time when the two seemed to be drifting apart. To these argu- ments was added the humanitarian consideration that adoption of 18Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd (eds.), The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (6 vols., New York, 1925-1927), V, 14. 19Abram I. Elkus to Lansing, March 2, 1917, Foreign Relations: Lansing Papers, I, 787. 20 Lansing to Wilson, May 2, 1918, ibid., II, 121 ff.; Elkus to Joseph P. Tumulty, March 30,1917, Woodrow Wilson Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress). 21 See, for example, a circular entitled “Worker’s Bulletin 11,” prepared by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, ca. January, 1918; also, Barton to Henry Cabot Lodge, December 10, 1917, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 333, p. 580; and Barton to Theodore Roosevelt, May 9, 1918, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 336, p. 258.

258 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW a war resolution would halt the American relief work and would subject American mission property in Turkey to destruction or expropriation. In the congressional debates on a proposed war resolution op- ponents of the measure echoed Barton’s arguments, without re- vealing his authorship, to show that war against Turkey would not further American interests.22 Secretary Lansing likewise followed the Barton argument in advising the chairman of the Senate Com- mittee on Foreign Relations that a declaration of war would have an adverse effect on the relief work and mission property in Turkey.23 Of greater significance, however, for the influence of the relief committee was its apparent ability to reach the ear of Presi- dent Wilson. Cleveland H. Dodge, a major figure in American philanthropy in the Near East, was a long-time personal friend of the President, and as American entry into the war became imminent Wilson confided to Dodge that he hoped to “manage things so prudently” that the lives of Americans in the Near East would not be endangered.24 Although this was no explicit pledge to avoid a Turkish war, it implied such a policy. In contrast, efforts to bring about a declaration of war on Turkey were never well organized. The periodical press made no comment on the issue and the newspaper press did little more than report such congressional debates as took place.25 The lack of public discussion would seem to suggest that most Americans felt that they had dis- charged their responsibilities toward the Armenians through the activities of the relief organizations. An attempt was made by members of Congress to include Turkey in the original declaration 22 For an example see speech of Representative Henry D. Flood, Cong. Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 52 (December 6, 1917). 23 Lansing to William J. Stone, December 6, 1917, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1917 Supplement (2 vols., Washington, 1932), II, 448-54. 24 Wilson to Dodge, February 6, 1917, Cleveland H. Dodge Papers (Firestone Library, Princeton University). There is also hearsay testimony that Dodge went directly to the President some time in April, 1917, to induce him to avoid war with Turkey and Bulgaria. See New York Times, June 25, 1926, and Stephen B. L. Penrose, That They May Have Life: The Story of the American University of Beirut, 1866-1941 (New York, 1941), 162-63. *25 For example, Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature for the years 1917 and 1918 carries no entries on the question of the war resolution, and no reference to the subject appears in the Literary Digest for those years. The New York Times re- ported discussions of the resolution in Congress from November 27 to December 8, 1917, and in April, May, and June. 1918.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 259 of war in April, 1917, but in the absence of a positive recommenda- tion from the President no action was taken, and the question re- mained dormant until the following November, when Wilson asked for a declaration of war against Austria-Hungary. In answer to proposals that Turkey be included, he explained that while a declaration of war against Turkey might appear logical, certain controlling reasons – which he did not state – made such a declaration undesirable.26 There was some grumbling in Congress, but the subject was quickly dropped. When the issue was revived in the spring of 1918, it was clear that the sponsors of the war resolution were using it mainly to attack Wilson. Charging that he had kept them in “as dense ignorance about our foreign relations as the Common Council of Keokuk,” 27 some members of the Senate demanded a statement as to whether the “controlling reasons” still obtained. When Secretary Lansing let it be known that they did,28 the resolution died in committee and was never revived. With the end of the war and the movement during the peace negotiations to have the United States assume a mandate over all or part of Turkey, the Armenian question quickly took on added significance. American missionaries and relief workers wanted guarantees of political stability in the Near East – the mission- aries that they might resume their work, the relief workers that they might cease operations. In programs formulated for Near Eastern recovery, interested parties usually thought in terms of a mandated state for the Armenians; but there was no agreement on the specific form such a mandate should take. Barton, whose re- flections on the problem antedated the American entry into the war, visualized a mandate for the entire Ottoman Empire with Armenia forming one of six federated states within the whole.29 Morgenthau also proposed a mandate over all of the Empire, but divided it into three territories: Constantinople, Anatolia, and Armenia.30 James 26 Baker and Dodd (eds.), Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, V, 136. 27 Speech of Senator Frank B. Brandegee, Cong. Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 5473 (April 23, 1918). 28 New York Times, May 3, 1918, reporting Lansing’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. 29 Barton to Frederick Dixon (editor of Christian Science Monitor), January 27, 1917, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 327, p. 473. A draft of Barton’s plan, entitled “Suggested Possible Form of Government for Area Covered by the Ottoman Empire at the Outbreak of the War, Exclusive of Arabia, but Inclusive of the Trans- caucasus,” is in American Board Papers, Turkey Missions, New Series, Vol. 4, p. 313. 30 Draft of a speech, December 2, 1918, Morgenthau Papers (Manuscript Division,

