Moudhros Armistice of 1918

a treaty signed on October 30 by representatives of Great Britain and the sultan’s government of Turkey aboard the British cruiser Agamemnon in the port of Moudhros (also Mudros), Limnos Island, after Turkey’s defeat in World War I (1914–18). The Moudhros Armistice provided for (1) the opening of the Straits to the navies of the Entente and the right of the Allies to occupy the forts on the Bosporus and the Dardanelles; (2) the capitulation of the remnants of the Turkish troops in Hejaz, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen and their withdrawal from Iran, Cilicia, and Transcaucasia; and (3) the occupation by the Allies of the six Armenian vilayets “in the event of disorders in any one of them” and, in general, of any strategic point in Turkey if the Allies deemed it necessary for reasons of “security.” These and other provisions were aimed at preparing the definitive partition of Turkey and using its territory as a springboard for anti-Soviet intervention. The implementation of the Moudhros Armistice was thwarted by the Turkish people’s national liberation struggle, which ended with the signing of the Mudanya Armistice of 1922 and the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923.