Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially announced
Ankara’s doubt in the Greek sovereignty on the islands of the Aegean Sea
and for one more time he confirmed Turkey’s aspirations and efforts to
use the “grey zones” in order to create a fait a compli.
Erdogan sharply criticized the Lausanne Treaty which largely gave
Turkey its present borders and suggested that Turkey was blackmailed to
accept it and therefore the Treaty was “presented as a victory”, where
there was none.
Speaking at a 27th gathering with village chiefs in Ankara on
Thursday, Erdogan said that some had tried to present the Treaty of
Lausanne as a victory. In his speech, Erdogan mingled patriotic and
nationalist fanfares having some wondering whether he is preparing the
war to ‘restore’ the historical borders of his country.
“July 15 [coup attempt] is the second War of Independence
for the Turkish nation. Let us know it like that. They [threatened] us
with Sèvres in 1920 and persuaded us to [accept] Lausanne in 1923. Some
tried to deceive us by presenting Lausanne as victory. In Lausanne, we
gave away the [now-Greek] islands that you could shout across to,” he
said.
“We are still struggling about what the continental shelf will be,
and what will be in the air and the land. The reason for this is those
who sat at the table for that treaty. Those who sat there did not do
[us] justice, and we are reaping those troubles right now. If this coup
had succeeded, they would have given us a treaty that would have made us
long for Sèvres,” he added.
In July, Erdoğan had said the Treaty of Lausanne was the title deed
of the republic in a message issued on the 93rd anniversary of its
signing.
“The victory, which our glorious nation gained by faith, courage and
sacrifice, was registered by transferring it to the ground of diplomatic
and international law with the Treaty of Lausanne. This treatment is
the title deed of our newly founded state,” Erdoğan said in his message.
(HurriyetDailyNews)
The
Treaty of Lausanne was signed on July 24, 1923
between Greece and Turkey and is regarded as the final treaty concluding
World War I. It secured the foundation of the modern Republic of Turkey
after the War of Independence.
The
Treaty of Lausanne was a
peace treaty
signed in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. It officially settled
the conflict that had originally existed between the Ottoman Empire and
the Allied British Empire, French Republic, Kingdom of Italy, Empire of
Japan, Kingdom of Greece, and the Kingdom of Romania since the onset of
World War I.
The Treaty of Lausanne the result of a second attempt at peace after the failed
Treaty of Sèvres,
signed in 1920 and imposed to Ottoman Empire by the powers of Antente
(Britain, France and Italy.) Through the Treaty of Sevres, the Ottoman
Empire would have suffered significant loss of territory.
Turkey under the Treaty of Sevres
The Treaty of Sevres was signed but was later rejected by the Turkish
national movement of Mustafa Kemla Ataturk who fought against the
previous terms and significant loss of territory. The Treaty of Lausanne
ended the conflict and defined the borders of the modern Turkish
Republic. In the treaty, Turkey gave up all claims to the remainder of
the Ottoman Empire and in return the Allies recognized Turkish
sovereignty within its new borders
Turkey’s borders under the Treaty of Lausanne
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 Turkish population of Greece had already
been deported under the earlier Convention Concerning the Exchange of
Greek and Turkish Populations signed by Greece and Turkey in 1923, while
more than a million Greeks were forced to flee to Greece during the
Turkish independence war in 1922.
The treaty delimited the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey;
formally ceded all Turkish claims on the Dodecanese Islands in the
eastern Aegean Sea; Cyprus (the North illegaly occupied by Turkey since
1974), also on Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Iraq incl Mosul and Libya.
Reactions
Erdogan’s statements triggered angry reactions in Turkish
social-democratic opposition CH, the party of the founder of modern
Turkey Ataturk.
Baskin Oran,
Professor for International Relations said that “criticizing the Treaty
of Lausanne is common among nationalists in Turkey” and that the
criticism has “less to do with the Greek islands but rather with the
Kurdish conflict and the oil-rich Mosul [in Northern Irak].”
Oran said that “Turkey did not want the Dodecanese islands in 1923 “because 90% of the population was Greek.”
The official Greek reaction is still due.
Πηγή: @Sean Hawkey
