Talk:Constantinople Agreement

From the article: "The agreement was never carried out due to the failure of the Dardanelles campaign and the threat Britain saw in Russia after the former finally reached the city in 1918." ---> Of course, after Russia pulled out of WW1 (and the Bolsheviks took over), it was no longer relevant/topical/necessary to give the area to Russia. --Oddeivind (talk) 17:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes this immediately caught my eye as well. Neither of the reasons given are actually reasons why the agreement wasn't implemented. The Dardanelles campaign is irrelevant because the war still ended with the Allies occupying Constantinople and the Straits; they were fully capable of giving Constantinople to Russia in the Treaty of Sevres if they'd wanted to. (Whether the Russians would have been any more successful in the Turkish War of Independence than the Greeks were is another matter.) That they didn't isn't because of "the threat Britain saw in Russia" after the war, but rather because by 1918 Russia was no longer considered one of the Allied powers. The Bolshevik government was seen as illegitimate, and their withdrawal from the war by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was seen as a massive betrayal of the Allied cause. Russia wasn't invited to the Paris Peace Conference, and the Allies had by then invaded Russia and were engaged in hostilities against the Bolsheviks. Seeing as I'm not the only one who's been brought up short by this, I'm going to amend the article. Binabik80 (talk) 15:58, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

With the Crimean War and ever after, it was one of Britan's chief geostrategic objectives that Russia should have no control over the Dardanelles. Promising Russia exactly that was a major upheaval of British policies, and it is certainly no question why they accepted a welcome excuse not to keep the agreement, but whether they ever really intended to. 2003:F2:B704:D825:60B8:66B1:E224:1399 (talk) 16:43, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

It would be interesting to know when these secret agreements were made. Before WW1 or during WW1? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.100.8 (talk) 10:06, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

After the Russian Revolution and the start of the Civil War, France and the UK had other intentions about who would end up with Constantinople and the Dardanelles. See the articles on the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and Turkish War of Independence.
A minor point: in the first sentence, the word "assurances" implies to me something which the Triple Entente states promised to an outside party rather than an agreement among themselves. Perhaps the substitution of wording using "agreements" or "treaty" would be better?
    ←   ZScarpia   10:28, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

• Feel free to edit, I am poking around trying to get to the bottom of just when exactly it was decided to do this, who decided and why. Looks like it was a British idea (surprisingly) and at least as far back as November 1914, possibly earlier, the why part is as clear as mud haha.Selfstudier (talk) 15:52, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
• I haven't forgotten about this, the sources for the period start of WWI (and in certain respects prior to that) leading up to this agreement, especially the first 3 months, are very confusing, getting there slowly.Selfstudier (talk) 18:34, 9 October 2019 (UTC)