Turkey in post-centennial phase of Treaty of Lausanne

Muhammad Sayyid Rasas

Over the past two years and the current year, there have been increasing statements by Erdogan’s close associates in the ruling party or by pro-government journalists, suggesting that the Treaty of Lausanne will expire after one hundred years since its signing on July 24, 1923.

This treaty established the basis for the present-day Turkish state, just three months after its signing. In conjunction with these statements or before them and between 2016 and 2019, there were statements by Ibrahim Kalin, former spokesperson of the Turkish presidency, and by former Minister of Interior Suleyman Soylu, pointing out or hinting that Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq should be based on “Misak-ı Millî” which was declared by the pro-Mustafa Kemal parliament in 1920 and demanded by the Turkish delegation leader, Ismet Pasha (Inonu), at the Lausanne Conference. However, he did not succeed in obtaining those borders, which included Antakya, Idlib, Aleppo, Raqqa, Hasakah, Mosul, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Kirkuk.

Today, it marks the beginning of the second centenary of the Treaty of Lausanne, and in the coming days, it is important to observe Turkey’s behavior, especially the Justice and Development Party (AKP) after its recent victory in parliamentary and presidential elections. They may attempt to break free from what they call the “Lausanne Treaty,” which Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk, later on) accepted to be as a “prison” for Turkey.

There is much evidence of Turkey’s expansionist tendencies, and about Turkey that it does not accept this treaty or Turkey is determined to override it that was in 1923. The first indications of these tendencies were its annexation of the Sanjak of Alexandretta in 1939, which was recognized by Turkey under the Lausanne Treaty as part of Syrian territory. Secondly, Turkey gained military control over northern Cyprus after the 1974 invasion, and in 2016, it took military control on the Jarablus-Bab-Azaz borders, followed by the military control on Afrin and its surrounding areas in 2018. Subsequently, Turkey gained control on Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain (Sere Kaniye) borders in 2019. Since last fall, Erdogan has been declaring and threatening to establish a 32-kilometer-deep border strip in Syrian-Turkish border areas after taking control on Tel Rifaat, Manbij, and Kobani (Ain al-Arab) in which this border strip connected from the town of Bdama in Idlib Governorate to Ras al-Ain. Turkey has taken various measures in the areas of Syria currently under its control, such as building residential complexes to house Syrian refugees and displaced people from areas like Horan, Ghouta, northern Homs, and southern Idlib in residences of displaced Syrians from Kurdish areas that were displaced following the Turkish military invasion, particularly in Afrin. Furthermore, Turkey has established economic links between those regions and Turkey, including infrastructure projects for water, electricity, and telecommunications, similar to what happened regarding the Sanjak of Alexandretta as “a special matter” after the 1937 French-Turkish Agreement, which was merely a transitional phase leading to annexation the Sanjak of Alexandretta to Turkey in 1939. In Iraq, and from time to time, there are many indications which show that the Turks view to cities of Mosul and Kirkuk with a special vision. 

Additionally, What goes beyond the “Misak-ı Millî”, as Turkey has shown ambitions beyond the borders established in the Treaty of Lausanne. Turkey did not accept its maritime boundaries with Greece of the Aegean Sea, which were confirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne. Moreover, although Turkey  abandoned Cyprus and recognized the British control over it in 1914, and through its invasion in 1974 not only violated the Treaty of Lausanne but also overruled its recognition of the independent and unified territory of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960. It can also be added to this that Turkey which recognized on the Treaty of Lausanne the fact that the Ottoman possessions in Africa did not belong to it, including Libya, which the Ottomans abandoned it for Italy in 1912, shows indications regarding Turkey’s recent engagement in the Libyan conflict, especially through the 2019 agreement between Erdogan and the Libyan Government led by Fayez al-Sarraj which considers that there are maritime boundaries between the coasts of Turkey and Libya, passing through the region separating between the islands of Cyprus and Crete. Also, Turkey’s military, security, and economic involvement in the Libyan conflict seems to be in Ankara a notion that goes beyond merely assisting Islamists in Libya, but it is for establishing a Libyan state under Turkish influence, and dominated by Libyan descendants of Turkish origins, particularly from the city of Misrata.

After an experience of the centennial era of the Treaty of Lausanne, we can consider that Turkey, like Israel, appears to be an expansionist state that does not accept the existing borders established by the Treaty of Lausanne, similar to Israel’s refusal to accept the borders set on November 29, 1947 by the UN Partition of Palestine. It expanded beyond it in the 1948 war and then in the 1967 war through its decisions to annex Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, as well as through settlement operations in the West Bank, and Israel has exceeded its borders tens of thousands of square kilometers regarding its establishment resolution. It seems that the Turks believe in David Ben-Gurion’s saying that “the borders are where the military forces are stationed.”

In this regard, expansionist countries can be found in contemporary times, such as Turkey and Israel, that are Serbia, which with the following of the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 and 1992, attempted to annex territories from Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo using force alone and the ethnic cleansing, including the Kosovo War in 1999. And Russia, feeling that it has been confined by its borders after the breakup of the Soviet Union since 1991, despite its recognition of the boundaries among the 15 Soviet republics during the final week of 1991, including the borders between Russia and Ukraine, as the new borders between the states emerging from the Soviet collapse, however, it overruled that recognition by annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 as well as the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson on September 30, 2022. In a speech preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine by three days on February 21, 2022, Putin pointed out that Ukraine is as an “artificial state designed by an architect named Lenin in 1922”.

In conclusion, keep a close watch on Turkey’s behavior and policies after July 24, 2023.