260 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW W. Gerard, former American ambassador to Germany, assuming that the Armenians were ready for self-government, proposed a short-term mandate for Armenia alone and vigorously opposed any scheme that would place the Armenians and Turks in the same mandate.3″ In contrast, Oscar S. Straus, former ambassador to Turkey and now a trustee of the newly incorporated Near East Relief, denounced the idea of an American mandate for Con- stantinople or any other part of the Near East and contended that the United States should restrict itself to financial aid to the Armenians and leave the administration of a mandate to the League of Nations.32 It was President Wilson, however, who assumed the initiative for the acceptance by the United States of a mandate for Armenia. In the twelfth of his Fourteen Points he had declared for inter- national control of Constantinople, a national state for the Turks, and autonomy for Armenia, but it was not until he was in Paris that he began to consider the specific steps by which these objectives should be achieved. He went to the Peace Conference with a general proposal that the former colonial possessions of the defeated powers should be handed over to certain nations for administration under the supervision of the League of Nations; but because of the demands of the other Allied Powers he was forced to compromise by agreeing to a system in which each of them was given a direct mandate over territories which they desired to control. The ques- tion of mandates over parts of the Ottoman Empire was left open, and when it became apparent that the newly established Armenian Republic 3 would require protection against the Turks Wilson gave encouragement to the belief that the United States would assume at least a temporary mandate over Armenia. In order to obtain more adequate information he arranged for the appointment of two trustees of Near East Relief, Henry C. King and Charles R. Crane, to investigate conditions in the Near Library of Congress); also, Morgenthau, “Mandate or War ?” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1919, p. 12. 31 James W. Gerard, “Why America Should Accept Mandate for Armenia,” New York Times, July 6, 1919; reprinted in American Committee for the Independence of Armenia, America as Mandatary for Armenia ([New York], 1919), 3-10. 32 For Straus’s statements, see New York Evening Post, May 29, 1919, and May 8, 1920. 83 The provisional government for the Armenian Republic, set up in December, 1917, was reorganized into a permanent government in May, 1918.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 261 East and report upon the advisability of American acceptance of an Armenian mandate. Their report, made in August, 1919, sug- gested that the administration of such a mandate would entail serious responsibilities, partly because of questions which the Armenians themselves had not yet settled in connection with the establishment of their Republic. One of these, they pointed out, was the problem of carrying out a large-scale removal of non- Armenians from the new state and the relocation within its boundaries of Armenians from other parts of the Empire. Closely related to this problem was a conflict between those who desired to restrict the territory to the Armenian provinces in eastern Turkey and an important element which sought to expand the proposed boundaries to include the Armenian province of Cilicia. King and Crane made no specific recommendations on either question; but they advised that because of the situation in neighboring parts of the former Turkish dominions any government that accepted a mandate over Armenia should also assume responsibility for Con- stantinople and Anatolia.34 Before this report was completed, however, the Wilson ad- ministration had taken initial steps to establish an Armenian mandate. Henry Morgenthau and Herbert Hoover were charged with initiating the preliminary studies, and as a stop-gap they appointed Colonel William Haskell to direct relief work in the Caucasus, where famine and political chaos were rampant. Next they prevailed upon General James G. Harbord, chief of staff to General Pershing, to make an estimate of the cost of operating the proposed mandate. Harbord’s report, completed by mid-October, 1919, presented a realistic account of conditions in the Near East, estimated the cost at $750,000,000 during the first five years, and expressed an opinion that it was “imperative from the standpoint of peace, order, efficiency, and economy” for the whole of Anatolia to be included in the mandate.”5 The contents of both this and the King-Crane report were withheld from circulation until the follow- 34″Report of the American Section of the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey,” Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the Unsted States, 1919: Paris Peace Conference (13 vols., Washington, 1942-1947), XII, 751-863, especially 841-48. 35 James G. Harbord, “Conditions in the Near East: Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia,” October 16, 1919, Senate Docs., 66 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 266 (Serial No. 7671), 14, 24-29.

