The year 1923 witnessed one of the greatest crimes of the twentieth century, committed by all the “civilized states,” both victors and losers, in the series of major wars from the Balkan War of 1913 to the end of the Greek-Turkish War in 1923. Under the Treaty of Lausanne, a population exchange was carried out between the emerging Turkish Republic and the Greek state, primarily under British auspices, which sought to establish nation-states within the former Ottoman Empire. To achieve this, social and religious diversity within the modern states had to be minimized to promote national harmony.<\/p>\n
With this primitive British vision, the treaty was signed, and 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Greeks were deported from western Anatolia, their historical homeland, to the Greek countryside. In return, approximately 500,000 Turkish Muslims were deported from across Greece to Anatolia.<\/p>\n
This treaty came in the aftermath of the Treaty of S\u00e8vres, signed in 1920. In this treaty, the victorious powers distortedly drew maps for establishing spheres of influence and creating mini-states on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. What is striking about the transition from S\u00e8vres to Lausanne is not Mustafa Kemal\u2019s victory in the War of Independence; it could have been halted at some point had Greece not transgressed against the British vision. Thus, Abdullah \u00d6calan describes Britain\u2019s stance in sponsoring the Treaty of Lausanne and ending S\u00e8vres as \u201ca shift in position based on the interests of the regime\u201d (The Kurdish Question, p. 156). Britain and France could not have prevented Russia from controlling several of the proposed mini-states, nor did they resolve who would dominate Istanbul and the straits. Continuing with the treaty would have paved the way for a second world war between the victorious powers of the first.<\/p>\n
The Kurdish state proposed in that treaty (S\u00e8vres), for reasons that remain undisclosed and which continue to influence us today, was confined to two adjacent regions: the first, directly under British influence, centered on the island of Botan, led by the Badirkhan family; the second, including Diyarbak\u0131r and extending westward to the Euphrates River, was described in British diplomatic and intelligence correspondence as \u201cWestern Kurdistan.\u201d What is notable about the Treaty of S\u00e8vres is that, in addition to Van and all Serhad, the Kurdish region west of the Euphrates was removed from the map of Kurdistan\u2014specifically, the longitudinal rectangle adjacent to the western bank of the Euphrates, from Sivas through Malatya, then Adiyaman, and reaching Afrin. Southern Kurdistan was also annexed to Iraq. \u00d6calan relies on this information to argue that the Treaty of S\u00e8vres was only partially implemented, with parts of it incorporated into Lausanne, which continues to this day.<\/p>\n
Today in Turkey, both treaties (S\u00e8vres and Lausanne) still occupy a prominent place in the ideological discourse of Turkish political parties. Within this context, four currents can be identified in the Turkish political landscape:<\/p>\n
First: The Justice and Development Party (AKP), under Erdo\u011fan\u2019s sole rule, has become centered around the Treaty of Lausanne as a foundation for overcoming this treaty, either through amendment or abolition. Erdo\u011fan\u2019s aligned media propagates blatant misinformation, claiming that the treaty is 100 years old and will expire in 2023, and that Turkey must prepare for a fight for its survival.<\/p>\n
Second: The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is founded on a historic fear of reimposing the Treaty of S\u00e8vres, both its nationalist component related to the Kurds and Armenians, and its religious component related to the Greek Orthodox.<\/p>\n
Third: The Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (DEM) seeks to revive the spirit of the Treaty of S\u00e8vres\u2014not its geographical divisions\u2014aiming to incorporate its proposals into a single nation-state that manages ethnic and religious diversity through recognition, not extermination.<\/p>\n
Fourth: The Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP) regards the Treaty of Lausanne as the jewel of the Turkish state, or as Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu described it, \u201ca taboo on Turkish territory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia vs. Lausanne<\/strong><\/p>\n Erdogan has reignited the controversy over the Treaty of Lausanne since the failed coup attempt in July 2016. That fall, the Turkish president launched a surprise attack on the treaty, denouncing it as a victory for Turkey.<\/p>\n Since then, the pursuit of ways to bypass Lausanne has become an obsession for Erdo\u011fan. During a visit to Greece on December 17, 2017, Erdo\u011fan reopened the issue of Lausanne, claiming that there are unclear provisions in the treaty that require “updating” it.