Treaty
On May 11, a new peace conference opened at Batum. At this conference Ottomans extended their demands to include Tiflis as well as Alexandropol and Echmiadzin; they also wanted a railroad to be built to connect Kars and Julfa with Baku. The new Armenian state, through which this transport corridor would run, was to give free right of passage. The Armenian and Georgian members of the Republic’s delegation began to stall. Beginning on May 21, the Ottoman army moved ahead once again into areas of Russian Armenia that had not been under the sultan’s control since the seventeenth century. The conflict led to the Battle of Sardarapat (May 21–29), the Battle of Kara Killisse (1918) (May 24–28), and the Battle of Bash Abaran (May 21–24).
The treaty was signed while the Third Army held positions 7 kilometers from Yerevan and only 10 kilometers from Echmiadzin. The treaty needed to be examined and confirmed by the Central Powers. Fifteen days after the treaty, delegates from Armenia were asked to come to Constantinople. In the surrendered territories the majority of the 1,250,000 pre-war inhabitants had been Armenians, with more than 400,000 in the ceded sector of Yerevan province alone.
Read more about this topic: Treaty Of Batum
Famous quotes containing the word treaty:
“No treaty is ever an impediment to a cheat.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“It is accordance with our determination to refrain from aggression and build up a sentiment and practice among nations more favorable to peace ... that we have incurred the consent of fourteen important nations to the negotiation of a treaty condemning recourse to war, renouncing it as an instrument of national policy.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.”
—Maurice Blanchot (b. 1907)