Finno-Turkish peace

On 11 May 1918 a peace treaty between Finland and the Ottoman Empire was signed in Berlin. It was signed for Finland by two senators: Edvard Hjelt, a chemist and Finland’s envoy extraordinary in Berlin, who two months earlier had concluded peace with Germany in the same city, and the lawyer Allan Serlachius, Finland’s chargé d’affaires in Christiania, today’s Oslo. The Sultan’s government was represented by its ambassador in Berlin, the former grand vizier İbrahim Hakkı Pasha. The choice of place was no accident: Berlin was the Finnish government’s main window on the world of the Central Powers.

The treaty was needed because formally the two states were still divided by war. Finland, as a Grand Duchy, had belonged to the Russian Empire, with which Turkey had been at war since the autumn of 1914. After the Finns declared independence in December 1917, the Ottoman government recognised it on 21 February 1918, following Germany and Austria-Hungary. Now the aim was to settle the question of the state of war and arrange mutual relations. The representatives of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud’s government signed the treaty a few days after the last Reds had laid down their arms and the civil war had ended.

The short document had eight articles. The first stated that there was no state of war between the parties and that they wished henceforth to live in lasting peace and friendship. Diplomatic and consular relations were to be established after ratification. Since no agreements had existed between the two countries until then, within two years they were to conclude a consular convention and a treaty of commerce and navigation, and until then to treat each other on a most-favoured-nation basis. The parties undertook to release at once the interned civilians of the other side and to send prisoners of war home. Finland was to apply to Ottoman subjects the same rules for liquidating the effects of the war as to Germans, and Turkey to give Finns the most favourable treatment accorded to Russians or Ukrainians. Any commission to assess war damage was to meet in Berlin. The treaty also provided for the opening of postal and telegraph communications.

The agreement with Turkey, however, contained none of the political and economic burdens that Finland had accepted in the March peace with Germany. Its significance was above all symbolic: it was another confirmation of Finnish independence by the Central Powers, while Great Britain, distrustful of the German-aligned government in Helsinki, still made recognition of Finland conditional. Ten days later, on 21 May, the same Finnish plenipotentiaries signed a twin treaty with Bulgaria in Berlin.

Finland ratified the peace with Turkey on 19 July 1918. Ten days later İbrahim Hakkı Pasha died in Berlin. The relations provided for in the treaty had no time to develop, because in the autumn the Ottoman Empire lost the war and began to fall apart. Diplomatic relations with Finland were established only in the mid-1920s, by the Republic of Turkey.