Sevres, Treaty of

   On 10 August 1920, the defeated Ottoman Empire was forced to sign the Treaty of Sevres, which would have reduced it to only a small rump section of Anatolia. The Turkish War of Independence overturned the stillborn Treaty of Sevres, and in 1923 a new Treaty of Lausanne recognized the modern Republic of Turkey. The very term Treaty of Sevres remains a byword in Turkey today, symbolizing the West's desire to partition and destroy Turkey.

   For the Kurds, however, the Treaty of Sevres represents a lost opportunity because it specifically provided for "local autonomy for predominantly Kurdish areas" (Article 62), while Article 64 even looked forward to the possibility that "the Kurdish peoples" might be granted "independence from Turkey." One obvious flaw in all this was that the Treaty of Sevres did not demarcate the borders between a putative Kurdistan and an independent Armenia, which the Treaty also tried to establish. The main problem, however, was that the Kurds proved to be too divided to take advantage of their opportunity, while the Turks proved resurgent under Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk). Sevres is a suburb of Paris.