page_title: Treaty of Sèvres
section_title: Zone of the Straits
hierarchical_section_title: Treaty of Sèvres / Territorial provisions / Zone of the Straits
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Western Turkey, showing the Zone of the Straits in Treaty of Sèvres.
context_page_description: The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 was designed to liquidate the Ottoman Empire and virtually abolished Turkish sovereignty. Sèvres was imposed by the Allies of World War I on the Ottoman Empire. It was one of a series of treaties that the Central Powers signed with the Allied Powers after their defeat in World War I. Hostilities had already ended with the Armistice of Mudros. The treaty was signed on 10 August 1920, in an exhibition room at the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres porcelain factory in Sèvres, France.
  The Sèvres treaty marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and its dismemberment. The terms it stipulated included the renunciation of most of the territory not inhabited by Turkish people and its cession to the Allied administration. The ceding of Eastern Mediterranean lands saw the introduction of novel polities, including the British Mandate for Palestine and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.
  The terms of the treaty stirred hostility and Turkish nationalism. The signatories of the treaty were stripped of their citizenship by the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and this ignited the Turkish War of Independence.
context_section_description: A Zone of the Straits was proposed, to include the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara. Navigation was to be open in the Dardanelles in times of peace and war alike to all vessels of commerce and war, no matter under what flag. This in effect would lead to internationalization of the waters. The waters were not to be subject to blockade, nor could any act of war be committed there, except in enforcing the decisions of the League of Nations.
caption: 1920 map of Western Turkey, showing the Zone of the Straits in the Treaty of Sèvres