262 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW ing year, and Wilson seems to have continued to think in terms of a mandate for Armenia alone. Official action to undertake a mandate was delayed, however, while the Senate debate over the peace settlement with Germany and acceptance of the League Covenant dragged on through the closing months of 1919 and the early part of 1920; and when on March 19, 1920, the Senate finally rejected the Versailles Treaty, the United States was no longer in a position to deal with the Armenian question on the basis of membership in the League of Nations. But the way was still open for direct official action, and efforts were already being made to induce the government to supple- ment the work of the relief organizations and to provide financial and material assistance toward the maintenance of an independent Armenian state. As early as the summer of 1919, for example, a group of prominent Americans, including Charles E. Hughes, Elihu Root, and Henry Cabot Lodge, telegraphed the President, expressing their concern over the “prevailing insecurity of life and intense want in the major portion of Armenia,” and urging him to dispatch “requisite food, munitions, and supplies for 50,000 men and such other help as they may require,” to support the Armenian Republic.3″ No mention was made of employing American troops, but by the end of the summer Wilson himself expressed the opinion that the only way to help the Armenian Republic effectually would be the sending of armed forces. But in view of the “temper of Con- gress,” he added, such action seemed impossible.37 To Wilson, however, this congressional opposition to military intervention in Armenia did not necessarily constitute an insur- mountable obstacle to the establishment of a mandate. Congress could still be influenced to approve the mandate, he believed, if it could be shown that the American people demanded it. He also believed that the concern for the Armenians revealed in the wide- spread response to the unofficial appeals for relief funds meant that 3 Acting Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace, June 28, 1919, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919 (2 vols., Wash- ington, 1934), II, 824. Other signers included Alfred E. Smith, James W. Gerard, Charles W. Eliot, and Senator John Sharp Williams. 37 Wilson to John Sharp Williams, August 12, 1919, and Wilson to Dodge, August 14, 1919, Woodrow Wilson Papers; Wilson to William Phillips, September 23, 1919, State Department Records, File 860J.01/92. A congressional resolution to authorize the President to use American military forces in the Armenian Republic was later defeated in committee.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 263 the American public desired official action by the United States to protect the new Armenian state and assist it in achieving political and economic stability. He undertook, therefore, to enlist the aid of the relief and missionary groups in bringing pressure to bear upon Congress,38 but soon ran into unexpected difficulties. While these groups generally favored a mandate for Armenia, they preferred not to use their publicity agencies to carry their views to the public from which they solicited funds; and this, together with the desire of some of their leaders to avoid involvement in political issues, made it difficult for them to use the Armenian question directly to stir up public support for a mandate.39 As a result, the active sponsor- ship of American acceptance of the proposed mandate was assumed by American interests not directly concerned with relief work, operating in conjunction with the leading organizations of Armenian immigrants in the United States. One of these groups, the Armenia-America Society, worked closely with some of the missionaries and with the leaders of the Cilician Armenians in urging American protection and nurture of the Armenian Republic and in seeking to obtain an expansion of its boundaries to include Cilicia.i The affairs of the Society were in the hands of George R. Montgomery, whose long residence in the Near East and participation in the King-Crane investigations there in 1919 made him an especially well-informed leader. A second important group, less moderate in policy and more vocal than the Armenia-America Society, was the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia. Nominally, this organization was headed by James W. Gerard and a sponsoring committee of American political, religious, and educational leaders who were favorably disposed to Armenian aspirations; but in reality neither 38 See, for example, Wilson to Dodge, April 19, 1920, Cleveland H. Dodge Papers, for an appeal to Near East Relief to exert pressure on Congress. 39 For Barton’s opposition to the use of the relief committees for political purposes, see Barton to the Reverend H. G. Benneyan, November 27, 1918, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 339, p. 399. In 1918, however, two pamphlets of a political nature, emphasizing what ought to be done with Turkey but not arguing the case for American acceptance of a mandate, were printed and given meager circulation by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. See William H. Hall (ed.), Reconstruction i’n Turkey ([New York], 1918), and Harold A. Hatch and William H. Hall, Recommendations for Political Reconstruction in the Turkish Empire ([New York], 1918). 40 George R. Montgomery to Wilson, February 7, 1921, Woodrow Wilson Papers.

