By 2023, When The Lausanne Treaty Expires, Can Turkey Rebuild Its Empire?

             The Treaty of Lausanne 11, which reduced the size of the contemporary Turkish state's territory and forced it to cede sizable portions of its own, has never been forgotten by the Turks. In light of Turkey's desire to get rid of the effects of the Convention and restore its rights, which the Allies had usurped, and the fact that Turkey believes the Convention's text is unfair to its rights, was it therefore not strange to hear Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan address the issue during regular meetings with Turkish mayors?

The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, which was signed by the victorious Allies of the First World War, including the United Kingdom (Britain), Ireland, France, Russia, Italy, and Britain, established the modern Turkish Republic, noting that Britain had created several unjust and painful conditions to the rights of the Ottoman Empire. the declaration of a secular state, the abolishment of the caliphate, the exile of the caliph and his family outside of Turkey, the confiscation of all of their assets, the banning of oil exploration in Turkey, the recognition of the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, as an international passageway devoid of any right for Turkey to collect tolls from passing ships.

And when the treaty's term, which has now lasted 100 years, expires in 2023, we can understand Erdogan's remarks since Turkey will enter a new age and will start drilling a new canal connecting the Black and Marmara seas to start charging passing ships to use the channel. Consequently, some aspects of the current conflict between Turkey and the West are understandable. After the First World War ended in 1918, the victorious allied powers signed the "Treaty of Sevres" on August 10, 1920, which divided the territory of the Ottoman Empire and granted independence to the majority of the non-Turkish nationalities there. However, the Turks rejected this treaty and engaged in a ferocious war with the allies until they decisively defeated them, particularly in Greece during the 1922–1923 war.

The Treaty of Lausanne, an international peace agreement, was signed on July 24, 1923, in the "Beau Rivage Plus" hotel in Lausanne, southern Switzerland. The parties to the Treaty include the victorious powers after the First World War (especially Britain, France, and Italy), as well as the Ottoman Empire, whose delegation was led by Ismet Inonu. After the withdrawal of Allied forces from Turkish territory, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938), the founder of the Republic of Modern Turkey, took Ankara as his capital, abolished the Islamic caliphate, and proclaimed a secular state. He led the Turkish National Movement that emerged in the aftermath of the First World War. In the Greek–Turkish War in 1922, he defeated the Greek army.

Ismet Inonu, who was born in 1884 and died in 1973, was the second President of the Republic of Turkey. He held the position from November 11, 1938, to March 22, 1950. During that time, he also formed ten governments while serving as Turkey's prime minister on several occasions from 1923 to 1924, from 1925 to 1937, and from 1961. He also held the positions of foreign minister and chief of general staff.

 

The most important of the contents of the second Treaty of Lausanne:

• the demarcation of the borders of the empire of the Ottoman Caliphate, which Western countries at the time called the “sick man”, which established the Turkish modern national state led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and its capital Ankara.

 

• It included 143 articles distributed over 17 documents ranging between the “Agreement”, “charter”,” declaration” and “annex”, and dealt with the arrangements of conciliation between the parties, signatories to the treaty, and the – establishment of diplomatic relations among them, “according to the general principles of international law.”

• it has established laws for the use of Turkish water straits and traffic rules and navigation in it at times of war and peace stipulates the conditions of residence and trade and the judiciary in Turkey, and reviewed the status of the Ottoman Empire and the fate of the territories which were subordinate to it before its defeat in the First World War during 1914-1918.

• Abolish the “Treaty of Sevres” and its unfair clauses to the Ottoman Empire, and the foundation of what was known later as the secular “Turkish Republic” after the abolition of the Islamic caliphate system, and the demarcation of Greece and Bulgaria’s borders with the Turkish state, which maintained the annexation of Istanbul and Western Thrace, and included provisions for the installment of the debt of Ottoman state.

• Turkey renounced sovereignty over Cyprus, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, and the Levant, except cities located in Syria, such as Urfa, Adana and Gaziantep, and Kells and Marsh, and the Ottoman Empire relinquished for its political and financial rights related to Egypt and Sudan as of November 1914.

