New Zealand's Chanak bellicosity: Ian McGibbon notes the centenary of the crisis that could have plunged New Zealand into a war with Turkish nationalists.

• Date: 01 September 2022
• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Author: McGibbon, Ian

Russia's aggression in Ukraine has gripped New Zealanders' attention, and induced their government to send troops to Europe to assist that beleaguered country. One hundred years ago, New Zealanders were equally transfixed by events occurring not far to the south of Ukraine--the possibility of a major war breaking out with Turkish nationalist forces in September 1922.

The Chanak Crisis had its origins in the Allied victory over the Ottoman Empire in the First World War in November 1918. Under the armistice arrangements, British and French troops occupied not only Istanbul (then Constantinople), the Ottoman capital, but also positions commanding the Dardanelles, the strategic waterway that linked the Aegean and Marmara seas. It had been the Allied attempt to seize this waterway that had brought some 17,000 New Zealanders to the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915--and cost more than 2700 of them their lives.

The first attempt to reach a peace settlement with the Ottoman Empire, the Treaty of Sevres negotiated in Paris in 1920, provided for control of the Dardanelles to go to the Greeks, and for the occupation of...