Batum peace talks

On 11 May 1918 a peace conference between the Ottoman Empire and the Transcaucasian Federative Republic met at Batum, a port the Turks had occupied less than a month earlier. It was a continuation of the negotiations held at Trebizond in March and April. The British chronology of the war records under 6 May the arrival of Turkish and German delegates at Batum, but the first and only formal session of the conference took place, according to the consistent accounts of historians and participants, on 11 May. That is the date given by the historians of the Caucasian wars W.E.D. Allen, a Briton, and Paul Muratoff, a Russian émigré, the Armenian historian Richard Hovannisian and Russian studies.

The delegations

The Transcaucasian delegation, numbering about 45 people according to Azerbaijani studies, was led by the prime minister and foreign minister, Akaki Chkhenkeli. It included representatives of the Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who were each pulling more and more clearly in their own direction. The Ottoman delegation was headed by the minister of justice, Halil Bey (Menteşe), and beside him sat the commander of the Turkish forces in the Caucasus, Vehip Pasha. Chkhenkeli hoped that the other Central Powers would also take part in the talks and might restrain the Turks’ appetites. At his invitation a small German mission arrived with General Otto von Lossow, but only as an observer. The Turks for their part brought representatives of the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus. Their representative, Haidar Bammat (PL), proclaimed at Batum the independence of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus and asked to be admitted to the talks.

New demands

Chkhenkeli wanted to negotiate on the basis of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which Transcaucasia had accepted when it declared independence on 22 April. It gave Turkey the districts of Kars, Ardahan and Batum, which the Turks had already occupied. Halil Bey declared, however, that since the Armenians and Georgians had answered the Turkish proposals with armed resistance and blood had been shed, the character of mutual relations had changed, and the Brest provisions could no longer be the sole basis for negotiations. The Ottoman side laid a ready draft treaty on the table. According to Allen and Muratoff, the Turks demanded that their troops occupy the districts of Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki and Alexandropol (today Gyumri), that they be given control of the railway from Alexandropol through Etchmiadzin and Nakhichevan to Julfa, needed to move troops into northern Persia, and that they have free use of the whole Transcaucasian Railway until the end of the war with Britain. Russian studies add that Armenia was to lose about two-thirds of the Erivan Governorate.

For the Armenians this meant disaster. After the loss of Kars they were left with a scrap of land around Erivan and Lake Sevan, crowded with hundreds of thousands of refugees. The Georgians would lose districts closely bound up with Tiflis. The Azerbaijanis saw things differently: they regarded the Turks as kinsmen and counted on their help in taking Baku from the Bolsheviks. Behind the demands lay the plans of Enver Pasha, who after the easy victories of the spring wanted to reach for Baku and Persian Azerbaijan.

With the session of 11 May the conference in effect came to an end. Further talks went on for about two weeks by an exchange of notes, and the Turks did not wait for their outcome. On the night of 14/15 May they presented an ultimatum over Alexandropol and almost at once advanced further. The German mission, alarmed by Turkish ambitions in the Caucasus, later offered to mediate, but without result. The Batum negotiations ended only on 4 June, when the Turks signed separate treaties with the three states that had arisen from the ruins of the federation.