The Constantinople Agreement (18 March 1915) was a set of secret assurances made by the Triple Entente during World War I. France and Great Britain promised to give Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and the Dardanelles (land on either coast in Thrace and Asia Minor), which at the time were part of the Ottoman Empire, to the Russians in the event of victory. The city of Constantinople was intended to be a free port.
It 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. The agreement was revealed by the Bolsheviks in 1917, making public the British diplomatic intentions and encouraging the passing of the Balfour Declaration. Knowledge of the agreement was used by Kemal Ataturk to regain Constantinople for the Turkish Republic, risking war with the Allies.
Read more about Constantinople Agreement: Details, Conflicting Promises, Responsibility, Purpose, Consequences
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“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
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