264 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW Gerard nor the sponsors exerted much influence on its policies.4 Instead, it became largely the instrumentality of Vahan Cardashian, long the American representative of the Caucasus-oriented Ar- menians, and under his leadership it usually took a more extreme position than the missionary and relief groups.42 The fact that these two immigrant organizations differed sharply on the question of boundaries for the new Armenian state and were never in complete agreement on other important issues prevented them from working together, and the conflicts between their re- spective demands served to confuse rather than consolidate the efforts to persuade Congress to approve a mandate. Evidence of other organized support was lacking, and even the administration failed to take steps to inform the public on the issues. The Harbord report was not published until April, 1920, and only the gist of the King-Crane report had been made available. Without benefit of these reports the advocates of the mandate were not able to es- tablish a case grounded in the national interest and had to rely heavily on whatever sympathy could be created for the Armenians.43 Support for the mandate, therefore, remained scattered and un- organized. Thus when on May 24, 1920, the President presented to Con- gress his official proposal that he be granted “power to accept for the United States a mandate over Armenia,” he had only the “free will offering” raised by the relief committees to cite as evidence that the proposal had the support of the American people. One week later the Senate, unencumbered by popular pressure, rejected the proposal by a vote of 52 to 24.4 Ironically, it was from the Harbord report that the Senate opponents of the mandate drew their principal arg,ument against its acceptance. Ignoring the moral 41- Barton to W. T. Ellis, December 18, 1923, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 371, p. 306, states that Gerard seldom went to the Committee headquarters. 42 In May, 1920, for example, the Cardashian group presented through Gerard a request that the American authorities deliver military equipment for 40,000 to 50,000 men to Erivan and send a cadre of officers to train and direct the Armenian army, and that the new Armenian government be permitted to recruit men for its army and sell $75,000,000 of its bonds in the United States. Gerard to Secretary of State, May 21, 1920, quoted in Cong. Record, 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 7876 (May 29, 1920). 43 For examples of periodical discussions of the merits and liabilities of the mandate see “United States as Mandatory for Armenia,” World’s Work (New York), XXXVII (April, 1919), 610-11, and Lewis Einstein, “Armenian Mandate,” Nation (New York), CX (June 5, 1920), 762-63. 44Cong. Record, 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 7533 (May 24, 1920), and 8073 (June 1. 1920).

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 265 imperatives of Harbord’s recommendations, they focused attention on his estimate of the cost and argued that American interests and prospects in Armenia were not sufficient to justify an expenditure of $750,000,000 to insure peace and stability for the Armenians.45 But their vote against making the Armenian question an official American problem did not close the case. Despite the failure to receive congressional approval of a man- date, friends of the Armenians continued to wage a quiet but per- sistent campaign to secure aid for their cause. The missionary group urged a unilateral commitment by the President to regard any attack on Armenia as an unfriendly act against the United States.46 An effort to obtain a loan of government funds to Armenia received support from Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and President Wilson, but the President’s request to Congress for authorization of the loan was not granted.47 Following the succession of Warren G. Harding to the presidency, the Near East Relief organization, abandoning for the moment its policy of non-participation in po- litical activities, urged its constituency to write to members of Congress about conditions in Turkey. Its board of trustees, pro- fessing to act “in behalf of at least 20,000,000 of the people of the United States who have contributed to American relief work in the Near East,” appealed to Congress to exert pressure on the Allies and on Turkey to end the “state of anarchy” in Anatolia.48 Shortly afterward the missionary group, Near East Relief, and the Ar- menia-America Society made common cause in an unsuccessful effort to bring about the recall of Admiral Mark L. Bristol as American High Commissioner at Constantinople on the grounds that his pro-Turkish viewpoint made him unacceptable to the friends of the Armenians.49 Meanwhile, some of the leaders in the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia lhad ap- pealed to Harding as president-elect to bring about Republican endorsement of a mandate for Armenia; 5 and in July, 1922, 45Ibid., 7877 (May 29, 1920). 46 Barton and others to Wilson, June 18, 1920, Woodrow Wilson Papers. 47Wilson to Dodge, December 2, 1920, Cleveland H. Dodge Papers; Baker and Dodd (eds.), Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, VI, 520. 48 New York Times, May 26, 1921. 4) Barton to George R. Montgomery, December 19, 1921, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 358, p. 543. 60 James W. Gerard and Henry Jessup, “A Memorandum to Warren Harding,” December 17, 1920, copy in Woodrow Wilson Papers.