<\/p>\n Here, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s aim to bypass Lausanne is linked to the gas wealth of the Eastern Mediterranean. The area surrounding the islands that the treaty granted to Greece in the Aegean Sea is considered a new gas zone, and the treaty\u2019s provisions restrict Turkey\u2019s ability to legally explore in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, last month, the Turkish president took a step back. In a message marking the 96th anniversary of the treaty\u2019s signing (July 24, 1923), he described Lausanne as \u201cTurkey\u2019s document of independence\u201d and the culmination of the victories of the War of Independence (1919\u20131922).<\/p>\n An international indicator of the divergence within the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in its Erdo\u011fanist phase (post-Ahmet Davuto\u011flu) is that the anti-Lausanne rhetoric finds support from Russia, exemplified by Russia\u2019s offer to escort Turkish exploration ships in the Mediterranean, as well as the occupation of Afrin, which constitutes a violation of the borders drawn in Lausanne and later confirmed in the Ankara Treaty of 1926.<\/p>\n Erdo\u011fan\u2019s characterization of the treaty as a \u201cdocument of independence\u201d occurs within the context of a discourse of rapprochement with the United States. The AKP is internally divided between two currents: the pro-Russian Eurasianists and the pro-NATO Atlanticists, a situation that can be described as \u201cstrategic chaos.\u201d (It is useful here to review the contributions of writer Farhad Hami on this issue.)<\/p>\n The contrast between Eurasianism and Atlanticism can be summarized as follows: The former encourages Turkey to expand and occupy, evidenced not only by Turkey\u2019s offer to escort drilling ships but also by its efforts to legitimize Turkish guardianship over Idlib and all of northern Aleppo, which is under direct Turkish occupation. The Atlanticist trend, while historically supporting Turkey in its internal wars against the Kurds, has significant consequences for attempts to bypass Lausanne. At minimum, serious sanctions could be imposed\u2014as happened for ten years when Ankara invaded northern Cyprus in 1974. Moreover, last month, the United States officially entered as a supporter of Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus regarding gas exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean, in a convoluted and \u201clong-suffering\u201d message\u2014typical of Atlanticist style\u2014aimed at any Turkish transgression.<\/p>\n The Nightmare of S<\/strong>\u00e8<\/strong>vres<\/strong><\/p>\n The nationalist movement\u2019s discourse on European unity, since its economic phase in the 1970s, has been marked by hostility and extreme caution. During this period, Alparslan T\u00fcrke\u015f declared his rejection of the European Common Market “because it would indirectly lead to the implementation of the Treaty of S\u00e8vres by allowing foreigners to buy land and gain benefits in any part of the country they wanted” (quoted from a study by \u015eermin Korkusuz). For the party, the European Union was an extension of the Allied powers of World War I. Throughout its history, the party sought to confine its definition of a desirable European Union to an economic framework\u2014an economic organization that would provide Turkey with financial grants without demanding anything in return.<\/p>\n When Turkey\u2019s candidacy for EU membership was accepted in 1999 at the Helsinki Summit, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) was part of the governing coalition. The party leader, Devlet Bah\u00e7eli, changed his tone and began speaking of \u201crediscovering Turkey\u2019s geopolitical and geographical importance, which had been underestimated in the post-Cold War period,\u201d and that \u201cthe European Union needs Turkey to achieve the desired stability in the Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Middle East\u201d (\u015eermin, 13). The discourse around the EU oscillated between welcoming Turkey\u2019s aspirations to join and denouncing the EU\u2019s racism when it tightened membership criteria. However, the EU ceased to be viewed as the enemy pushing for Turkey\u2019s division and as the agent of the Treaty of S\u00e8vres. Yet, after the MHP lost its parliamentary representation in the 2002 elections and the EU increasingly focused on human rights issues\u2014such as the trial of \u00d6calan\u2014Bah\u00e7eli reverted to portraying the EU as an enemy and an \u201caspirer to realize Byzantine dreams\u201d (\u015eermin, 13). These accusations were also directed at the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which Bah\u00e7eli saw as a continuation of the Freedom and Coalition Party that governed Ottoman Istanbul when it was occupied by the Allies after World War I and signed the Treaty of S\u00e8vres.<\/p>\n Before the formation of the alliance between the AKP and the MHP in the early 2015 parliamentary elections\u2014known in Turkey as the alliance between center-right and far-right\u2014the MHP accused the AKP of working to restore the Treaty of S\u00e8vres and pave the way for Turkey\u2019s partition.