Treaty of Lausanne

The Treaty of Lausanne (, ) is a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923 and signed in the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially resolved the conflict that had initially arisen between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied French Republic, British Empire, Kingdom of Italy, Empire of Japan, Kingdom of Greece, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the Kingdom of Romania since the outset of World War I. The original text of the treaty is in English and French. and all other signatories did so by 16 July 1924. The Treaty of Lausanne became effective on 6 August 1924.

Additionally, a declaration of amnesty was issued, granting immunity for crimes committed between 1914 and 1922, including the Armenian genocide and Greek genocide.

Background

thumb|300px|Borders of Turkey according to the unratified [[Treaty of Sèvres (1920) which was annulled and replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) in the aftermath of the Turkish War of Independence]]

After the withdrawal of the Greek forces in Asia Minor and the expulsion of the Ottoman Sultan by the Turkish army under the command of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Ankara-based Kemalist government of the Turkish National Movement rejected the territorial losses imposed by the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, previously signed by the Ottoman Empire but remaining unratified. Britain had sought to undermine Turkish influence in Mesopotamia and Kirkuk by seeking the creation of a Kurdish state in Eastern Anatolia. Secular Kemalist rhetoric relieved some of the international concerns about the future of Armenians who had survived the 1915 Armenian genocide, and support for Kurdish self determination similarly declined. Under the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, Eastern Anatolia became part of modern-day Turkey, in exchange for Turkey's relinquishing Ottoman-era claims to the oil-rich Arab lands.

Negotiations were undertaken during the Conference of Lausanne. İsmet İnönü was the chief negotiator for Turkey. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary of that time, was the chief negotiator for the Allies, while Eleftherios Venizelos negotiated on behalf of Greece. The negotiations took many months. On 20 November 1922, the peace conference was opened; the treaty was signed on 24 July 1923 after eight months of arduous negotiation, punctuated by several Turkish withdrawals. The Allied delegation included U.S. Admiral Mark L. Bristol, who served as the United States High Commissioner and supported Turkish efforts.

Stipulations

The treaty was composed of 143 articles with major sections including:

{| class="wikitable"

|+Treaty

!Parts

|Convention on the Turkish Straits

|Trade (abolition of capitulations) – Article 28 provided: "Each of the High Contracting Parties hereby accepts, in so far as it is concerned, the complete abolition of the Capitulations in Turkey in every respect."

|Agreements

|Binding letters

The treaty provided for the independence of the Republic of Turkey but also for the protection of the Greek Orthodox Christian minority in Turkey and the Muslim minority in Greece. However, most of the Christian population of Turkey and the Muslim population of Greece had already been deported under the earlier Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations signed by Greece and Turkey. Only the Greek Orthodox population of Constantinople, Imbros and Tenedos (about 270,000 at that time), and the Muslim population of Western Thrace (about 129,120 in 1923) were excluded. Article 14 of the treaty granted the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada) "special administrative organisation", a right that was revoked by the Turkish government on 17 February 1926. Turkey also formally accepted the loss of Cyprus (which had been leased to the British Empire following the Congress of Berlin in 1878, but de jure remained an Ottoman territory until World War I). The fate of the province of Mosul was left to be determined through the League of Nations. Turkey also explicitly renounced all claims to the Dodecanese Islands, which Italy had been obliged to return to Turkey according to Article 2 of the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912 following the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912).

Summary of contents of treaty

{| class="wikitable"

Lausanne Treaty I. Treaty of Peace

!Parts

!Sections

|Preamble

|Part I

|Political Clauses

|Part II

|Financial Clauses

|Part III.

|Economic clauses

|Part IV

|Communications and Sanitary Questions

|Part V.

|Miscellaneous Provisions  

|Part IV.