266 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW Bishop James Cannon, Jr., an active member both of this com- mittee and of Near East Relief, asked the State Department to intervene – even to the extreme of sending an army if necessary to stop a new wave of Turkish persecutions in Armenia.” While these efforts were being made to keep alive the question of American aid for the Armenians, the situation in Turkey was undergoing a radical change. In the early fall of 1922 the Nationalist forces of Mustapha Kemal emerged triumphant and unchallenged, and their success marked a turning point in American- Turkish relations. Between 1919 and 1922 the Nationalists had helped destroy the infant Armenian Republic, had repudiated the Treaty of Sevres in which the Allies had established spheres of influence in the Ottoman Empire in accordance with secret wartime agreements, had expelled the French, Italians, Greeks, and British from Turkey, and had overthrown the Sultanate. Undisputed mas- ters of a new Turkey, they were in no mood to tolerate further out- side influence in their affairs, and the Western Powers agreed to a conference at Lausanne to negotiate a new settlement. In the course of the negotiations the European powers abandoned their claims to spheres of influence, agreed to the abrogation of the ca- pitulations, and in effect recognized the restoration of Turkey to a position of equality as a sovereign state. At the same time Turkey gave assurance that the life and liberty of all inhabitants would be protected without distinction of nationality, race, or religion and guaranteed that British, French, and Italian philanthropic, educational, and religious institutions would be placed on a foot- ing of equality with similar Turkish institutions. Both sides ac- cepted the principle of “freedom of transit and navigation” of the Straits; and the treaty did not mention the question of a homeland for the Armenians within Turkish territory.”2 Although the United States was not to be a party to the treaty, the State Department sent a delegation consisting of Joseph C. Grew, Richard W. Child, and Admiral Mark L. Bristol to act as 51 See Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes to President Harding, July 24, 1922, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1922 (2 vols., Wash- ington, 1938), II, 931. 52 For a convenient summary of the developments in Turkey and a more detailed account of the Lausanne Conference, see Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplo- matic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945, ed. by Walter Johnson (2 vols., Boston, 1952). I, 475-587.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 267 observers in the conference and to prevent so far as they could any Allied-Turkish settlement at the expense of American interests. In addition to performing this duty, the American delegates were frequently able to offer constructive suggestions on some of the questions at issue; but their most important service was the es- tablishment of a sympathetic contact between Turkey and the United States government. When the Turkish delegation indicated an interest in negotiating a treaty, Grew advised the State Depart- ment that the United States would “gain a great advantage by beginning as soon as possible,” and Secretary Hughes authorized him to proceed with formal negotiations after the Allied-Turkish settlement had been completed.53 Informal discussions based on a draft treaty sent to Grew by the State Department were begun in May, 1923, and in June the two delegations began to hold more formal meetings, with the result that by the time the Allied agree- ment was signed in July many of the provisions had been tentatively agreed upon. Throughout the negotiations Grew was aware that the terms of the treaty would be conditioned by the Allied settlement, and he was further constrained by numerous requirements laid down by the State Department, which also passed upon the wording of key provisions as the negotiations proceeded.”4 Determined to conclude a treaty, he made concessions of form in order to safeguard princi- ple, and when faced with getting less than everything the State Department wanted he chose to accept what he could get rather than break off negotiations. Hence the treaty which he signed on August 6, 1923, was “far from what I should have wished to have,” as he reported to Secretary Hughes; and except for the omission of the question of spheres of influence it was not substantially dif- ferent from the one negotiated by the Allies.55 The capitulations were “completely abrogated.” In commercial matters most-f avored- nation treatment was secured. A separate declaration guaranteed American religious, philanthropic, educational, and medical in- 53Grew to Hughes, January 12, 1923, and Hughes to Grew, January 13, 1923, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1923 (2 vols., Wash- ington, 1938), II, 1043-44. 54 For the extensive correspondence between Grew and the State Department in June and July, 1923, see ibid., II, 1065-1133. Grew’s own account is in Grew, Turbu- lent Era, I, 586-605. 65 Grew to Hughes, August 6, 1923, Foreian Relations. 1923. IL. 1148-50.

