Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / Armenian Diplomats in Paris: The Treaty of Sèvres
Transcript
- Lucas: We’ve walked through the mountains of Avarayr, the streets of New Julfa, and the blood-soaked fields of Sardarabad, but there is another front in Armenia’s long struggle that rarely gets the spotlight it deserves. It wasn’t fought with swords or even just bullets, but with pens, briefcases, and the fragile hope of international law in the halls of Paris. Luna: The peace talks after the war? Lucas: Exactly. By early nineteen eighteen, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation had actually declared an independent republic in Yerevan. But they were surrounded, exhausted, and running out of ammunition. They knew survival depended not just on holding their ground, but on convincing the victorious Allies that an Armenian state belonged on the map. Lucas: Enter Boghos Nubar, an older diplomat who had spent decades lobbying European courts. He arrived in Paris with a team that included Ardashes Karamanouk, a younger lawyer who spoke multiple languages and understood the intricacies of international treaties. They weren’t just asking for mercy; they were presenting a legal case for sovereignty based on self-determination. Luna: And President Wilson was listening at that point? Lucas: He certainly seemed to be. Wilson’s Fourteen Points had explicitly mentioned the right of small nations to form their own states, and the Armenians saw a direct line from those words to their survival. Nubar presented maps, demographic studies, and historical claims, arguing that the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire—places like Van and Bitlis—had a clear Armenian majority and needed protection from further massacres. Lucas: It was a sophisticated campaign. They didn’t just rely on pity; they relied on the emerging framework of collective security. The Near East Relief, which we touched on earlier with Hagop Margosian, played a huge role here too. Their photographs of survivors and their fundraising efforts in America kept the humanitarian crisis visible, putting pressure on diplomats to act. Luna: Did the other powers agree with them? Lucas: That’s where it got complicated. Britain and France had already signed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement in nineteen fifteen, carving up the Middle East between themselves without regard for ethnic lines. When the Armenians showed up demanding a large state stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, it clashed directly with French and British strategic interests in Syria and Iraq. Lucas: So you have this tension between Wilson’s idealism and the old-school realpolitik of London and Paris. The Americans liked the idea of an Armenian buffer state, but the British were worried about overextending their resources, and the French were more interested in protecting their cultural missions in Beirut than securing distant Caucasian borders. Luna: So the Armenians were caught between two different empires' interests. Lucas: Precisely. And then there was the issue of Turkey itself. Even though the Ottoman government was defeated, the Turkish National Movement under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was rising in Anatolia. They refused to recognize any treaty that stripped away Turkish territory, and they made it clear they would fight rather than accept an Armenian state that controlled their eastern border. Lucas: The Armenian delegation, led by Nubar and supported by figures like Missak Torossian who coordinated with American aid groups, tried to play these powers against each other. They appealed to the League of Nations, hoping to get an international mandate similar to what happened in some other parts of the former Ottoman realm. Luna: They thought the League would protect them. Lucas: They really did. The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in nineteen twenty, looked like a victory on paper. It recognized an independent Armenia with significant territory, including access to the Black Sea at Trabzon. For a few months, it felt like the nightmare of the deportation might finally have an end in sight. Lucas: But treaties are only as strong as the will to enforce them. The United States never joined the League of Nations, so there was no American muscle behind the guarantee. Britain and France were already pulling back from their commitments in the region, looking toward stability and oil rather than enforcing new borders. Luna: And Turkey just ignored the whole thing? Lucas: Turkey ignored it and then attacked. While the diplomats were signing papers in Paris, the Turkish army was moving into the disputed territories. Without a standing army of their own—having disbanded many units due to lack of supplies—the First Republic couldn’t hold the land granted to them by Sèvres. Lucas: It was a devastating realization. The ink was dry, but the guns were still loud. The Armenians found themselves trapped between a hostile Turkey to the west and a Bolshevik Russia to the north, which was also expanding its influence into the Caucasus at the same time. Luna: So the diplomatic win became a military loss almost immediately. Lucas: That’s the tragedy of Sèvres. It gave Armenia everything it wanted on a map, but none of the power to keep it. Within a year, the Soviet Red Army moved into Yerevan, and the First Republic collapsed. The Treaty of Sèvres was eventually replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne in nineteen twenty-three, which erased Armenia from the map entirely and left millions of refugees scattered across the globe. Luna: It feels like a betrayal of the promise. Lucas: It does, and that sense of betrayal echoes through Armenian memory today. But I think there’s something else worth noting about those diplomats. Despite the outcome, Nubar and his team laid the groundwork for modern international human rights law. They forced the world to acknowledge that mass slaughter could be a crime against humanity, not just a side effect of war. Lucas: Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word 'genocide,' later cited the Armenian experience as a primary inspiration for his work. So while they lost the territory, they helped change the language of justice for the entire world. Luna: That’s a heavy legacy to carry. Lucas: It is. And it reminds us that history isn’t just about battles won or lost, but about the ideas we plant along the way. The dream of a sovereign Armenia survived the collapse of the republic, carried forward by diaspora communities and generations of advocates who refused to let the promise of Sèvres fade completely. Luna: Do you think they ever got closure on that? Lucas: Closure is a tricky word when dealing with centuries of displacement. But seeing the world slowly come to terms with the events of nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventeen must have offered some measure of validation. The fact that we can discuss this now, with such specificity, is part of that ongoing reckoning. Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, supporting the show helps us dig deeper into stories like these. If today was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it keeps the research going. Lucas: It really does. And as we look ahead, there are so many other threads to pull—like how Armenian culture adapted in the Soviet era, or the complex politics of Nagorno-Karabakh—but that’s a journey for another day. Thanks for walking through this with me.