• provides for the independence of the Republic of Turkey, the protection of the Greek Orthodox Christian minority in Turkey and the Muslim minority in Greece, and to bind the Turkish government to preserve the lives of all citizens, their rights, and their freedom within their territory, and they have equal rights before the law regardless of origin and nationality, language and religion, but most of the Christian population in Turkey and Turkish population in Greece, they had been driven based on the treaty of the exchange of Greek and Turkish population which has been already signed between Greece and Turkey, noting that the Aunanao Istanbul, and Lambros and Tendos (about 270,000 at the time), and the Muslim population in Western Thrace (about 129.120 P 1923) were excluded, paragraph 14 of the Treaty granted Islands Kochi (Lambros) and Bozjaadh (Tendos) “special administrative organization”, a right that was quashed by the Turkish government on February 17, 1926.

 

• Turkey officially agreed to the loss of Cyprus (which was hired by the British Empire after the Berlin conference in 1878 but remained a legal Ottoman ground until World War I), as well as Egypt and Sudan, the Anglo-Egyptian (occupied by British forces under the pretext of “putting out Orabi revolution and restore order” in 1882, but they remained “legally” Ottoman territory until the first World war), which Britain annexed them unilaterally on November 5, 1914.

• leaving the fate of Mosul province to be determined through the League of Nations, as Turkey renounced all claims in respect of the islands of the Dodecanese, which Italy was forced to bring it back to Turkey by paragraph 2 in the Ochi Treaty in 1912, also known as the First Treaty of Lausanne in 1912, as it was signed at the Chateau Doshi in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the wake of the Turkish Italian war (1911-1912), between Turkey and Italy.

• lands to the south of Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula remained under Turkish control when a truce of Madras was signed on October 30, 1918, which its texts did not deal with them clearly, but Turkey’s southern border is defined in paragraph 3, it also means that Turkey has abandoned it, and it includes Mutawakkilite Kingdom Yemen, Asir and parts of Hijaz, such as the city of Medina, retained by Turkish troops until January 23, 1919.

•To bind Turkey not to put any restrictions on citizens in the use of any language of their choice whatsoever, whether in relationships or in public meetings, or in the fields of religion, commerce, media, and publishing, with an affirmation of the rights of political and economic sovereignty of the Turkish state and cancel the application of the system of foreign privileges on its territory.

• Romania declared unilaterally to impose its sovereignty over the Ottoman fortress island (Adha castle) in 1919, and strengthened this claim in the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the island was completely forgotten in the course of peace talks at the Berlin conference in 1878, which allowed it to remain Turkish legal ground in the private ownership of the Ottoman Sultan until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. It is a small island located on the Danube River, and today it belongs to the Romanian Serbian territories, most of its inhabitants were Turks, and the island reflects the properties of Ottoman architecture, where many mosques and twisted alleys are there. Some of the island buildings such as the Orthodox Church and some cafes have been built in Vauban style.

• Turkey has abandoned its privileges in Libya as it was designated by paragraph 10 of the Uche Treaty in 1912 (according to paragraph 22 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923).

As stated by Turkish President "Recep Tayyip Erdogan" in his speech to mayors gathered at the presidential compound in the nation's capital Ankara, where President Erdogan comes to talk again about the treaty and calls for a review of the Second Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923 and followed by the settlement of the borders of modern Turkey after the First World War, Turks view the Convention as a founding document of the Turkish Republic.

Erdogan claimed that "opponents of Turkey" forced it to sign the "Treaty of Sevres" in 1920 and the "Treaty of Lausanne" in 1923, and as a result, Turkey gave Greece control of the Aegean Sea islands. Erdogan called the Treaty of Sevres the "first fork in the Ottoman back" because it required Turkey to give up vast tracts of land that were under its control.

 

The final piece in the dissolution of the Ottoman legacy was the Lausanne Treaty.

