Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/238

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only be agreed to after the Greek evacuation. The Allied Governments replied on April 15 that the period of the Greek evacuation would be shortened but that it was conditional on a prior armistice. On April 22, Yusuf Kemal Bey offered to meet Allied delegates at Ismid in an effort to explore further peace conditions which the acceptance of the armistice proposal would impose on his Government, conditions which had been left "open to discussion" in the Allied Note of April 15. The Ismid proposal came to nothing and in June, Ali Fethy Bey, Minister of the Interior at Angora, was dispatched to Paris and London with the object of discovering the nature of the peace conditions which had not yet been defined by the Allies and effecting an agreement if possible.

On July 22, the Royalist Greek command transferred 20,000 Old Greek troops from its lines behind Smyrna to the Chatalja lines in Eastern Thrace for a move on Constantinople itself, a move which the Allied Governments vetoed. It replaced them behind Smyrna with raw Anatolian Greek levies and on July 30, "autonomy under the guarantee of the Greek Army" was proclaimed upon "Ionia." This radically changed the military situation, but Fevzi Pasha who was now ready at Angora, was ordered by his Government to withhold action pending news from Fethy Bey. In Paris, Fethy Bey had been well received but when he crossed to London late in July, Lord Curzon's engagement with him was cancelled and it was only after protests were made on his behalf that Sir William Tyrrell of the Foreign Office received him. Sir William, however, was not empowered to discuss terms of peace and on