|Convention respecting conditions of Residence and Business and Jurisdiction

|Part V

|Commercial Convention

|Part VI

|Convention concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations

|Part VII

|Agreement between Greece and Turkey respecting the reciprocal restitution of interned civilians and the exchange of prisoners of war

|Part VIII

|Declaration relating to the Amnesty 

|Part IX

|Declaration relating to Muslim properties in Greece

|Part X

|Declaration relating to sanitary matters in Turkey;

|Part XI

|Declaration relating to the administration of justice;

|Part XII

|Protocol relation to certain concessions granted

|Part XIII

|Protocol relating to the accession of Belgium and Portugal to contain provisions and instruments signed at Lausanne

|Part XIV

|Protocol relating to the evacuation of the Turkish territory occupied by the British, French and Italian forces

|Part XV

|Protocol relative to the Karagatch territory and the Islands of Imbros and Tenedos 

|Part XVI

|Protocol relative to the Treaty concluded at Sèvres between the principal Allied Powers and Greece on 10 August 1920, concerning the protection of minorities in Greece, and the Treaty concluded on the same day between the same Powers relating to Thrace. 

|Part XVII

|Protocol relating to signature by the Serb-Croat-Slovene State

Borders

thumb|250px|[[Ada Kaleh|Adakale Island in River Danube was forgotten during the peace talks at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which allowed it to remain a de jure Ottoman territory and the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II's private possession until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 (de facto until Romania unilaterally declared its sovereignty on the island in 1919 and further strengthened this claim with the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.) Egypt and Sudan (Article 17); Syria and Iraq (Article 3); and (along with the Treaty of Ankara) settled the boundaries of the latter two nations.

By Articles 25 and 26 of the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey officially ceded Adakale Island in the Danube River to Romania by formally recognizing the related provisions in the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. Due to a diplomatic irregularity at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the island had technically remained part of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey also renounced its privileges in Libya which were defined by Article 10 of the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912 (per Article 22 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.) Consequently, Turkey annulled the concession. The advisors were to observe a juridical reform in Turkey. The advisors contract could be renewed if the suggested reforms would not have taken place. The treaty thus put an end to the effort to prosecute Ottoman war criminals for crimes such as the Armenian genocide, the Sayfo, the Greek genocide, and codified impunity for these crimes.

Legacy

thumb|200px|right|Turkish delegation after having signed the Treaty of Lausanne. The delegation was led by [[İsmet İnönü (in the middle).]]

The Treaty of Lausanne led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire. The convention on the Straits lasted for thirteen years and was replaced with the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits in 1936. The customs limitations in the treaty were shortly after reworked.

For Greece, the treaty brought to an end the impetus behind the Megali Idea, the notion that modern Greece should encompass those territories in Asia Minor which had been populated with Greek speakers for up to 3000 years and which also formed the core of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Hatay Province remained a part of the French Mandate of Syria according to the Treaty of Lausanne, but in 1938 gained its independence as the Hatay State, which later joined Turkey after a referendum in 1939. Political amnesty was given to opponents of the new Turkish regime but the government reserved the right to make 150 exceptions. The 150 personae non gratae of Turkey (mostly descendants of the Ottoman dynasty) slowly acquired citizenship – the last one in 1974.

Lloyd George declared the treaty an "abject, cowardly and infamous surrender".

Historian Norman Naimark states, "The Lausanne Treaty served as a pivotal international precedent for transferring populations against their will throughout the twentieth century."

Historian Ronald Grigor Suny states that the treaty "essentially confirmed the effectiveness of deportations or even murderous ethnic cleansing as a potential solution to population problems".

Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser states, "Lausanne tacitly endorsed comprehensive policies of expulsion and extermination of hetero-ethnic and hetero-religious groups, with fatal attraction for German revisionists and many other nationalists".

Conspiracy theories

The Treaty of Lausanne has given rise to a number of Islamist conspiracy theories in Turkey to defame the post-war Turkish secular nationalist rule of the country. For example, it has been claimed that the treaty was signed to be effective for a century and there are "secret articles" in the treaty regarding Turkey's mining of natural resources. One conspiracy theory that had following in the 2010s held that the treaty would expire in 2023 and Turkey would be allowed to mine boron and petroleum. This appears not to have happened.

Notes and references

External links

Full text of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923)