Summary
The international state the King-Crane Commission Report proposes for Constantinople and the Straits: completely separated from Turkey, directly and permanently vested in the League of Nations, and administered through a single territorially and strategically disinterested Mandatory responsible to the League (Report of the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, lines 5561-5908, 6409-6908).
Details
- The conception: a Mandatory appointed by, responsible to and removable by the League, but permanent except for cause; an international commission on the Danube model is rejected because actual governmental functions are involved. The State would include Constantinople and reasonable territory on either side of the Straits, all fortifications abolished, Constantinople no longer Turkey’s capital, the Sultan possibly still residing there, and full consideration given to Moslem sentiment (lines 6409-6650 approx.).
- The reasons given run from Wilson’s twelfth Point on the Dardanelles as a free passage under international guarantees — the Straits having been closed almost continuously since 1911 — through Woolf’s The Future of Constantinople, quoted at length, to Turkey’s forfeiture of the responsibility by her record and the advantage to Turkey’s own new government of removal from the centre of intrigue (lines 6409-6908 approx.).
- Boundaries, as Dr. Albert H. Lybyer states them: at minimum both sides of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles and the whole Sea of Marmara shore; in Europe the remnant of Turkey in Europe to the 1915 Turco-Bulgarian frontier, the Greek claim to Turkish Thrace being held unjustified on the population figures given; in Asia a line east of the Sakaria river to south of Mt. Ida, Brusa left to the Turks and the whole Troad going with the Straits. The area’s population at the outset is put at about two millions, about 60 per cent Turks, 25 per cent Greeks and 10 per cent Armenians (lines 6651-6908 approx.).
- Section Three’s recommendations propose its formation under a Mandatary as recommendation 2, and its inclusion, with Armenia and the continued Turkish State, in a general single mandate for Asia Minor asked of the United States, America being held the only Great Power territorially and strategically disinterested for this mandate (lines 7409-7760 approx.).
Related pages
Report of the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, King-Crane Commission, League of Nations, Armenia, Albert H. Lybyer