The removal of the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI Vahideddin (d. 1926), is among history’s greatest anti-climaxes. The Ottomans had (obviously) lost World War I, which resulted in the dismantling of their empire under the terms of the 1918 armistice and the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. Sèvres not only put the empire’s Arab dominions under British and French control, but it also apportioned big chunks of the real Turkish heartland of the empire, Anatolia, out to various European states (France, Greece, Italy, Britain) either as ceded territory or in the form of “zones of control.” In short, there was really no more sultanate for Mehmed to rule.
Read the rest at my new home, Foreign Exchanges!
