the Straits became a duel between Curzon of Britain and Chicherin of Russia, the latter of whom demanded the passage of military vessels through the Straits to be prohibited at all times and the restoration of full Turkish sovereignty over the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles with an unrestricted right to fortify their shores. Eventually, the British prevailed by enacting Article I of the Straits Convention of 24 July 1923, which stated the principle of freedom of transit and of navigation through the Straits during both peace and war. Furthermore, Article IV stipulated that the shores of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles as well as the contiguous islands in the Aegean and in Marmara would be demilitarised. Aftermath The Lausanne Conference officially recognized the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey internationally. Turkey, in a sense, achieved what the Ottoman Empire had set out to do prior to World War I: receive equal treatment by the Western powers and assert its place in the international political sphere. The treaty restricted the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey and formally relinquished all Turkish claims on the Dodecanese Islands, Cyprus, Egypt and Sudan, Syria and Iraq. In Article 3, Turkey had its southern border also become rigidly defined, and it officially ceded the territories of Yemen, Asir, and parts of Hejaz, including Medina. Turkey also officially ceded Adakale Island in the River Danube to Romania by Articles 25 and 26. According to Article 10, Turkey gave up any of its privileges in Libya. The Armenians also lost hope of reestablishing a large presence in East Anatolia under the treaty and were instead afforded a small homeland in Soviet Armenia, which in 1922 became a part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. Aside from the redrawing of geographic borders, Robert Gerwarth stated that the conference sanctioned relocation of ethnic and religious populations had inauspicious consequences and "had a significance that went well beyond the Greek and Turkish context to which it ostensibly applied. The Convention effectively established the legal right of state governments to expel large parts of their citizens on the grounds of 'otherness'. It fatally undermined cultural, ethnic and religious plurality as an ideal to which to aspire and a reality with which - for all their contestations - most people in the European land empires had dealt with fairly well for centuries". See also Commissions of the Danube River Lausanne