Treaty of Lausanne | World War I

The Lausanne Treaty (Traite de Lausanne) was a negotiated peace signed during the Lausanne Conference in 1922–23 and signed on 24 July 1923, in the Palais de Rumine Lausanne, Switzerland. Since the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman Empire had been at odds with the Associated French Republic, British Empire, Kingdom of Italy, Empire of Japan, Kingdom of Greece, and the Kingdom of Romania. The Treaty's original text is in French. It resulted from a second attempt at peace after the Treaty of Sevres, which failed to split Ottoman possessions and was never recognized. The previous pact was signed in 1920, but the Turkish national movement later rejected it because of its stipulations.  İzmir was reclaimed due to the Greco-Turkish War, and the Mudanya Armistice was signed in October 1922. It allowed for the exchange of Greek and Turkish citizens and unfettered civilian movement via the Turkish Straits, but not military traffic.

Turkey approved the pact on 23 August 1923 and all other signatories by 16 July 1924. On 6 August 1924, it went into effect when the ratification instruments were officially submitted in Paris. Between 1914 and 1922, a Declaration of Amnesty guaranteed amnesty for crimes committed, including the Armenian genocide. However, "Lausanne tacitly accepted extensive strategies of expulsion and annihilation of hetero-ethnic and hetero-religious groupings," writes historian Hans-Lukas Kieser.

Table: Brief Description of Treaty of Lausanne

Following the withdrawal of Greek forces from Asia Minor and the exclusion of the Ottoman King by the Turkish military under the command of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Turkish National Movement's Ankara-based Kemalist government rejected the territorial losses imposed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which had been contracted but not ratified by the Ottoman Empire. By attempting to establish a Kurdish state in Eastern Anatolia, Britain hoped to weaken Turkish power in Mesopotamia and Kirkuk. Some foreign anxieties about the future of Armenians who had survived the 1915 Armenian genocide were alleviated by secular Kemalist discourse, and support for Kurdish self-determination diminished as well. Eastern Anatolia became part of modern-day Turkey after the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923, in exchange for Turkey surrendering Ottoman-era claims to the oil-rich Arab regions.

Negotiations took place during the Lausanne Conference. İsmet İnönü served as Turkey's principal negotiator. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, served as the Allies' main negotiator, while Eleftherios Venizelos represented Greece. The negotiations lasted several months. The peace conference began on 20 November 1922, and the Treaty was completed on 24 July 1923, following eight months of gruelling negotiations punctuated by multiple Turkish retreats. Admiral Mark L. Bristol of U.S., who served as the United States High Commissioner and endorsed Turkish efforts, was part of the Allied mission.

The Treaty was made up of 143 articles, with the following key sections:

The pact guaranteed the Republic of Turkey's independence and the preservation of Turkey's Greek Orthodox Christian minority and Greece's Muslim minority. However, under a previous Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations signed by Greece and Turkey, most of Turkey's Christian population and Greece's Muslim population had already been deported. Only the 270,000 Greek Orthodox of Constantinople, Imbros, and Tenedos and the 129,120 Muslims of Western Thrace in 1923 were exempt. The islands of Imbros and Tenedos were awarded "special administrative organization" under Article 14 of the Treaty, which the Turkish government cancelled on 17 February 1926. Following the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Turkey formally accepted the loss of Cyprus, which had been leased to the British Empire, but de jure remained an Ottoman province until World War I. Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan were captured by British forces in 1882 on the pretense of "putting down the Urabi Rebellion and reestablishing order." Still, they remained an Ottoman territory until World War I, when the British Empire unilaterally acquired them. The fate of Mosul's province was left to be decided by the League of Nations. Turkey also explicitly abandoned all rights to the Dodecanese Islands. Italy was required to cede to Turkey during the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) under Article 2 of the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912.

