Turkey alone among 1918’s defeated powers rejected the imposed peace

Evidence

Of the three major powers defeated in 1918, Turkey alone was able to reject the peace imposed by the conquering allies and to negotiate freely and on equal terms a peace securing its basic national objectives. At a time when almost all of the Islamic world was falling under the dominance of the imperial powers of Europe, Turkey was one of the very few that managed not just to preserve, but to reinforce its sovereign independence. By these two successes alone, the new republican regime was able to infuse in a defeated and dispirited people a new sense of pride—of self-respect concerning the past and selfconfidence for the future. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1755

Of the three major powers defeated in 1918, Turkey alone was able to reject the peace imposed by the conquering allies and to negotiate freely and on equal terms a peace securing its basic national objectives. At a time when almost all of the Islamic world was falling under the dominance of the imperial powers of Europe, Turkey was one of the very few that managed not just to preserve, but to reinforce its sovereign independence. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1755

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what Atatürk’s foundational achievement was: not victory but the rejection of imposed terms.
• XREF: Corroborates and complicates the Said-adjacent narrative: this is a non-Western actor negotiating on equal terms, a counterexample to one-way Orientalist knowledge production.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1755