17/6/1919 Turkey’s prime minister fails to charm the Paris Conference

The Allies are waiting to see whether the Germans will finally accept the peace terms, with Fochready to invade Germany if they fail to do so. In the meantime, the work of the Paris Conference continues. Today the Allied leaders hear Damad Ferid Pasha, the Turkish prime minister. He attempts to ingratiate himself with the Allies by laying all the blame for Turkey’s entry into the war and the terrible massacres of the Armenians onto the Ottoman Empire’s three leaders in 1914, Enver, Talaat and Djemal (all of whom have conveniently fled into exile). It would be wrong, he says, to punish the Turkish people as a whole for their crimes. Accordingly he rejects any talk of dismembering the Turkish Empire.

The Turkish prime minister’s presentation does not have a positive effect on the Allies. Lloyd George see Ferid Pasha’s speech as little more than a joke, while