Treaties of Batum

On 4 June 1918 at Batum the Ottoman Empire signed three separate treaties “of peace and friendship” with the states that had arisen a few days earlier from the ruins of the Transcaucasian Federative Republic: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. So ended the negotiations opened at Batum on 11 May. The Turks obtained much more than the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had given them: further districts of Georgia and Armenia and the right to move troops across Transcaucasia. The British chronology of the war records the signing of the treaties under 8 June, but the documents themselves and all studies give the date as 4 June.

Peace at gunpoint

The Ottoman delegation was led, as in May, by the minister of justice, Halil Bey (Menteşe), and the commander of the Turkish forces in the Caucasus, Vehip Pasha. The other side no longer had much to negotiate. Georgia had declared independence on 26 May and was counting on German protection, but Turkish troops stood in its southern districts. Armenia was in an even worse position. Its forces at Sardarabad and Bash Abaran had halted the march on Erivan, but General Nazarbekian’s main forces had been beaten at Karakilisa, ammunition was short, and hundreds of thousands of refugees were crowded on the scrap of land around Erivan. On 30 May the Armenian National Council, which two days earlier had assumed power over the Armenian lands, informed the Turks that it accepted their terms. Talks with the Armenian delegation had been going on since 29 May. On the Armenian side the treaty was signed by Alexander Khatisian, Hovhannes Kajaznuni and Mikayel Papajanian. For Azerbaijan, according to some studies, it was signed by the chairman of the National Council, Mammad Amin Rasulzade, and the foreign minister, Mammad Hasan Hajinski.

The terms

Armenia paid the heaviest price. The new frontier, described in detail in the second article of the treaty, ran from the summit of Aragats towards Etchmiadzin (today Vagharshapat), the seat of the head of the Armenian Church, and passed round it at a distance of only seven kilometres. Further on it ran parallel to the railway from Alexandropol to Julfa, a few kilometres from the track, so that the whole railway line remained in Turkish hands. Armenia lost most of the Alexandropol and Etchmiadzin districts, the Surmalu district with Mount Ararat, and parts of the Erivan, Sharur-Daralagez and Nakhichevan districts. According to the American historian of Armenian descent Richard Hovannisian, the lands taken from Armenia and Georgia at Batum over and above what the Turks had received at Brest totalled about 21,000 square kilometres, and before the war about 400,000 Armenians and nearly 200,000 Muslims had lived on them. The republic was left, according to various estimates, with about 10,000 to 12,000 square kilometres of mountainous land around Erivan and Lake Sevan.

The other provisions showed how the Turks imagined the future of Transcaucasia. Armenia had to disarm the “bands” on its territory, in practice the Armenian volunteer units, and guarantee Muslims freedom of worship. The Sultan’s name was to be mentioned in the mosques, and a chief mufti was to reside in Erivan. The Armenian government also undertook to withdraw all Armenian armed forces from Baku, and a separate protocol allowed Turkish troops to march along Armenia’s roads and buy food and fodder locally. The Ottoman Empire promised armed assistance in maintaining order “if requested”. The treaty with Azerbaijan contained the same clause, and there it mattered most. The Azerbaijani government wanted to take Baku from the Baku Commune (PL), and the treaty gave a formal basis for sending Turkish troops there and building up the Caucasus Army of Islam.

Georgia lost Batum, already ceded to the Turks at Brest, and in addition the district of Akhalkalaki and part of the district of Akhaltsikhe, inhabited largely by Armenians and Georgians. It had to agree to the free use of the Transcaucasian railways by Turkish troops and their allies, and according to Soviet studies also undertake to demobilise its army. All three treaties were to be ratified, and the ratifications exchanged in Constantinople within a month.

German displeasure

The treaties did not end the dispute over Transcaucasia; they merely moved it to another level. Germany, which at the end of May had taken Georgia under its protection, did not want the Turks to whittle down the territory of the young republics and take control of the railway from Batum through Tiflis to Baku, by which Berlin wanted to carry oil and manganese. The German observer at the conference, General Otto von Lossow, left Batum even before the treaties were signed. The German government soon protested against their provisions and pressed for a conference in Constantinople at which all the Central Powers and the Caucasian republics would settle the region’s affairs anew. On 5 June the war minister, Enver Pasha, sailed from Constantinople for Batum together with the German chief of staff of the Ottoman army, General Hans von Seeckt, to seek a compromise. Soviet Russia had already announced in May that it would not recognise any agreements concluded without its participation.

For the Armenians the treaty was a humiliation, but also the first act in which the Ottoman Empire recognised the existence of an Armenian state. The Turks did not enter Erivan, and Armenia survived the summer within its truncated borders. The Batum settlement lost its significance after Turkey’s defeat. The Armistice of Mudros of 30 October 1918 provided for the withdrawal of Ottoman troops from Transcaucasia.