Summary of Contents of Treaty

Table: Summary of Contents of Treaty

Borders

The Treaty defined Greece's, Bulgaria's, and Turkey's borders. The Treaty specifically stated that islands and islets within three miles of the coast are included within the coastal State's frontier. Except for the Dodecanese, Imbros, and Tenedos, all islands have been given to Greece (Articles 6 and 12). Both articles include a specific note stating that, unless otherwise mentioned, Turkish sovereignty extends three miles from Asia Minor's coasts. The Greek populations of Imbros and Tenedos were not included in the population swap and would be protected under Turkey's minority protection laws (Article 38).

The primary issue of war reparations, which Turkey requested from Greece, was dropped after Greece agreed to hand over Karaaaç to Turkey. Turkey also publicly renounced all claims to the Dodecanese Islands (Article 15), Cyprus (Article 20), Syria and Iraq (Article 3), Egypt and Sudan (Article 17), and fixed the borders of the latter two nations with the Treaty of Ankara. The lands on the Arabian Peninsula to the south of Syria and Iraq, which were still under Turkish regulator when the Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, were not explicitly specified in the Treaty's language. On the other hand, article 3's demarcation of Turkey's southern border implied that Turkey had legally relinquished them. The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, Asir, and sections of Hejaz, including Medina, were among these lands. Turkish army held them until 23 January 1919.

By legally acknowledging the corresponding terms of the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, Turkey legitimately conceded Adakale Landmass in the Danube River to Romania under Articles 25 and 26 of the Treaty of Lausanne. The island had theoretically remained part of the Ottoman Empire due to a diplomatic blunder during the 1878 Berlin Congress. Turkey likewise gave up its Libyan privileges, as stipulated by Article 10 of the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912 and Article 22 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

Agreements

There was a separate arrangement with the United States, the Chester concession, etc. The Treaty was opposed by various groups in the United States, including the Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty (COLT). On 18 January 1927, the United States Council declined to ratify it by a vote of 50–34, falling six votes short of the Constitution's two-thirds requirement. As a result, Turkey revoked the concession.

Turkey was also required to appoint four European legal advisers for five years. The consultants were sent to Turkey to witness a legal reform. If the advised reforms were not implemented, the consultants' contract might be renewed. Before the end of the five years, Turkey worked on and announced a new Turkish constitution and reformed the Turkish court system by incorporating the Swiss Civil Code, Italian criminal law, and German commercial law.

The "Declaration of Amnesty" in Annex VIII of the Treaty gave immunity to those who committed crimes related to political events between 1914 and 1922. Thus, the pact effectively ended efforts to try Ottoman war criminals for atrocities such as the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides and formalized impunity for genocide.

The Treaty of Lausanne resulted in international acknowledgement of the fledgling Republic of Turkey's sovereignty as the Ottoman Empire's successor state. Furthermore, the Ottoman public debt was shared between Turkey and the countries that arose from the former Ottoman Empire due to the Treaty. The Straits Convention lasted thirteen years before being replaced in 1936 by the Montreux Convention Regarding the Straits Regime. Shortly after, the Treaty's customs restrictions were revised.

According to the Treaty of Lausanne, Hatay Province remained part of the French Mandate of Syria. Still, it obtained independence in 1938 as the Hatay State, which ultimately joined Turkey following a referendum in 1939. Opponents of the new Turkish rule were granted political amnesty, although the government could make 150 exceptions. Turkey's 150 personae non-gratae gradually gained citizenship, the last in 1974. The deal was dubbed an "abject, cowardly, and shameful surrender" by Lloyd George. "The Lausanne Treaty served as a significant international precedent for relocating populations against their will throughout the twentieth century," writes historian Norman Naimark.

According to historian Ronald Grigor Suny, the Treaty effectively validated the efficacy of deportations, if not deadly ethnic cleansing, as a feasible solution to population problems. "Lausanne tacitly approved complete programs of expulsion and extermination of hetero-ethnic and hetero-religious groupings, with disastrous attraction for German revisionists and many other nationalists," writes historian Hans-Lukas Kieser.