Britain promises Lemnos to Greece

On 20 March 1915 the British government guaranteed Greece that in the future peace treaty Turkey would cede to it the island of Lemnos. According to the British Naval Staff monograph, this was a secret guarantee given to the new government of Dimitrios Gounaris. It was meant to reassure Athens, which was uneasy that the British had set up the base of the expedition against the Dardanelles on a Greek island, and had replied on 9 March to Greek questions that military necessity required it.

Athens’s fears

The Greeks were also troubled that London treated the island as disputed Turkish territory, since Turkey had never recognised Greek rule over it. In that case its future could become an object of bargaining in the partition of the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of March Russia had claimed Constantinople and the Straits, and with them the islands of Imbros and Tenedos at the entrance to the Dardanelles, and Great Britain had accepted these demands. Lemnos lay not much further away, about 50 kilometres from the entrance to the strait. Petrograd had also recently objected to Greek participation in the Dardanelles operation, because it did not want to see the Greeks in Constantinople.

The fears were not groundless. In August 1914, when the Entente was trying to keep Turkey out of the war, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, had been ready to give Lemnos to the Turks and to offer Greece compensation in Epirus instead. London objected, and in the autumn Turkey entered the war on Germany’s side anyway.

An irreplaceable base

For the British, good relations with Athens were of particular importance in those days. Two days earlier the fleet’s attack on the Dardanelles forts had broken down, and it was becoming ever clearer that the Straits could not be taken without land forces. Mudros Bay was the only place nearby where tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of ships could assemble. An open dispute with Greece over the island could endanger the whole undertaking.

The guarantee cost the British nothing. Lemnos had in any case been in Greek hands since 1912, and the Powers had already awarded it to Greece in February 1914. London undertook only that after victory Turkey would finally recognise this state of affairs. In public the British continued to explain their presence on the island by the fact that the Sultan had not ratified the decision of the Powers. The Times published a semi-official statement to that effect on 30 March.

Later developments

The British government made Greece a similar promise in July 1915 concerning the island of Lesbos, where the Allies had also set up a base. Lemnos remained a base of the Entente fleet throughout the war. In October 1918 the armistice that ended the war with the Ottoman Empire was signed in the harbour of Mudros.

The question of the island was finally settled only by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923. In it Turkey recognised the decision of the Powers of February 1914, and with it Greek sovereignty over Lemnos, Samothrace, Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria. Imbros and Tenedos returned to Turkey. Under the Straits convention signed at the same time, however, Lemnos, lying at their entrance, was to remain demilitarised.