Ανατροπή ισορροπιών στα στενά: Η μυστική συμφωνία της Κωνσταντινουπόλεως του 1915

Περίληψη

No sooner the question of the eastern Aegean Islands remained unsettled at
Bucarest in 1913, than the Russians suspected a Greek expansion over the
Straits and Constantinople, with the tacit approval of Britain. This expansion
seemed more certain, when, at the outbreak of the Great War, the Turks closed
the Straits and isolated Russia: The British proposed to use Greek troops and
ships for an attack on Gallipoli. This raised the old ghost of a revived Byzantine
empire and the Czar made it a sine qua non condition that no Greek forces
should participate in an attack on the Straits, or in any settlement concerning
that question. He demanded that the Straits and the adjoining territory be
included within his empire. Neither the British, nor the French, or the Greeks
wished to see the Czar seated on the Bosphorus. But only when the Russians
threatened to withdraw from the alliance, did Britain and France agree to
Russia’s claims on condition «that the war was carried to a victorious conclusion
». The abortive secret treaty of Constantinople of 1915 was formally concluded
at the monent when Venizelos, the initiator of the Greek participation
in the Straits question, had resigned.
Nevertheless, the presence of the Russians in the area was never before that
important and played such a principal role as in 1915. But also the presence of
the Greeks in that same area neither had nor did become ever again of such a
consequence in the history of contemporary Europe.