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The Turkish--Armenian War Of 1920

The Turkish--Armenian War, known as the Eastern Front of the Turkish War of Independence in Turkey, refers to a conflict in the autumn of 1920 between the First Republic of Armenia and the provisional government of the Turkish national movement, following the signing of the Treaty of Sevres. The Turkish Army under Kâzım Karabekir defeated the Armenians and retook the land initially lost to Armenia in the aftermath of World War I and to the Russian Empire in 1878. The Turkish military victory was followed by Soviet Russia's occupation and sovietization of the rest of Armenia. The Treaty of Moscow (1921) between Soviet Russia and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (March 1921) and the identical Treaty of Kars (October 1921) completed the effective partitioning of the territorial claims of post-war Armenia between Turkey and Soviet Russia. With the dissolution of the Russian Empire in the wake of the February 1917 revolution and of the Transcaucasian Federation in May 1918, the Armenians of the South Caucasus declared their independence and formally established the First Republic of Armenia. In its two years of existence, the tiny republic, with its capital in Yerevan, was beset with a number of debilitating problems, ranging from fierce territorial disputes with its neighbors and an appalling refugee crisis. Armenia's most crippling problem was its dispute with its neighbor to the west, the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had killed as many as a million Armenians and weakened the country during the Armenian Genocide. Although the armies of the Ottoman Empire eventually occupied the South Caucasus in the summer of 1918 and stood poised to crush the republic, Armenia resisted until the end of October, when the Ottoman Empire capitulated to the Allied powers. Though the Ottoman Empire was partially occupied by the Allies, they did not withdraw their forces from the pre-war Russo-Turkish boundary until February 1919 and maintained many troops mobilized along this frontier. Bolshevik and Turkish nationalist movements During the First World War and in the ensuing peace negotiations in Paris, the Allies had vowed to punish the Young Turks and reward some, if not all, the eastern provinces of the empire to the nascent Armenian republic. But the Allies were more concerned with concluding the peace treaties with Germany and the other European members of the Central Powers. In matters related to the Near East, the principal powers, Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States, had conflicting interests over the spheres of influence they were to assume. While there were crippling internal disputes between the Allies, and the United States was reluctant to accept a mandate over Armenia, disaffected elements in Anatolia in 1920 coalesced and formed the Turkish National Movement, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The Turkish Nationalists considered the partition of Anatolia to be unacceptable. Their avowed goal was to "guarantee the safety and unity of Anatolia." The Bolsheviks sympathized with the Turkish Movement due to their mutual opposition to the western powers, or "Western Imperialism," as the Bolsheviks referred to it. In his message to Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, dated 26 April 1920, Kemal promised to coordinate his military operations with the Bolsheviks' "fight against imperialist governments" and requested five million lira in gold as well as armaments "as first aid" to his forces. In 1920, the Lenin government supplied the Kemalists with 6,000 rifles, more than five million rifle cartridges, and 17,600 projectiles, as well as 200.6 kg of gold bullion; in the following two years the amount of aid increased. In the negotiations of the Treaty of Moscow (1921), the Bolsheviks demanded that the Turks cede Batum and Nakhchivan; they also asked for more rights in the future status of the Straits. Despite the concessions made by the Turks, the financial and military supplies were slow in coming. Only after the decisive Battle of Sakarya (August--September 1921), the aid started to flow in faster. After much delays, the Armenians received from the Allies in July 1920 about 40,000 uniforms and 25,000 rifles with a great amount of ammunition. It was not until August 1920 that the Allies drafted the peace settlement of the Near East, in the form of the Treaty of Sèvres. The United States had refused to assume the Armenian mandate in May of that year, but the Allies delegated the US to draw the western boundaries of the republic. The US allotted four of the six eastern provinces to the Ottoman Empire,