1922 in Greece - Negotiations For Peace

Negotiations For Peace

In the meantime the efforts of the Allies to negotiate a peace settlement between Greece and the Turkish Nationalists which had been commenced in the previous year, were continued. A meeting of British, French, and Italian statesmen to discuss Near Eastern affairs and the revision of the Sèvres Treaty was unofficially announced to take place early in February, but was postponed. On March 22, however, a conference of Allied foreign ministers consisting of Raymond Poincaré, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, and Carlo Schanzer was opened in Paris, and one of its first steps was to propose to the Greeks and Turks a three months' armistice in Asia Minor together with the establishment of a neutral zone between the warring armies, pending negotiations for the conclusion of peace. At the same time it advocated the evacuation of the whole of Asia Minor by the Greeks, the establishment of a special regime for the Smyrna area, and the placing of racial minorities under the protection of the League of Nations. It further drew up plans for the demilitarization of the Straits and a rectification of the Turkish-Greek frontier in Eastern Thrace between the neighbourhood of Ganos on the Sea of Marmora and a point on the Bulgarian frontier in the western part of the Stranja mountains, leaving Rodosto to the Turks and placing Baba-Eske and Kirk Kilisse on the Greek side of the border, Greece thus retaining Adrianople. The Angora government expressed its readiness to enter into an armistice on condition that Smyrna should be immediately evacuated by the Greeks, and that the evacuation of Asia Minor should be completed within four months. The Greek government, while nominally accepting the Allied proposals, made hasty preparations for the formation, under the auspices of the Greek military leaders, of a special "Government of Ionia" (hinterland of Smyrna) on the same general lines as the Angora Nationalist government, while simultaneously an organization of Greeks resident abroad, consisting mainly of Venizelist elements and calling itself the "League for National Defense", issued an appeal to Greeks all over the world to oppose the evacuation of Asia Minor by the Greek army. Meanwhile no attempt was made to carry out the Allied proposals in practice, and for nearly three months the situation in Asia Minor remained in suspense, no official armistice being concluded, while at the same time active hostilities on the front were limited to small skirmishes between the outposts of the two armies.