The Constantinople Strait Question
For Britain and France, finding new allies in the Balkan region to ease the pressure on the Balkan countries had become extremely important.
After much deliberation, the British turned their attention to Turkey, once the most powerful country in the Balkan region and, a century ago, one of the Four Great Powers.
After the many Balkan Wars, Turkey was no longer as powerful as Ottoman Turkey had been. In the eyes of Britain and France, the newly established republic was not welcome either.
Especially after the end of World War I, vast stretches of land and sea, including Constantinople and the Strait of Constantinople, had been forced to become demilitarized zones, just like Germany's Rhineland.
What was even worse for Turkey was that the Turkey of today actually controlled a portion of European territory: the Edirne region, seized from Bulgaria after the end of the Balkan Wars.
Though this land was not particularly vast, it at least lay around Constantinople, once one of Europe's most prosperous cities.
More importantly, this was one of Turkey's precious few plains and one of the most important grain-producing regions in the entire Balkan Peninsula.
If the whole region became a demilitarized zone, it would be tantamount to delivering a slab of fat meat straight into the mouths of the Balkan countries. For the Republic of Turkey, which had already completed its revolution, this was undoubtedly a festering wound in the nation's side—and a problem the Turkish Government was constantly eager to solve.
But Constantinople and the straits were not only extremely important to the Balkan countries; they were equally important to the Black Sea countries.
Of course, there were not many countries along the Black Sea at present. Russia and Turkey already occupied more than two-thirds of the coastline, while