<\/p>\n Since its founding in 1969, the MHP has framed its ideological discourse around Soviet and NATO conspiracies to restore the Treaty of S\u00e8vres and abolish the Treaty of Lausanne. In this regard, the party has operated along two loosely controlled directions: on one hand, it dedicates itself to fighting all political and social manifestations reminiscent of the S\u00e8vres era, thereby preserving the gains of Lausanne; on the other hand, it adopts a distorted nationalist interpretation of the \u201cNational Pact\u201d approved in 1920 by the Ottoman Parliament, which defined the state\u2019s borders to include all of northern Syria, Mosul, Kirkuk, the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and the entire island of Cyprus. In this sense, it aligns with Erdo\u011fan in border expansion, though it is more cautious about the possibility of such expansion backfiring against Turkey.<\/p>\n Based on its on-the-ground behavior, the party views crime as something it either commits secretly or under the cover of law. The legal umbrella provides wide latitude for crimes, including genocide and the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of unwanted residents. However, at some point, when the potential reimposition of S\u00e8vres arises through the undermining of Lausanne, Devlet Bah\u00e7eli will likely be less impulsive than Erdo\u011fan and may act to hold him back\u2014even though the official platforms of both parties give the nationalist movement the upper hand in racism and a genocidal mindset. Yet, Bah\u00e7eli will do this from his new stance as an advocate of the Eurasianist orientation, which Erdo\u011fan has not fully embraced.<\/p>\n In recent days, Bah\u00e7eli has sent highly contradictory signals, including receiving the Ukrainian president and declaring that Turkey will never recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea, as well as announcing the construction of the first church in the history of the Turkish Republic, dedicated to the Syriac Orthodox community. Erdo\u011fan\u2019s choice of this community for the first church is a clever way to circumvent his ally Bah\u00e7eli, who focuses his concerns on Armenian and Greek sects as tools of S\u00e8vres, not the Syriac Orthodox. On the other hand, this decision aligns with Erdo\u011fan\u2019s trend toward Russia, which he may view as an imperial expression of Orthodoxy. The building of the church as a gesture welcoming Russia may be enough, at least temporarily, to silence Bah\u00e7eli, who is terrified of opening Turkey to Christianity and reviving what he calls the \u201cByzantine dream.\u201d<\/p>\n Shadows of Hagia Sophia<\/strong><\/p>\n In a telling story, writer Selim Koru recounts the atmosphere of transformation within the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) before its alliance with the Justice and Development Party (AKP), and how the latter drew them in during the 2011 elections. That year, as the country was preparing for the general elections, Koru met two young men from the MHP who looked worried and gloomy. He asked them, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d One replied, \u201cThere are rumors that the AKP will reopen Hagia Sophia for worship.\u201d Koru thought to himself, \u201cShouldn\u2019t they be happy? People like them would be willing to clean Hagia Sophia with a toothbrush if it really were reopened.\u201d The other young man said, \u201cWell, if the AKP does it, honestly, we don\u2019t know how we wouldn\u2019t vote for them in the elections.\u201d<\/p>\n This ruling alliance between the AKP and the MHP continues to rest on unresolved agreements about breaking away from the Atlanticist circle. Until the next presidential elections in 2023, Erdo\u011fan and Bah\u00e7eli will work together under the slogan that the best way to bury the Treaty of S\u00e8vres beneath another layer of massacres is to work towards bypassing Lausanne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The year 1923 witnessed one of the greatest crimes of the twentieth century, committed by all the “civilized states,” both victors and losers, in the series of major wars from the Balkan War of 1913 to the end of the Greek-Turkish War in 1923. Under the Treaty of Lausanne, a population exchange was carried out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":6266,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[533,543,36],"ppma_author":[151],"class_list":["post-6265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-treaty-of-lausanne","tag-treaty-of-sevres","tag-turkey"],"authors":[{"term_id":151,"user_id":13,"is_guest":0,"slug":"hussain-jummo","display_name":"Hussain Jummo","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Jummo-3.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Jummo-3.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6267,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6265\/revisions\/6267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6265"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=6265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}