London agreement extended to Turkey

The British chronology of the war records under 26 January 1915 that the governments of Britain, France and Russia agreed to regard the Pact of London as binding in the war with the Ottoman Empire as well. We have not been able to find the text of this understanding or to establish in what form it was concluded. It was probably an exchange of notes or telegrams between the three capitals rather than a new document signed with the same ceremony as the declaration of September 1914.

A war that had not been foreseen

In the declaration signed in London in September 1914 the three powers undertook not to conclude a separate peace “during the present war” and to settle the peace terms jointly. The document did not name the enemies, but it was drawn up at a time when the Entente was fighting Germany and Austria-Hungary. Turkey was then still neutral. It entered the war only at the end of October, when its fleet attacked Russian ports on the Black Sea. At the beginning of November war was declared on it by Russia and then by Britain and France. It could therefore be argued whether the war with Turkey was part of the same “present war” or a separate conflict which each of the powers could end on its own.

Each had its own aims in Turkey

The doubt was not purely legal. Each of the allies had its own, often conflicting, interests in the Ottoman Empire. Russia had long sought control of Constantinople and the Straits, and in the autumn of 1914 the British Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, had assured it that their fate would be settled in accordance with its interests. Britain thought above all of the security of Egypt, the Suez Canal and the route to India, and its troops had already taken Basra on the Persian Gulf. France had huge capital invested in Turkey and ambitions in Syria. A separate peace with the sultan would have allowed one of the allies to secure its own gains at the expense of the others.

The matter grew in importance in January 1915. The Russians, who at the end of December had asked their allies for help against the Turkish offensive in the Caucasus, had meanwhile routed the Turks at Sarikamish, and in London a naval expedition was already being prepared against the Dardanelles, with Constantinople as its objective. The Entente was also courting Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, promising them gains, Ottoman lands among them. Extending the obligation to the war with Turkey gave the allies the certainty that none of them would come to terms with Constantinople behind the backs of the others.

What followed

Much more far-reaching agreements on the future of the Ottoman Empire soon followed. As early as March and April 1915 Britain and France agreed, in a secret exchange of notes, that after the war Russia would receive Constantinople and the Straits. In 1916 the British and French, with Russia’s consent, agreed on the division of the empire’s Arab provinces in the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Japan and Italy acceded to the Pact of London itself in 1915. Russia broke it only in 1918, by concluding a separate peace with the Central Powers, Turkey among them.