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Treaty of Lausanne

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The Treaty of Lausanne (French: Traité de Lausanne, Turkish: Lozan Antlaşması) is a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923 and signed in the Palais de Rumine[1][2][3] in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923.[4] 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 Serbia, and the Kingdom of Romania since the outset of World War I.[5] The original text of the treaty is in English and French.[5] It emerged as a second attempt at peace after the failed and unratified Treaty of Sèvres, which had sought to partition Ottoman territories. The earlier treaty, signed in 1920, was later rejected by the Turkish National Movement which actively opposed its terms. As a result of Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War, Turkish forces recaptured İzmir, and the Armistice of Mudanya was signed in October 1922.[6][5] This armistice provided for the exchange of Greek-Turkish populations and allowed unrestricted civilian, non-military passage through the Turkish Straits.

Treaty of Lausanne
Treaty of Peace and Exchange of War Prisoners with Turkey Signed at Lausanne

Accord relatif à la restitution réciproque des internés civils et à l'échange des prisonniers de guerre, signé à Lausanne

Lozan'da Türkiye ile Barış ve Savaş Esirlerinin Değişimi üzerine İmzalanan Antlaşma
Borders of Turkey set by the Treaty of Lausanne.
Signed24 July 1923
LocationLausanne, Switzerland
ConditionFollowing ratification by Turkey and any three of the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan, the treaty would come into force for those "high contracting parties" and thereafter for each additional signatory upon deposit of ratification
Parties
DepositaryFrench Republic
LanguageEnglish and French
Full text
Treaty of Lausanne at Wikisource

Turkey ratified the treaty on 23 August 1923,[7][8] and all other signatories did so by 16 July 1924.[9]

Additionally, a declaration of amnesty was issued, granting immunity for crimes committed between 1914 and 1922, including the Armenian genocide and Greek genocide. Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser asserts that "Lausanne tacitly endorsed comprehensive policies of expulsion and extermination of hetero-ethnic and hetero-religious groups".[10]

Background

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Main article: Lausanne Conference of 1922–23
See also: Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish War of Independence
 
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.[11]

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 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.[12]

Stipulations

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The treaty was composed of 143 articles with major sections including:[13]

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."[14]
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 of Constantinople, Imbros and Tenedos (about 270,000 at that time),[15] and the Muslim population of Western Thrace (about 129,120 in 1923) were excluded.[16] 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).[17][18]

Summary of contents of treaty

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Lausanne Treaty I. Treaty of Peace[19]
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

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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.)[20] The island was submerged during the construction of the Iron Gates hydroelectric plant in 1970, which also removed the possibility of a potential legal claim by the descendants of Abdul Hamid II.

The treaty delimited the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Specifically, the treaty provisioned that all the islands, islets and other territories in the Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean in the original text) beyond three miles from the Turkish shores were ceded to Greece, with the exception of Imbros, Tenedos and Rabbit islands (Articles 6 and 12). There is a special notation in both articles, that, unless it is explicitly stated otherwise, the Turkish sovereignty extends three miles from Asia Minor shores. The Greek population of Imbros and Tenedos was not included in the population exchange and would be protected under the stipulations of the protection of the minorities in Turkey (Article 38).

The major issue of the war reparations, demanded from Greece by Turkey, was abandoned after Greece agreed to cede Karaağaç to Turkey.

Turkey also formally ceded all claims on the Dodecanese Islands (Article 15); Cyprus (Article 20);[21] 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.[5]

The territories to the south of Syria and Iraq on the Arabian Peninsula, which still remained under Turkish control when the Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, were not explicitly identified in the text of the treaty. However, the definition of Turkey's southern border in Article 3 also meant that Turkey officially ceded them. These territories included the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, Asir and parts of Hejaz like the city of Medina. They were held by Turkish forces until 23 January 1919.[22][23]

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.[5][20] 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.)[5]

Agreements

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Among many agreements, there was a separate agreement with the United States, the Chester concession. In the United States, the treaty was opposed by several groups, including the Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty (COLT), and on 18 January 1927, the United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty by a vote of 50–34, six votes short of the two-thirds required by the Constitution.[24] Consequently, Turkey annulled the concession.[13]

Besides, Turkey was obliged to instate four European advisors on juridical matters for five years.[25] 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.[25] Subsequently, Turkey worked on and announced a new Turkish constitution and reformed the Turkish justice system by including the Swiss Civil code, the Italian criminal law and the German Commercial law before completion of the five years in question.[25]

Declaration of Amnesty

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Declaration of Amnesty

Annex VIII to the treaty, called "Declaration of Amnesty", granted immunity to the perpetrators of any crimes "connected to political events" committed between 1914 and 1922.[26][27] The treaty thus put an end to the effort to prosecute Ottoman war criminals for crimes such as the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the Greek genocide,[28][29] and codified impunity for these crimes.[30]

