Constantinople Agreement

The Constantinople Agreement (also known as the Straits Agreement) resulted from a secret exchange of diplomatic correspondence between members of the Triple Entente from 4 March to 10 April 1915 during World War I. In the event of an Entente victory, France and Great Britain promised to give Constantinople and the Dardanelles (at the time part of the Ottoman Empire) to the Russian Empire. Britain and France put forward their own claims: to an increased sphere of influence in Persia (present-day Iran) for Britain, and to the annexation of Syria (including Palestine) and Cilicia for France. The three Triple Entente powers also agreed that the Holy Places and Arabia would come under independent Muslim rule. The Greek government remained technically neutral in the war until June 1917, but in 1915 it negotiated with the Allies, offering soldiers and (especially) a geographical launching-point for attacks on the Turkish Straits. Greece itself wanted control of Constantinople, but Russia vetoed the Greek proposal, because its own main war-goal was to control the Straits and to take control of Constantinople.

Though the Anglo-French attempt to seize the area in the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 to 1916 failed, the Allies, eventually victorious, nevertheless occupied Constantinople after the end of World War I in November 1918. By that time, however, the October Revolution of 1917 had brought about Russian withdrawal from the war, and as Russia was no longer one of the Allied Powers the agreement was not implemented. The Bolshevik government had published the text of the Constantinople Agreement in accordance with the Soviet move against the practice of secret diplomacy propounded in the Decree on Peace of 8 November[O.S. 26 October] 1917.