On March 16, 1921, the Nationalists concluded a treaty with Soviet Russia, according to which each contracting party pledged itself not to recognize any treaty or other agreement imposed upon the other party by force, and the Russians promised to ignore the Constantinople Government. On July 30 the Angora National Assembly ratified by 202 votes against 1 the treaty with the Bolshevists.
Angora’s relations with Moscow, and the humiliation inflicted upon her in Cilicia and by the refusal of Angora to ratify the treaty concluded in London, did not deter France from continuing to seek favors at Angora. M. Franklin Bouillon, who was president of the Foreign Relations Committee of the French Senate, made two visits to Angora in June and September. The second proved more fruitful than the first, for in the meantime the Greeks had won notable victories and had extended their occupation in Western Asia Minor. It is a sad commentary upon the fundamental heartlessness and cynicism of international politics that France, who profited greatly in Syria by the Greek victories of the summer of 1921, should have used the advantage they gave her to help her enemies against her ally.
On October 20, 1921, Mustafa Kemal Pasha and M. Franklin Bouillon signed a treaty, which was ratified by the French Government ten days later. The convention was elaborate. France not only gave back to the Nationalists Cilicia (which she had received from Great Britain) without any stipulation for the protection of the unfortunate Armenians to whom the French authorities in Cilicia had appealed three years earlier to help France against the Turks, but returned to Turkish rule a strip of northern Syria that had been included in the mandate entrusted to France by the League of Nations. The section of the Bagdad Railway up to the Tigris was restored to Turkey. In return for extensive and exclusive economic concessions and preferential commercial treatment, France agreed to make the same promise that Italy had made, i. e., to support the Angora Government in ousting Greece from Smyrna and Thrace. The news of the treaty, leaking out almost immediately, caused a great outcry against France in Great Britain. Parliament and press united in denouncing the French act as a blow to the Entente alliance, a disloyal and underhand proceeding, and the betrayal of France’s glorious and traditional rôle as protector of the Christians in the Levant.