This study addresses the implications of the Lausanne Conference through a comparison between Arabs and Turks. It refutes arguments in the literature that the Arabs were not as politically or militarily mature as the Turks during Lausanne and attributes the failure of the Arabs at Lausanne to structural factors such as the central roles of the Great Powers (e.g. Russia, Britain, France) in the period's events, which ended the First World War in Turkey's favour. The study examines two important historical factors at this juncture: how Turkish-Russian relations transformed from hostility to close friendship, and how Arab-Turkish relations turned from animosity to cooperation, especially after the Sykes-Picot Agreement was announced and Britain backed the idea of a national home for the Jews. The study concludes that hostility between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied Powers on the one hand, and the new Turkish Republic's relations with the Great Powers on the other, helped end the war in the Middle East in Turkey's favour.​