Turkey and Ottoman Empire
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This is the 28th Anniversary of the massacre at Khojaly, when Armenian forces destroyed an Azerbaijani town in Nagorno-Karabakh and killed over 600 people in cold blood. The following is the text of an interview I gave to Eurasia Diary/Eurasia Media Network with my thoughts on the event: ED: 28 years have now passed since…
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In 1914 there was unease within British Liberalism about allying itself with Russia in pursuance of its Great War. Sure, the Russian Steamroller was the necessary instrument to occupy the Germans in a two front war while they could be worn down by a Royal Navy Blockade. But Russia was, after all, geopolitical enemy number…
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The short answer is: when Tsar Nicholas II offered his country and its population up to Britain in its Great War of 1914 to destroy Germany and break up the Ottoman Empire. In waging that War, in which Russia was bled to collapse in return for substantial British finance to continue fighting to the bitter…
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May 2019 marks the Centenary of the invasion of Ottoman Anatolia by the Greek Army, acting as Lloyd George’s cat’s-paw to enforce a punitive settlement on the Turks. The political and military assault launched by Britain during the Great War on neutral Greece and the devastating effect this ultimately had on the Greek people across…
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The Young Turk government in Istanbul (aside from Enver Pasha anyway), the Sultan/Caliph, and even the leader of the Turkish resurgence in Eastern Anatolia, Mustapha Kemal, were all favourably disposed to Britain and the West. The Turkish leadership would have been very open to a reasonable and honourable peace settlement with the Allies, either negotiated…
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Aside from the policy of the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, there were two other factors that led to the loss of the Caucasus to the Bolsheviks. The first of these was that special and discordant element in the region, the Armenians – who immensely complicated matters. The second was Britain’s continuing and purposeless hostile…
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Lloyd George gave the coup de grace to the Russian Whites in his infamous Guildhall speech of 8 November 1919. He made the speech without consulting his Cabinet colleagues and it had the effect of a bombshell. As Harold Nicolson wrote the diplomacy of Lloyd George was most of all characterised by its privacy –…
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As early as the end of January 1919 Lloyd George indicated to the Allied Supreme Council that, despite the influx of troops over the previous mouths, he saw the British occupation of the Caucasus as a temporary phenomenon. On 6 March the Inter-Departmental Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs under Lord Curzon, to which the Cabinet…
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British policy with regard to Russia and the Caucasus was formed in the Imperial War Cabinet. This was founded in 1916 after Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister. Its function was to concentrate power in the hands of the few (rather than the 22 of the normal Cabinet) so that the War could be…
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In January 1919 General George Milne, who led the British military in the Caucasus, wrote the following letter to his superior, Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, telling him just what the British military thought of the various peoples of the Caucasus: “I am fully aware that the withdrawal of the British…