268 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW stitutions treatment equal to that accorded similar Turkish institu- tions; and another declaration guaranteed that foreigners appearing before Turkish courts would be assured all the safeguards of a good judicial system. Again, as in the Allied settlement, the Armenian question was not mentioned.56 These results would seem to indicate that American public opinion had little direct effect on the terms of the treaty. It was strong enough to prompt the State Department to seek guarantees for minorities, but not sufficiently active to prevent Grew from accepting the general provision of the Allied settlement instead of insisting on a special statement for the American treaty. Likewise, an invitation to the missionary interests and the Armenia-America Society to present their views on the Armenian question to the Lausanne Conference did not bring a response strong enough to deter the Americans from signing a treaty lacking provisions for an Armenian homeland.57 It was in the debate over ratification of the American-Turkish treaty, however, rather than in its negotiation, that the Armenian question played a decisive role. The treaty was not submitted to the Senate until May 3, 1924, and by that time it was clear that among those groups which had been most concerned about the fate of the Armenians opinion was sharply divided on the question of its acceptability. In general, the missionary and relief groups, together with the Armenia-America Society, favored ratification, while the Gerard-Cardashian Committee for the Independence of Armenia had begun an aggressive campaign to bring about its rejection. For the missionaries, acceptance of the Nationalist regime and abandon- ment of the capitulations was not easy, but it remained the only practicable course open to them. In achieving their victory the Na- tionalists had expelled or killed most of the Armenians with whom the missionaries had worked, and in the last months of hostilities relief workers had evacuated the surviving Armenian orphans to areas outside Turkey. Since there was no possibility of a return to the prewar situation, they considered it more desirable to take up work among the Turks than to abandon their missions, schools, and hosDitals. In contrast, the Gerard-Cardashian group, still de- 56 For the full text of the treaty and the declarations, see ibid., II, 1153-71. 67 Grew to Hughes, June 21, 1923, ibid., II, 1092, and, for the invitation, American Mission to Hughes. December 30. 1922. izbid.. II, 940-41.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 269 termined to obtain the establishment of an Armenian homeland, could gain nothing by accepting this treaty; and since the Armenian population had been killed or expelled, they did not even risk Armenian lives in tenaciously demanding that the creation of an Armenian state must precede recognition of the Kemal government by the United States. In the battle to influence the Senate’s decision on ratification the advocates of the treaty had the more difficult task. Not only did they have to gain two votes for each one required by the op- ponents, but some of them faced the necessity of overcoming the effect of their own previous efforts to defame the Turk. They must now reverse their position and work for American approval of the new Turkey. To this task James L. Barton, a leading spokesman since 191S for the missionary and relief groups, devoted much of his time and energy throughout the period during which the treaty was before the Senate. He began in an apologetic fashion to point out errors and exaggerations which had appeared in the earlier propaganda, proceeded to challenge more recent charges against the Nationalists, and professed to see in the Kemal government the beginning of a modern political state.58 In numerous articles in relatively obscure journals he heralded the westernization of Turkey as manifested in the adoption of the Latin alphabet, the dropping of the fez and veil, and the introduction of western legal concepts; 5 and in an effort to reach a larger group of readers he urged the editors of the New York Times to run feature stories on Turkish progress under the new regime.60 His most tangible ac- complishment was probably the bringing together of a group of missionary, church, philanthropic, and other organizations into a general committee to sponsor the preparation of a small book de- signed to promote the ratification of the treaty.6″ t58 Barton to Mark L. Bristol, July 11, 1923, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 369, p. 28; Barton to Eliot G. Mears, April 12, 1924, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 373, p. 140. 59 See especially Barton, “Changing Turkey: Political and Religious Revolution,” Envelope Series of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston), XXVIII (January, 1926). He also wrote for Missionary Review (Princeton), and International Review of Missions (Edinburgh). 60 Barton to John H. Finley, March 12, 1926, American Board Papers, File 3.2, Vol. 383, p. 67; Barton to Lester Markel, May 28, 1926, ibid., File 3.2, Vol. 384, p. 376. The fact that the Times supported the treaty cannot, of course, be attributed to Barton’s activities. 61 General Committee of American Institutions and Associations in Favor of Ratification of the Treaty with Turkey, The Treaty with Turkey: Statements, Resolu-

270 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW While Barton was seeking to promote ratification by removing the effects of the agitation over the Armenian question, other groups worked toward the same end in different ways. Most notable among them were certain American businessmen whose interest in investment possibilities in Turkey made the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the two governments especially de- sirable. Because of earlier conflicts with the missionaries and relief workers, they were now unwilling to co-operate with Barton or the groups he led, and their methods sometimes tended to nullify the effect of his work. The most active of these businessmen were Colby and Arthur Chester, father and son, whose Ottoman-American De- velopment Company, chartered in 1908 to build railroads in Turkey, had become a controversial issue in American political circles.”2 To them, as to Barton, the effects of the Armenian ques- tion had to be minimized; but they undertook to accomplish this by denouncing the missionary and relief groups for the part they had played in stirring up sympathy for the Armenians. The Near East Relief organization, one of them said, had issued “false or deliberately biased reports” in order to spur contributions, and thus had helped build up a distorted image of the Turk which should no longer be accepted.63 Such evidence of the inability of the advocates of ratification to present a united front was sure to weaken their effectiveness. Leading the opposition to the treaty was the Gerard-Cardashian group, now reorganized as the American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty. The strategy of this group was to capitalize on the tremendous ill-will toward the Turk which had been whipped up by the relief workers. Since the image of the “Terrible Turk” was firmly fixed in the minds of most Americans, little effort was tions, and Reports in Favor of Ratification of the Treat) of Lausanne (New York, 1926). Among the sponsoring organizations were the Congregational Mission Board, the YMCA, the YWCA, and several chambers of commerce. 62 By 1923 the Chesters had obtained railroad and petroleum concessions in Turkey which called for over $300,000,000 in capital. A subsequent public stock flotation in the United States barely raised a million dollars, and the proposals failed. Hedley V. Cooke, Challenge and Response in the Middle East (New York, 1952), 267. 63 Arthur T. Chester, “Angora and the Turks,” Current History (New York), XVII (February, 1923), 758-64. See also Colby M. Chester, “Turkey Reinterpreted,” ibid., XVI (September, 1922), 944-45, and, for a similar attack by a freelance journal- ist, Clair Price, “Mustapha Kemal and the Americans,” ibid., XVII (October, 1922), 117.92