Legacy

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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.[5] As result of the Treaty, the Ottoman public debt was divided between Turkey and the countries which emerged from the former Ottoman Empire.[31] The convention on the Straits lasted for thirteen years and was replaced with the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits in 1936.[32] 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.[33] The 150 personae non gratae of Turkey (mostly descendants of the Ottoman dynasty) slowly acquired citizenship – the last one in 1974.[citation needed]

Lloyd George declared the treaty an "abject, cowardly and infamous surrender".[30][34]

Historian Norman Naimark states, "The Lausanne Treaty served as a pivotal international precedent for transferring populations against their will throughout the twentieth century."[35]

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".[36]

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".[10]

Conspiracy theories

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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.[37][38] 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.[39]

See also

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Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Further reading

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  • Kieser, Hans-Lukas (2023). When Democracy Died: The Middle East's Enduring Peace of Lausanne. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781316516423.
  • Tusan, Michelle (2023). The Last Treaty: Lausanne and the End of the First World War in the Middle East. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009371087. online book review
  • Marabello, Thomas Quinn (2023) "The Centennial of the Treaty of Lausanne: Turkey, Switzerland, the Great Powers and a Soviet Diplomat’s Assassination," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 59: No. 3, Article 4. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol59/iss3/4
  • Conlin, Jonathan (2023). They All Made Peace – What is Peace?. Gingko. ISBN 978-1-914983-05-4.

