Treaty of Lausanne

 

1922–23. The peace treaty (see Sèvres, Treaty of) imposed by the Allies on the Ottoman Empire after World War I had virtually destroyed Turkey as a national state. The treaty was not recognized by the nationalist government under Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later known as Atatürk). After the nationalist victory over the Greeks and the overthrow of the sultan, Kemal's government was in a position to request a new peace treaty. Accordingly, the signatories of the Treaty of Sèvres and delegates of the USSR (excluded from the previous treaty) met at Lausanne, Switzerland. After lengthy negotiations a peace treaty was signed in 1923. Turkey recovered E Thrace, several Aegean islands, a strip along the Syrian border, the Smyrna district, and the internationalized Zone of the Straits, which, however, was to remain demilitarized and remain subject to an international convention (see Dardanelles). Turkey recovered full sovereign rights over all its territory, and foreign zones of influence and capitulations (see Ottoman Empire) were abolished. Outside the Zone of the Straits, no limitation was imposed on the Turkish military establishment. No reparations were exacted. In return, Turkey renounced all claims on former Turkish territories outside its new boundaries and undertook to guarantee the rights of its minorities. A separate agreement between Greece and Turkey provided for the compulsory exchange of minorities.

For the 1912 Treaty of Lausanne between Italy and the Ottoman Empire (signed on 18 October, 1912 in Ouchy), see the Italo-Turkish War.

The Treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923) was a peace treaty signed in Lausanne that settled the Anatolian part of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by annulment of the Treaty of Sèvres signed by the Ottoman Empire as the consequences of the Turkish Independence War between Allies of World War I and Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Turkish national movement).

Overview & negotiations

Main article: Conference of Lausanne

See also: Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Independence War

After the expulsion of the Greek forces by the Turkish army under the command of Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk), the newly-founded Turkish government rejected the recently signed Treaty of Sèvres.

Negotiations performed during Conference of Lausanne which İsmet İnönü was the lead negotiator for Turkey and Eleftherios Venizelos was his Greek counterpart. Negotiations took many months. On October 20 1922 the peace conference was reopened, and after strenuous debates, it was once again interrupted by Turkish protest on February 4 1923. After reopening on April 23, and more protest by Kemal's government, the treaty was signed on July 24 after eight months of arduous negotiation by allies such as US Admiral Mark L. Bristol, who served as United States High Commissioner and championed Turkish efforts.

The stipulations of treaty

The treaty is composed of 141 articles with major sections;^[1]

• Convention on the Turkish straits
• Trade (abolition of capitulations)
• Exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey
• Agreements
• Binding letters.

The treaty provided for the independence of the Republic of Turkey but also for the protection of the ethnic Greek minority in Turkey and the mainly ethnically Turkish Muslim minority in Greece. Much of the Greek population of Turkey was exchanged with the Turkish population of Greece. The Greeks of Istanbul, Imbros and Tenedos were excluded (about 270,000 in Istanbul alone at that time [1]), and so were the Muslim population of Western Thrace (about 86,000 [2] in 1922). Article 14 of the treaty granted the islands of Imbros and Tenedos "special administrative organisation", a right that was revoked by the Turkish government on 17 February 1926. The republic of Turkey also accepted the loss of Cyprus to the British Empire. The fate of the province of Mosul was left to be determined through the League of Nations.

Borders

The treaty delimited the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey, formally ceded all Turkish claims on Cyprus, Iraq and Syria, and (along with the Treaty of Ankara) settled the boundaries of the latter two nations. The treaty also led to international recognition of the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey as the successor state of the defunct Ottoman Empire.

Agreements

Among many agreements, there was a separate agreement with the United States, Chester concession. US Senate refused to ratify the treaty and consequently Turkey annulled the concession.^[1]

Aftermath

The Convention on the Turkish straits lasted only thirteen years and was replaced with Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits. The custom limitations in the treaty were shortly reworked. Political amnesty was applied. 150 persona non grata of Turkey slowly acquired citizenship (the last one was in 1974) to the descendants of the former dynasty.

