Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/250

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Turkey permitting the Oecumenical Patriarchate to remain at the Phanar in Stamboul subject to its disestablishment and to the departure of Meletios IV, the then Patriarch. With this precedent agreement, Greece recognized in the Peace Treaty of July 24 "her obligation to make reparation for the damage caused in Anatolia by the acts of the Greek Army or administration which were contrary to the laws of war. On the other hand, Turkey, in consideration of the financial situation of Greece resulting from the prolongation of the war and from its consequences, finally renounces all claims for reparation against the Greek Government." In lieu of reparation, Turkey accepted the suburb of Karagatch across the Maritza from Adrianople, which was surrendered by the Greek Army on September 15 in as wrecked a condition as the towns from which the Greek Army had fled in Anatolia a year before.

On August 23 the Grand National Assembly at Angora ratified the Peace Treaty of Lausanne by a vote of 215 to 20, and on the following day the Allied evacuation of Constantinople and the Straits began, to be completed within a period of six weeks. . . .

To realize the meaning of the Treaty of Lausanne, we shall have to go back some distance into Ottoman history. Sultan Selim III who was deposed in 1808, was possibly the first of the Ottoman reformers. Mahmoud II who succeeded him, was another great Sultan who saw the need of introducing Western methods into his Eastern realm, and it was he who abolished the Janissaries in 1826 as a result of their long opposition to