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 271 required to perpetuate it or to create a climate of opinion hostile to the treaty. Relying on the image of the saintly, innocent Armenian maltreated by the Turk, the Committee attacked the treaty advo- cates by imputing unworthy motives to their actions. In general terms the missionaries were accused of “selling out” or “betraying’” the Armenians. President Wilson’s espousal of self-determination of peoples was interpreted as a unilateral assumption of responsi- bility of the United States for securing Armenian independence. The Committee assumed further that whether or not an Armenian state was to be a reality could be determined solely by United States policy, thus ignoring the role of Italian, Greek, French, British, and Russian policies, to say nothing of Turkish politics, as factors in the Near East situation.64 This argument did not rest only on generalities. In one of the first speeches in the Senate against ratification, Senator William H. King charged that the United States had participated in the Lausanne Conference “for the sole purpose of securing and con- firming the Chester oil concession, and that in pursuance of that purpose, vested and essential rights of American nationals in Turkey were sacrificed and Armenia forsaken, if not betrayed.” 65 Some three weeks later the Democratic national convention sought to make the treaty an issue in the 1924 presidential campaign by including in the party platform a plank which expressly condemned it on the ground that “It barters legitimate American rights, and betrays Armenia, for the Chester Oil Concession.” 66 Obviously made for political purposes, these accusations were not accompanied by supporting evidence, but the fact that the specific information needed to refute them could not be made public at the time enabled them to be circulated with no other challenge than a general denial.67 Senator King returned to the subject shortly after the assembling of the new Congress in 1925 and, in a long speech filled with the read- 64 American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty, The Missionaries and the Lausanne Treaty (n.p., n.d.), 15-21. 65 Cong. Record, 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 10292 (June 3, 1924). 66 Quoted in Grew, Turbulent Era, I, 678 n. 67 Secretary Hughes had explicitly denied the charge in a speech to the Council ,on Foreign Relations of New York on January 23, 1924, but this denial was ignored both by Senator King and by the Democratic national convention. For Hughes’s speech, see Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1924 (2 vols., Washington, 1939), II, 709-15. For evidence that the State Department was secretly hostile toward the Chester interests, see a manuscript entitled “History of the Chester Project,” Series C, Sec. 52, Turkey, No. 10, State Department Archives.

272 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW ing of resolutions and petitions inspired for the most part by the activities of the American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty, summed up the arguments against ratification. The Turks, he maintained, are a “cruel and degenerate people,” and by ratify- ing the treaty the United States would give up the capitulations, which were still necessary for the protection of American citizens in Turkey; and he repeated the charge that in order to protect the Chesters the Armenians were being betrayed.68 Meanwhile the Committee also sought to counteract the possible effect of the Congregational Mission Board’s support of the treaty by encouraging other denominational groups to announce their op- position. As early as 1923, the Presbyterian mission groups had denounced the treaty in general terms as unjust and unrighteous.69 More significant, however, was a memorial which Bishop William T. Manning of the Protestant Episcopal Church induced 110 bishops to sign early in 1926, in which the treaty was condemned for permitting the Turkish government to establish the educational standards to which mission schools in Turkey must conform and to prohibit the teaching of religion.70 It was implied that this state- ment also represented the sentiments of the Northern Baptists, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Reformed Church. Since none of these churches had mission stations within the borders of Nationalist Turkey, they thus insinuated that in favoring the treaty the Congregational Mission Board was selling its soul to preserve its property in Turkey.71 This brought a spirited reply from the Congregationalists, branding the assertions as “misleading and misconstrued,” and pointing out that “legitimate American interests are protected by [the] treaty and moral obligations can be discharged more effectively by America after diplomatic rela- tions are resumed.” 72 This exchange of charges was the closing act in the competition 68 Cong. Record, 69 Cong., Special Sess., 290-96 (March 17, 1925). 69 Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, Annual Report, 1923 (Philadelphia, 1923), 261. 70 See Grew, Turbulent Era, I, 675-78, for Grew’s answer to this memorial. 71 A condensed form of the statement, signed by Manning, S. Parkes Cadman (Church of Christ), and James Cannon, Jr. (Southern Methodist), was sent to the Senate shortly before the vote on ratification was taken. Telegram to Senator Cole L. Blease, January 7, 1927, Cong. Record, 69 Cong., 2 Sess., 1266 (January 8, 1927). 72Cleveland E. Dodge and others to Senator Hiram Bingham, January 10, 1927, ibid., 1412 (January 11, 1927).

