This Al Stewart’s (more interesting) version of what went down at the infamous Versailles Treaty after the armistice.
That would be the first global appearance of Progressive Woodrow Wilson, who certainly didn’t impress Europe.
A much more interesting treaty was this one:
The Sèvres treaty marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and its dismemberment. The terms it stipulated included the renunciation of all non-Turkish territory and its cession to the Allied administration.[6] Notably, the ceding of Eastern Mediterranean lands allowed the creation of new forms of government, including Mandatory Palestine and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.[7]
The terms of the treaty stirred hostility and nationalist feeling amongst Turks. The signatories of the treaty were stripped of their citizenship by the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,[8] and this ignited the Turkish War of Independence. In that war, Atatürk led the Turkish nationalists to defeating the combined armies of the signatories of the Treaty of Sèvres, including the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. In a new treaty, that of Lausanne in 1923, Turkish sovereignty was preserved through the establishment of the Republic of Turkey.
The map is enlightening.
As Al Stewart says, so cynically, “pax vobiscum”.
Thanks for uploading Al Stewart. Lyrically, this has to be one of his best. I have various versions of this in my record cabinet but for various reasons, I don’t get to listen to music as often as I did. From the other side of the world, I get the impression that Europe is a tinderbox just waiting to ignite. It is not a case of whether but when this will happen.
To Wilson’s credit, he opposed France’s demand for massive reparations from Germany, which helped create the conditions which enabled the Nazis’ rise to power.
The Armenian genocides were begun by the Caliphate, but continued and expanded by the Turkish military government which took effective control of the Turkish government around 1915. So, under the “anti-Islamic” government of Attaturk, the Turks
1) stripped citizenship from the signers of the Treaty dissolving the Ottoman empire;
2) continued the Armenian genocide and aggressively protested any international recognition of the tragedy;
3)continued to send observant Muslims to Germany as “guest workers”;
4) carried out the Turkish occupation of Cyprus and expelled non-Turks from occupied Cyprus.
Now we have an Islamist government in Turkey, building up a massive army under the tender protection of NATO. And the difference between the present Islamist regime and the previous “secular” regime is…?????