From Law to Force: Ending the Ottoman Capitulations, 1914–23

On September 9, 1914, the Ottoman government informed foreign embassies in Europe and the Americas that the unequal treaties, the Capitulations, which governed the legal and economic relationship between the largest independent Muslim state and the West, had been unilaterally abrogated effective October 1. The next day, newspapers in Istanbul and provincial capitals in Damascus, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Cairo, enthusiastically celebrated the end of the unequal treaties as a declaration of “independence” and the end of “slavery.” Across the empire, there were spontaneous celebrations, parades, and speeches to commemorate the eclipse of a system of legal humiliation that had devastated the imperial economy and prevented the Ottoman state from achieving full sovereign equality in international relations. It would take nearly a decade, and almost as many years of shattering warfare, for the capitulatory powers to relinquish their system of extraterritorial laws and courts, which were not formally dismantled until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923—the unequal treaties remained in effect Egypt until 1949, exempting Europeans and Americans from local authority.

This paper examines the immediate effect the cancellation of the Capitulations on the Ottoman War effort through their demise at Lausanne. While abrogating the Capitulations had been a driving foreign policy goal of the state since 1856, their sudden termination transformed the state’s relationship with its imperial subjects—particularly the non-Muslim population—its allies and with the Allied Powers. Ottoman bureaucrats and lawyers had attempted to negotiate the cancellation of the unequal treaties through domestic legal reform and through international law. The decision to unilaterally abrogate the treaties represented a profound shift in Ottoman foreign policy—one that valued power over negotiation and law.