Since signing the treaty, both Turkey and Greece have claimed that the other has violated its provisions. Greece has seen its ethnic minority population in Turkey diminish from several hundred thousand in 1923 to just a couple of thousand today, and claims that this was caused by the systematic enforcement of anti-minority measures.^{[2][unreliable source?]} Turkey closed the Halki seminary, which is in direct contradiction to the treaty which stipulates religious freedom.

Ultimately, Winston Churchill who had a damaged career because of his failure at the Battle of Gallipoli, during which he had urged the Armenian population to rebel with vague promises to divert manpower that arena,^[3] and his inability to enforce the Treaty of Sèvres, and managed to dismantle the Ottoman Empire with the occupation of Istanbul remarked: “In the Lausanne Treaty, which established a new peace between the allies and Turkey, history will search in vain for the name Armenia.”^[4]

See also

• Aftermath of World War I
• Treaty of Sèvres
• Treaty of Kars
• Turks of Western Thrace
• Muslim minority of Greece
• Greeks of Turkey
• Greek refugees

References

External links

• Text of the treaty
• Information about the Treaty (1)
• Information about the Treaty (2)
• Text and Information about the Treaty

First World War treaties

London Pact · Sykes-Picot Agreement · Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne · French-Armenian Agreement · Damascus Protocol · Treaty of Brest-Litovsk · Treaty of Batum · Treaty of Versailles · Treaty of Saint-Germain · Treaty of Neuilly · Treaty of Trianon · Treaty of Sèvres · Treaty of Rapallo · Treaty of Alexandropol · Treaty of Moscow · Cilicia Peace Treaty · Treaty of Ankara · Treaty of Kars · Treaty of Lausanne

World War I
General	Main events	Specific articles	Participants	See also
Prelude: Causes Sarajevo assassination July Ultimatum Theatres: Western Front Eastern Front Italian Front Middle Eastern Theatre Balkan Theatre Atlantic Theatre African Theatre Pacific Theatre General timeline: WW I timeline See also: Female roles Literature Total war Veterans	1914: Battle of Liège Battle of Tannenberg Invasion of Serbia First Battle of the Marne First Battle of Arras Battle of Sarikamis 1915: Mesopotamian Campaign Battle of Gallipoli Italian Campaign Conquest of Serbia 1916: Battle of Verdun Battle of the Somme Battle of Jutland Brusilov Offensive Conquest of Romania Great Arab Revolt 1917: Second Battle of Arras (Vimy Ridge) Battle of Passchendaele Capture of Baghdad Conquest of Palestine 1918: Spring Offensive Hundred Days Offensive Meuse-Argonne Offensive Armistice with Germany Armistice with Ottoman Empire	Military engagements Naval warfare Air warfare Cryptography People Poison gas Railways Technology Trench warfare Civilian impact and atrocities: Armenian Genocide Assyrian Genocide Pontic Greek Genocide Aftermath: Aftermath Casualties League of Nations Paris Peace Conference Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire Spanish flu Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Treaty of Lausanne Treaty of Neuilly Treaty of St. Germain Treaty of Sèvres Treaty of Trianon Treaty of Versailles	Entente Powers Russian Empire French Empire   » France   » Vietnam British Empire   » United Kingdom   » Australia   » Canada   » India   » New Zealand   » Newfoundland   » South Africa Italy Romania United States Serbia Portugal Republic of China Japan Belgium Montenegro Greece Armenia more… Central Powers German Empire Austria-Hungary Ottoman Empire Bulgaria	Contemporaneous conflicts: Mexican Revolution (1910-20) First Balkan War (1912-13) Second Balkan War (1913) Maritz Rebellion (1914-15) Easter Rising (1916) Russian Revolution (1917) Russian Civil War (1917-21) Finnish Civil War (1918) North Russia Campaign (1918-19) Wielkopolska Uprising (1918-19) Estonian War of Independence (1918-1920) Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) Polish-Soviet War (1919-21) Polish-Lithuanian War (1920) Irish War of Independence also known as the Anglo-Irish War (1919-21) Turkish War of Independence including the Greco-Turkish War (1919-23) Irish Civil War (1922-23) More information on World War I: World War I from Wiktionary WWI Textbooks from Wikibooks WWI Quotations from Wikiquote WWI Source texts from Wikisource WWI Images & media from Commons WWI News stories from Wikinews

Donate to Wikimedia