Notes and references

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  1. ^ Archives de la Ville de Lausanne (consulté le 22.07.23)
  2. ^ "Palais de Rumine". www.lonelyplanet.com. Archived from the original on 14 September 2018. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
  3. ^ "Palais de Rumine & Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts". MySwitzerland.com. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
  4. ^ Xypolia, Ilia (2021). "Imperial Bending of Rules: The British Empire, the Treaty of Lausanne, and Cypriot Immigration to Turkey". Diplomacy & Statecraft. 32 (4): 674–691. doi:10.1080/09592296.2021.1996711. hdl:2164/18252. S2CID 246234931. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Treaty of Peace with Turkey signed at Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, 24 July 1923, archived from the original on 12 January 2013, retrieved 28 November 2012{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ^ "Armistice of Mudanya". Archived from the original on 2 February 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  7. ^ Martin Lawrence (1924). Treaties of Peace, 1919–1923. Vol. I. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. p. lxxvii.
  8. ^ "Official Journal, October 1924". League of Nations Official Journal. 4: 1292. October 1924.
  9. ^ Hansard, House of Commons Archived 18 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine, 16 July 1924.
  10. ^ a b Kieser, Hans-Lukas (2010). "Germany and the Armenian Genocide of 1915–17". In Friedman, Jonathan C. (ed.). The Routledge History of the Holocaust. Taylor & Francis. doi:10.4324/9780203837443.ch3. ISBN 978-1-136-87060-6. Archived from the original on 13 December 2020. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  11. ^ Darren L. Logan (2009). "Thoughts on Iraqi Kurdistan: Present Realities, Future Hope". Iran & the Caucasus. 13 (1): 161–186. doi:10.1163/160984909X12476379008205. JSTOR 25597401.
  12. ^ Morgenthau, Henry, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2003), 303.
  13. ^ a b Mango, Andrew (2002). Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Overlook Press. p. 388. ISBN 1-58567-334-X.
  14. ^ In addition to Turkey, the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were parties to the Treaty.
  15. ^ The Greek minority of Turkey Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine – Hellenic Resources Network
  16. ^ Öksüz, Hikmet (2004), The Reasons for Immigration from Western Thrace to Turkey (1923–1950) (PDF), Turkish Review of Balkan Studies, p. 255
  17. ^ "Treaty of Lausanne, October, 1912". Archived from the original on 25 October 2021. Retrieved 18 November 2008.
  18. ^ James Barros, The Corfu Incident of 1923: Mussolini and The League of Nations, Princeton University Press, 1965 (reprinted 2015), ISBN 1400874610, p. 69
  19. ^ "Treaty Summary". Archived from the original on 26 February 2021. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
  20. ^ a b "Adakale Island in River Danube". Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 21 September 2010.
  21. ^ Xypolia, Ilia (2011). "Cypriot Muslims among Ottomans, Turks and British" (PDF). Bogazici Journal. 25 (2): 109–120. doi:10.21773/boun.25.2.6. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 June 2018. Retrieved 10 November 2012.
  22. ^ "Arabia (Yemen–Hejaz) Front Side". www.osmanli700.gen.tr. Archived from the original on 7 August 2020. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
  23. ^ "Arabistan Cephesi – Osmanlı Web Sitesi – Forsnet". www.osmanli700.gen.tr. Archived from the original on 6 September 2018. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
  24. ^ Trask, Roger R. (1971). "Rejection of the Lausanne Treaty and Resumption of Diplomatic Relations, 1923–1927". The United States Response to Turkish Nationalism and Reform, 1914–1939. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 37–64. ISBN 978-1-4529-3717-5. Project MUSE chapter 1252066.
  25. ^ a b c Liebisch-Gümüş, Carolin (6 July 2020). p. 257
  26. ^ The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 18., No. 2, Supplement:Official Documents (Apr. 1924), pp. 92–95.
  27. ^ Scharf, Michael (1996). "The Letter of the Law: The Scope of the International Legal Obligation to Prosecute Human Rights Crimes". Law and Contemporary Problems. 59 (4): 41–61. doi:10.2307/1192189. ISSN 0023-9186. JSTOR 1192189. Archived from the original on 19 July 2018. Retrieved 17 December 2020. Initially, the Allied Powers sought the prosecution of those responsible for the massacres. The Treaty of Sevres, which was signed on August 10, 1920, would have required the Turkish Government to hand over those responsible to the Allied Powers for trial. Treaty of Peace between the Allied Powers and Turkey [Treaty of Sevres], art. 230, at 235, Aug. 10, 1920, reprinted in 15 AM. J. INT'L L. 179 (Supp 1921). "The Treaty of Sevres was, however, not ratified and did not come into force. It was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, which not only did not contain provisions respecting the punishment of war crimes, but was accompanied by a 'Declaration of Amnesty' of all offenses committed between 1914 and 1922." Treaty of Peace between the Allied Powers and Turkey [Treaty of Lausanne], July 24, 1923, League of Nations Treaty Series 11, reprinted in 18 AM. J. INT'L L. 1 (Supp. 1924). 99.
  28. ^ Lattanzi, Flavia (2018). "The Armenian Massacres as the Murder of a Nation?". The Armenian Massacres of 1915–1916 a Hundred Years Later. Studies in the History of Law and Justice. Vol. 15. Springer International Publishing. pp. 27–104. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-78169-3_3. ISBN 978-3-319-78169-3. Archived from the original on 21 March 2021. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  29. ^ Marchesi, Antonio (2018). "Metz Yeghern and the Origin of International Norms on the Punishment of Crimes". The Armenian Massacres of 1915–1916 a Hundred Years Later: Open Questions and Tentative Answers in International Law. Springer International Publishing. pp. 143–160. ISBN 978-3-319-78169-3.
  30. ^ a b Dadrian, Vahakn (1998). "The Historical and Legal Interconnections Between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust: From Impunity to Retributive Justice". Yale Journal of International Law. 23 (2). ISSN 0889-7743. Archived from the original on 3 December 2020. Retrieved 24 November 2020. After expunging all references to Armenian massacres (and, indeed, to Armenia itself) from the draft version, they signed the Lausanne Peace Treaty, thus helping to codify impunity by ignoring the Armenian genocide. The international law flowing from this treaty, while a sham in reality, lent an aura of respectability to impunity because the imprimatur of a peace conference was attached to it. A French jurist observed that the treaty was an "assurance" for impunity for the crime of massacre; indeed, it was a "glorification" of the crime in which an entire race, the Armenians, was "systematically exterminated." For his part, David Lloyd George, wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain, found it appropriate to vent his ire when he was out of power: He declared the Western Allies' conduct at the Lausanne Conference to be "abject, cowardly and infamous." A creature of political deal-making, the Lausanne Treaty was a triumph of the principle of impunity over the principle of retributive justice.
  31. ^ Findley, Carter V. (2010). Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789–2007. Yale University Press. pp. 224–226. ISBN 978-0-300-15260-9.
  32. ^ Liebisch-Gümüş, Carolin (2020). Verflochtene Nationsbildung: Die Neue Türkei und der Völkerbund (in German). Walter de Gruyter GmbH. p. 256. ISBN 978-3-11-064341-1. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  33. ^ Zürcher Erik Jan. Turkey: a Modern History. 4th ed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2017. p. 163
  34. ^ Jones, Adam (2016). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Taylor & Francis. p. 231. ISBN 978-1-317-53386-3. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  35. ^ "Ethnic Cleansing | Sciences Po Violence de masse et Résistance – Réseau de recherche". ethnic-cleansing-0.html (in French). 16 April 2019. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
  36. ^ Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). 'They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else': A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton University Press. pp. 367–368. ISBN 978-1-4008-6558-1.
    • Lay summary in: Ronald Grigor Suny (26 May 2015). "Armenian Genocide". 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  37. ^ "In Turkey, conspiracy theories about the Peace Treaty of Lausanne run riot". The Skeptic. 29 March 2023. Archived from the original on 2 July 2023. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
  38. ^ "Lozan Antlaşması'nın 100. Yılında Komplo Teorileri ve Gizli Maddelerin İzinde". Yalansavar (in Turkish). 25 July 2023. Archived from the original on 6 August 2023. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
  39. ^ Danforth, Nick (2 October 2014). "Notes on a Turkish Conspiracy". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 9 May 2020. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
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