 

The treaty recognized the boundaries of the modern state in Turkey, and the demands of the allies for Turkish Kurdistan's autonomy were reduced in exchange for Turkey's concession of lands to Armenia, and abandoning claims to impose control over financial transactions in Turkey or the armed forces, and it was announced that the Turkish Straits between the Aegean and the Black Sea would become open to all, unlike what happened in the past.

In Asia, Turkey ceded control of Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine in exchange for British influence, while Syria and Lebanon came under French rule. Turkey kept control of Anatolia, while Armenia gained independence with the backing of international organizations. Turkey retained Constantinople and its surroundings, including the area of the strait of "Dardanelles and the Bosphorus," which was neutralized and internationalized, and allies got more effective control over the Turkish economy with the surrender rights. In Europe, Turkey ceded parts of Eastern Thrace and some of the islands of the Aegean Sea to Greece, and the Dodecanese and Rhodes to Italy.

International recognition of the Republic of Turkey's sovereignty as the Ottoman Empire's successor was made possible by the second Lausanne Treaty. However, after a century since the treaty's signature, it is thought that the "circulating of the message" led to political tension between Turkey and some EU nations with the treaty's termination. The letter also states that Turkey will be able to conduct oil exploration after the treaty expires and join the group of nations that produce oil, as well as collect fees from ships passing through the Bosphorus Strait and dig a new channel connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, both of which are prohibited for Turkey under the Lausanne Treaty, to start collecting fees from passing ships.

We can comprehend some aspects of the ongoing tensions between Turkey and the West, including how Western nations worry that if the treaty is terminated, Turkey will use Mosul as a pretext for its intervention there. Mosul belonged to Turkey for over four centuries before it was lost to it during the First World War. The condition of Turkey's surrender of Mosul to Iraq, according to Turkish Professor and expert in international relations Mustafa Sidqi Bilgin, was that Iraq would not alter its borders or status at the time, which has changed over the years.

The brief history notes that the city of Mosul was under the Ottoman rule from 1534, during the reign of Suleiman al-Kanoni, until the end of World War I. As it became a Western country's goal, particularly after the discovery of oil, France and Britain took control of Mosul, and after Turkey signed the Treaties of Lausanne and Ankara, Ankara abandoned Mosul after reducing the land area. By signing the Tchenba Agreement, which aims to put an end to the first Anglo-Chinese struggle, it is feasible to strike a balance between the Treaties of Lausanne II and the "Treaty of Nanking," under which China gave Hong Kong to Britain following the first Opium War.

One of the most significant objectives of Britain's war was the annexation of Hong Kong Island, which is populated and located close to the coast of southeast China. Britain invaded China in 1839 to quell resistance to its meddling in the country's political and economic affairs. Hong Kong Island, the new British colony, saw prosperity as it developed into a commercial hub between East and West, a commercial gateway, and a distribution hub for southern China. In 1898, the Second Beijing Agreement granted Britain 99 more years of control over Hong Kong.

After lengthy negotiations, the British and Chinese officially approved the return of the island to China in 1997 in September 1984. In exchange, China agreed to uphold Hong Kong's capitalist system, and on July 1st, 1997, Hong Kong was formally handed over to China at a ceremony attended by several senior Chinese and British figures. The new Hong Kong government's Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa, established policy based on the concordat.

As concerns started to appear with the expiration of the time and links between this and the battles of al-Riqqa and Mosul, as well as the attempted coup against Erdogan in the middle of 2016, the second Lausanne is currently being discussed. Whether Turkey will re-establish itself as a modern Ottoman empire in the area following the expiration of the "Treaty of Lausanne 2" is the question. Will the world's geopolitical and economic landscape shift, and is a new chapter of Ottoman legacy renovation beginning? And how are the present-day superpowers handling Turkish demands? Will there be wars before 2023, and if so, whose initiative will it be?

Observers question whether there is a provision in international law that limits the validity of international treaties to 100 years only. Noting that Germany canceled the convention in the 1930s 20 years after signing it, is it possible for Turkey to do the same? The close of the convention has been linked to political tension between Turkey and some European Union countries.