I've been reading the findings of the American
Arbitral Award of the President of the United States of America Woodrow Wilson: Full Report of the Committee upon the Arbitration of the Boundary Between Turkey and Armenia, which was the basis for the whole concept of "Wilsonian Armenia". This is part of a small side-project surrounding the idea of such an Armenia's actual survival in the wake of WWI. However, an interesting side-project, or ought I say a side-side-project, concerns the port city of Batum.
Of the schemes to grant Armenia access to the Black Sea, two were initially proposed by the allied powers after WWI. The first was that Batum ought to become an international / free port. Not dissimilar to ideas surrounding Trieste or Danzig, the idea was that Batum would become an international territory or condominium which could be used not only by Armenia, but by Georgia, Azerbaijan and Persia. Below is my best approximation of the boundaries of such a micro-state: The dotted line represents Batum Oblast (the maximum area that could be allotted to Batum) and the solid line represents the most desirable boundaries (according to the Americans).
However, this proposal was not taken up; chiefly on the grounds that such a port could only ever serve "Russian" Armenia, and had no commercial links whatever to Erzurum, Erzincan or other settlements in "Ottoman" Armenia - meaning the economic, industrial and social divisions that already existed would only widen with Batum serving as Armenia's main port. Furthermore, though Georgia at the time was amenable to Armenian interests in this direction, the Americans of the
Committee upon the Arbitration of the Boundary Between Turkey and Armenia had no confidence this would last, especially with the Bolsheviks cascading into the region.
The second main proposal prior to the work of the Committee was that a semi-autonomous Lazistan would comprise Armenia's coastline. However the ports of Lazistan were small and at that time unusable for much of the year, and it was considered entirely unfeasible to build a railway into Lazistan (the Pontic alps being in the way).
It was eventually decided that a substantial part of Trebizond Vilayet would also be adjoined to Armenia, despite the fact few Armenians lived in the region and both Trebizond's Turks and Greeks were opposed to such a move. This was decided upon by the
Committee upon the Arbitration of the Boundary Between Turkey and Armenia on purely economic grounds, though it is amusing to note that even the city of Trebizond was adjudged incapable of serving as an independent Armenia's main port (again, as no rail line could connect Trebizond to interior cities) - Tirebolu would instead serve as Armenia's port.
Or it would have, had Wilsonian Armenia survived into the interwar period.