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Treaty of Lausanne: bringer of peace or cause of conflict?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (r) uses the Treaty of Lausanne as he likes to argue. photo
© Petros Karadjias/AP/dpa
Today’s Türkiye was established in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne. But the “peace treaty” is also breeding ground for conflicts. For the Turkish President Erdogan, he is a welcome pawn.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is rarely shy when it comes to his version of a stronger one Türkiye goes.
A few months ago, the Turkish head of state threatened neighboring Greece with a sudden attack on islands in the Aegean, citing what has now been a 100-year agreement – the Treaty of Lausanne. The agreement signed in 1923 was intended to guarantee peace. But conflicts smolder to this day.
The content of the contract
The treaty was one of the post-World War I peace treaties. The Turkish national movement, led by the later founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had recently emerged victorious from the so-called “Turkish War of Liberation”.
“The war was also a result of the Treaty of Sèvres, which had been concluded beforehand and was sharply criticized by the nationalists,” says Turkey expert Salim Cevik. The borders of Turkey were defined there after the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Strengthened by their triumph, the Turkish nationalists took a seat at the negotiating table with the victorious powers of the First World War and negotiated a significantly larger national territory. The treaty is the de facto recognition of Turkey as a state, Istanbul is freed from British occupation, Greece loses the city of Izmir on the Aegean Sea.
The contract also seals the forced resettlement of more than one and a half million people. A large part of the Greek Orthodox population is leaving Anatolia and, in return, many Muslims are leaving Greece. To this day, Atatürk supporters celebrate the contract as a negotiation success.
Dissatisfaction accompanies contract
“For WWI winners like France and Britain, the treaty represented an important reversal,” says analyst Ryan Gingeras. “Both London and Paris had imagined that the whole of today’s Middle East would be divided according to their ideas.” However, Turkey’s victory in 1922 forced them to accept far less than they had originally planned or hoped for.
But not only the victorious powers left the negotiations with less. The Kurds were promised their own state in the Treaty of Sèvres. That was dropped now, Kurds were represented by Turks in Lausanne. Dealing with minorities is still seen as critical in Turkey today.
The Kurdish umbrella organization Diakurd recently announced that it intends to take action against the provisions of the treaty. The Kurdish people were “taken into captivity” in Lausanne, the association argues. If necessary, they want to go as far as the International Court of Justice.
Benefit for Erdogan
Many conservatives in Turkey also see the treaty as a disgrace: in neo-Ottoman fashion, they argue that their country has been betrayed. It is to them that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses himself when he questions the treaty.
The leader uses the treaty as he likes to argue, particularly in the conflict over islands in the Aegean. Sometimes it is the treaty that puts Turkey at a disadvantage, sometimes Erdogan upholds its contents to pillory Greece.
The background is that the treaty stipulates the sovereignty of the islands and, for example, that islands such as Lesbos and Samos off the west coast of Turkey must be demilitarized. Greece has stationed its military there since the beginning of the Cyprus conflict in 1974 – for self-defense, as Athens emphasizes, because Turkey has stationed numerous landing craft on its west coast.
Ankara argues that Greece could lose sovereignty over the islands concerned because of the breach of contract through militarization. Groups in Turkey are even calling for the contract to be revoked. Sinan Ülgen doesn’t think the approach makes sense. “That would not mean giving them the islands,” said the analyst from think tank Edam.
It is considered unrealistic that the contract will actually be renegotiated. According to Cevik, it was written with regard to the Kurdish question in terms of assimilation. “This ideology has to change, but that doesn’t mean the treaty has to change.”
Ülgen also says: “It is not the Treaty of Lausanne that prevents Turkey from strengthening democratic freedoms.” The international agreement still deserves the name peace treaty, Cevik believes: “European powers recognized the victory of the Turkish nationalists. And that is peace.”