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 273 between the conflicting points of view on the Armenian question to influence the Senate’s decision on the treaty. When the vote was taken a few days later (January 18, 1927), the result was 34 against ratification and 50 in favor – six votes short of the neces- sary two-thirds majority. Thus only a minority of the Senate followed Senator King’s leadership and supported the position of the champions of Armenian independence, but their number was sufficient to prevent the acceptance of the treaty. Some of them, of course, had other reasons for voting against ratification; but the victory had gone to the American Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty. That it could carry the day, however, was per- haps less a tribute to its effectiveness as a molder of political opinion than to the lasting power of the image of the “Terrible Turk” built up by the missionaries and relief workers. Under the existing circumstances the Senate’s failure to approve ratification created an untenable situation. As the New York Herald Tribune observed, “Seldom has a decision in foreign affairs been taken with more irrelevant emotion and greater disregard for realities.” 7 The United States had no intention of going to war to restore an independent Armenian state or to re-establish the ca- pitulations, and until diplomatic relations could be renewed it could not discuss directly with the Turkish government questions involving the protection of American missionary and commercial interests in that country. Fearful that the Turks would resent the rebuff implied in the rejection of a treaty negotiated in good faith, the State Department immediately instructed the American High Commissioner at Constantinople to explain to the Turkish authori- ties that the vote against ratification did not reflect the sentiment of the President, or of the great majority of the American people, or even of a majority of the Senate itself.74 Accepting this explana- tion, the Turkish government agreed to a proposal for the resump- tion of relations by an official exchange of notes, and on February 17, one month after the defeat of the treaty, regular diDlomatic 73New York Herald Tribune, January 19, 1927. For excerpts from other adverse newspaper comments, see Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1927 (3 vols., Washington, 1942), III, 769-70. 74For the correspondence between Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and Com- missioner Mark L. Bristol, January 18 to February 17, 1927, see Foreign Relations, 1927, III, 765-98.

274 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW intercourse was formally renewed, with the unratified Lausanne agreement constituting the basis of relations.” The only serious objection to this renewal of relations came from the same group that had so vigorously opposed ratification. Since the Armenian question had not been mentioned in the Lausanne agreement, it was now obvious that it was not likely to be considered in any future relations between the United States and Turkey. Members of the old Committee for the Independence of Armenia, realizing that they had been circumvented, gave expression to their rage in bitter but fruitless protests against the State Department’s action.” The Senate, on the other hand, tacitly acceding to the resumption of diplomatic relations, quietly confirmed the appoint- ment of Joseph C. Grew, the negotiator of the Lausanne agreement, as the first ambassador to the new Turkey; and during the next seven years it voted – sometimes without debate – to approve a series of treaties which established piecemeal most of the provisions which had failed to receive its approval as a group in 1927. And in this process the soundness of the original Lausanne agreement as the basis for restoring cordial relations between the United States and Turkey was recognized. In a larger sense, the process also marked the recognition of the basic changes which had taken place in American relations with Turkey in the period from 1914 to 1927. Before World War I, Near Eastern peoples were rarely accorded the status of full sovereignty in world affairs. By 1927, it was apparent that they could be treated only as equals by the West. Yet American vision, befogged by images of the decrepit Sultanate of the nineteenth century, could not easily grasp the idea that a non-occidental and non-Christian people could create a modern political state and develop a modern commercial-industrial economy. To the Turk, the capitulations, requiring concessions that would never be re- ciprocated by the United States, were incompatible with Turkish nationalistic pride, and their removal was the obvious first step toward the attainment of full equality. But the intrusion of the Armenian question at almost the same 7{51ibid., nill, 799-800. 76New York Times, May 16, May 30, June 23, November 28, and December 1, 1927. Vahan Cardashian and James W. Gerard were still protesting a year after the renewal of diplomatic relations. Ibzd., April 11 and May 15, 1928.

AMERICAN-TURKISH RELATIONS 275 moment as Turkey’s abrogation of the capitulations made difficult any clear-headed search for mutual understanding. This question plagued all subsequent American-Turkish negotiations, diverting attention from the main issues and prolonging a final settlement of more basic problems. While sympathetic to the Armenians, the United States could in no way officially guarantee their safety with- out infringing upon Turkish sovereignty. Unofficially, interested parties in America thus found vilification of the Turk their only weapon in creating sympathy and support for the Armenians. Naturally, this compromised any official American-Turkish rela- tions. But by the mid-1920’s it was obvious that the United States must treat with the Nationalist Turks. Again negotiations were hindered by the Armenian question – this time because of Ameri- can difficulties in overcoming the myth of the “Terrible Turk” which had been expediently exploited during earlier Armenian persecutions – and it was not until 1927 that the United States found a way to eliminate it from official consideration in the ne- gotiations with Turkey. Its influence on American-Turkish re- lations is perhaps best indicated, therefore, in the fact that its removal from the diplomatic picture cleared the way for the prompt restoration of full-scale relations between the two countries on the new basis of equality and mutual respect.

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The Armenian Question and American-Turkish Relations, 1914-1927Author(s): Robert L. DanielSource: The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Sep., 1959), pp. 252-275Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: : 16/11/2010 00:58Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oah.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toThe Mississippi Valley Historical Review.http://www.jstor.org

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