Treaty of Sèvres and Cilicia Special Section: A Missed Opportunity and the Revenge of History

The Allies used a similar tactic with the Arabs. The Arab revolt, led by British Intelligence Officer Thomas Edward Lawrence, known better as Lawrence of Arabia, is well documented. That revolt reinforced the Allied victory.

As a result of the effort, 150,000 Armenians and 100,000 other Christian minorities returned to their homes in Cilicia, under the supervision of the French forces.

On the way back to Cilicia, the French authorities began to disarm some of the Armenian volunteers. Unsuspecting Armenians were not aware that by 1919, the French had entered into backroom dealings with Mustafa Kemal, the leader of the Ottoman forces.

In May 1919, Boghos Nubar Pasha dispatched Mihran Damadian as the representative of the Armenian National Delegation to the French colonial headquarters. There he was asked to organize the resettlement program for the repatriates.

Damadian was one of the rare breed of leaders who was both a consummate, erudite intellectual as well as a hero with 30 years of death-defying revolutionary activities under his belt. He was an inspiring statesman and captivating orator.

Beyond the resettlement program, Damadian was pursing the old dream of Armenian home rule in Cilicia, under a French mandate.

Meanwhile, intense diplomatic activity was taking place in Paris and other European capitals. The Treaty of Sèvres was being drafted to dismember the defeated Ottoman Empire and grant independence to all nations under its yoke, including the Armenians, who were given most of historic Armenia within a territory of 160 square kilometers with an opening to the sea in Trebizond.

The Treaty of Sévres did not include Cilicia, where a quarter of million Christians were brought back with the promise of home rule. The Armenians put too much credence in the French promises, while France was all the while negotiating with the Turks, behind their backs.

Mustafa Kemal was either a supreme diplomat or a bold opportunist. Instead of disbanding the Ottoman army, which he was tasked to do by the Allied leadership, he reinforced it and played off the competing interests of the Allies. He negotiated with Lenin in Russia, promising the rise of communism in Turkey, and for which he received arms, money and food, all the while making similar guarantees to the Western powers.

As the date was approaching fast to sign the treaty (August 10, 1920), the Armenians in Cilicia were getting impatient.

Damadian had gathered all the leaders of the Armenian groups, as well as the leaders of the other Christian groups and formed a shadow government.

Time was of the essence and the Armenians planned to preempt the signing of the Sèvres Treaty. Therefore, Damadian gathered his cabinet members and the leadership of the communities and headed to the city hall in Adana and occupied it on August 5, 1920. He proclaimed Cilicia’s independence under the French mandate. He sent his proclamation to the commander of the French forces in Cilicia, Gen. Edouard Brémond, who in return, sent a contingent of Senegalese forces and ordered Damadian and his cabinet to vacate the premises, where a huge tricolor flag was already hanging.

Damadian made a last stand, believing that the French would appreciate his valor. He cited the words of one of the leaders of the French Revolution, Honoré Mirabeau: “If you have been instructed to make us leave this place, you should seek permission to use force, for only the power of bayonets will dislodge us.”

Sure enough, the bayonets were pointed at Damadian, who was forced to leave.

This intriguing chapter of history has not been thoroughly studied. Damadian himself has left scant memoirs, insufficient to develop a sound theory.

To this day, a lot of controversies remain and many questions are left unanswered. Damadian, in the last pages of his memoirs, answers only some of the questions:

• The Armenians had to take their defense into their own hands, as the Kemalist forces were harassing the Armenians.
• Cilicia’s independence movement did not take place to counter the independent Republic of Armenia, as blamed by Avedis Aharonian and Alexander Khadissian. On the contrary, it was supposed to complement the Republic of Armenia by acting as its window on the Mediterranean.
• Armenians did not create the Cilician issue. It was thrust on us by the international community, which then failed to defend us.

The controversy will certainly continue, because as the saying goes, success will have many godfathers, while defeat is always an orphan.

Indeed, how many real and fake founders do we have for the First Republic? Too many. But the historic fact is that independence of the First Republic was thrust upon Armenians, when they were least ready to embrace it.

One major factor in the collapse of the Cilician dream was French treachery. The French government not only refused to inform Armenians about its intentions, even the local army officers were unaware of what was going on in the corridors of power back home.

The French retreated from Marash, for example, on a snowy night, silently, leaving the Armenians to the mercy of the marauding Kemalist hordes. Many Armenians who were alarmed by the French retreat tried to follow the soldiers, but they froze to death.

One weakness in the Armenian position is that they placed too much trust in the French and ignored the military component of the plan. Had they secretly armed themselves, as the Kemalists did, they could have put up a good fight, as they had done in Marash, Hajin, Urfa, Aintab and Zeitoun and they could have delayed the advance of the Kemalist forces, if not outright defeated them.

Cilicia is one of the most fertile regions of Asia Minor. Today it serves as Turkey’s breadbasket.

The Cilician movement was a missed opportunity for the Armenians, but its lessons were not lost. This time, as the opportunity rose in Karabakh, the Armenians did not listen to their friends or foes. They resorted to defending themselves and in a short time, their ragtag army was converted into a modern fighting machine, which helped Armenia to recover one of its lost pieces.

Our loss in Cilicia was compensated in Karabakh. That was the revenge of history — a hard lesson learned in the span of a full century