menian Republic of Erivan; and the line of railway from Azer- baijan to Turkish territory passed through the hostile Armenian State. In Sept. 1920 the Nationalists, in agreement with Russia, therefore began military operations against the Republic of Erivan. The upshot was that by the end of Nov. the Republic was crushed, its territory occupied, many thousands of its people massacred, its Government overthrown and replaced by a Soviet Government which accepted Russian mediation and onerous terms of peace. These included the cession of the districts of Kars and Ardahan to Turkey, together with additional territory traversed by the railway from Azerbaijan to the Turkish frontier. Nationalist leaders had always urged that time was on their side. During Dec. 1920 the elections in Greece overthrew the Government of M. Venizelos; and the return of the ex-King Constantine took place the same month as the result of a plebis- cite. These events changed the whole policy of the Allied Powers towards Greece. But a settlement of Turkish questions remained as necessary to the Allies as ever. They therefore invited the Greek and Turkish Governments to send delegations to a confer- ence in London in Feb. 1921, for the purpose of reaching, if possible, a compromise on the Treaty of Sevres. The condition was made that the Turkish Delegation should include repre- sentatives of Angora. The conference finally made an offer to the two delegations, to be accepted or rejected as a whole by their Governments. The offer proposed various important changes in the Treaty, including evacuation of Constantinople by the Allied garrison, an increase in the strength permitted the Turkish army, and the granting of autonomy to the Smyrna zone under Turkish sovereignty, and a Christian governor. These terms were promptly rejected by the Greek Government, who then reopened hostilities against the Nationalists in opposition to Allied advice. The Greek aim was to reach Angora, and destroy the Nationalist army. At the end of March, however, the Greek army was heavily repulsed before Eskishehr and compelled to retreat to its original positions before Brusa and Ushak. At the beginning of July another Greek offensive was made, this time on a much greater scale. Afium Kara Hissar, Kutahia, and Eskishehr were captured, notwithstanding determined Turkish resistance, and the advances continued along the railway towards Angora. But in a great battle at the end of Aug., on the line of the Sakaria river, the Greek army failed to break through the Turkish entrenchments, and again retreated, this time to positions covering Eskishehr and Afium Kara Hissar. (W. J. C.*)
TURKISH CAMPAIGNS. Under this general heading the
operations in the World War involving Turkey in (i) the Caucasus, (2) Mesopotamia, (3) the Sinai area, and .(4) Syria, are described.
(I.) OPERATIONS ON THE CAUCASUS FRONT
A firm grasp of the military-geographical conditions on the Russo-Turkish frontier is an essential preliminary to an understanding of the operations in the Caucasus. In this region war, though waged with modern weapons, must be conducted by very old-fashioned methods; for the absence of railways and the rarity of good roads on the Turkish side from the first militated against, and indeed largely precluded, strategic mobility. In the vast area, 600 m. long by 300 wide, bounded by the S. coast of the Black Sea, the Russo-Turkish frontier, Lake Urmia and a line thence by Urfa to Angora, not a single railway exists. The only roads are the steep mountain track from Trebizond to Erzerum, a somewhat easier main road from Angora by Sivas and Erzinjan to Erzerum, the very steep mountain road from Kharput to Erzerum which at Garib meets the road crossing the wild Armenian Taurus from Diarbekr, the highway Mosul- Bitlis-Mush-Erzerum, and lastly the old caravan route from Erzerum by way of Bayazid into Persia. The only other means of communication are narrow tracks, made by use only and impossible to trace after a snowfall; they serve to indicate to the troops their lines of advance, but can in no sense be said to facilitate their march. Transport, apart from pack-animals, can only move in the few roads mentioned and even on these, which are all in bad condition, only with extreme difficulty. The rivers
as a rule can only be crossed at the fords, as any bridges hav long ago broken down, for in Turkey no attempt is made to keel up the roads, the high dues levied for this purpose disappear ing into the pockets of the officials.
It must always be remembered that a Turkish army operatin in the region of Erzerum has a line of communications over 600 n long to the nearest railhead at Angora or Ulu Kyshla, from whic points every shell has to be brought up by camel transport, takin I six weeks in transit. It would, therefore, have been of urgen I importance to the Turks, for this reason alone, to gain complet j command of the Black Sea, which would have made it possibl | for them to send supplies for the army by sea from Constantinopl to Trebizond and thence overland by the comparatively short route to Erzerum. However, they only succeeded for a shorj period at the beginning of the war, in asserting a sufficien superiority over the Russian Black Sea fleet to allow of saf( transit by sea to Trebizond, and it became impossible to count 01 this. The present writer had in 1913 drawn up for the Turkisl 1 general staff a memorandum, in which he fully discussed anJj recommended the reconstruction of the wholly antiquated: fortress of Erzerum, of which the newest works dated from 1864! the erection of barrier forts to secure the Trebizond road, ano other measures aimed at facilitating future operations in thil area. But this important problem received no attention, and the future theatre of war was left in such a condition as to remit impossible the defence of the frontier against a resolute attack, I
The main theatre of war of the eastern Anatolian campaign] of 1914-8 was Turkish Armenia. The geographical area 01 Armenia had no clearly defined limits, having become nothin; more than a geographical term for the districts of Russia, Peru and Turkey, which were inhabited by people of Armejuan nationality. The geographical limits of Armenia are cleariJ defined only in the Caucasian isthmus, where the boundary a formed by the little Caucasus, stretching south-eastward between Tillis and Akhaltsikh. In Persia the Armenian population in tha province of Azerbaijan melts gradually into the Persian from Lake Urmia eastward. To the S. the ethnographic bourn Ian corresponds more or less with the line of the Armenian Taurus and the parts of the Taurus stretching from the Cilician frontiei to the Euphrates gorge; but northern spurs of Kurdistan jut out into Armenian territory, e.g. especially in the region of Dersin which extends with its population of Kurdish tribesmen, who have a mortal feud with the Armenians, to just S. of Erzinjan In the W. conditions are the same as in Persia. As one goes towards Sivas, the Armenians melt away into the Turkish Mahommedan population, while to the N. Lazistan cuts off thd Armenian highlands from the sea. The course of the Juroch may be taken as the frontier between Pontus and Lazistan on the one side and Armenia on the other. In all this " Armenia " there is no territory inhabited exclusively by Armenians. As against this, countless Armenians are dispersed all over Turkey, and these communities of the dispersion are frequently, as in Adana (Cilicia), numerically strong and economically predominant.
Turkish Armenia is in parts a fertile land, but the climate is) most unfavourable from the military point of view. Long cold, winters, with heavy and frequent snowfalls, render almost impossible all strategic movement, and large bodies of troops; are always in danger of decimation by frost and hunger, while the short summer brings with it oppressive heat. Turkish Armenia, inside the stupendous mountain range which cuts it off from Russian Armenia, is a tangled mass of hills and valleys. The differences in height between the mountain ridges and their deep-cut gorges is very marked. The population is poor and scattered, so that in areas hundreds of square miles in extent there are neither tracks nor habitations to be found. Much of Turkish Armenia has never really been explored, and the representation of it on the maps is largely mere guesswork. Erzerum itself is one of the highest placed towns in the world; it stands over 6,000 ft. above sea-level. Its population was estimated (much too highly) at 120,000 in 1913.
For the Russians the strategic situation was much more favourable than for the Turks. Preparations for the eventuality
