The Treaty of Lausanne: What It Decided for Modern Turkey

What is the Treaty of Lausanne?

The Treaty of Lausanne is the peace treaty that closed the Turkish War of Independence. Turkey had won the war on the battlefield. Lausanne turned that victory into international recognition of the new Turkish state’s independence. It replaced the Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920.

Article 1 listed the parties: Turkey, the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania and the Serb-Croat-Slovene State. The full text runs to 143 articles. If you travel in Turkey today, the land borders you cross, the islands you reach by ferry and the end of special legal privileges for foreigners all trace back to this document.

Where was the Treaty of Lausanne signed?

The treaty was signed on 24 July 1923 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The room was the Aula hall of the Palais de Rumine. The building gives the treaty its name.

If you go looking for the signing table in the Palais de Rumine, you will not find it. In November 2008, the President of the Swiss Confederation gave the table to the President of Turkey as a gift.

Treaty of Lausanne 1923: a conference in two rounds

The Lausanne Conference opened on 20 November 1922. Talks broke down on 4 February 1923. They resumed on 23 April 1923 and ran until the signing in July. Turkey’s delegation was led by chief delegate İsmet Pasha. Rıza Nur served as second delegate and Hasan Saka as delegate.

The signature was not the end. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified the treaty on 23 August 1923. The treaty entered into force on 6 August 1924, more than a year after the signing ceremony.

Treaty of Lausanne terms: the borders

The border with Greece runs along the Meriç River. Article 2 took the river bed as the line on the stretch running down to the Aegean. The Syrian border was not drawn from scratch. Article 3 adopted Article 8 of the Turkish-French Ankara Agreement of 20 October 1921.

The border with Iraq, the Mosul question, was left open. Article 3 gave Turkey and Britain nine months to settle it by negotiation. If they failed, the matter would go to the Council of the League of Nations.

The islands were handled article by article. Article 12 confirmed Greek sovereignty over a group of Aegean islands but excluded Gökçeada, Bozcaada and the Tavşan Islands. Article 15 saw Turkey renounce, in favour of Italy, its rights over Rhodes, the other Dodecanese islands and Meis. Article 20 recognised Britain’s annexation of Cyprus, which Britain had declared on 5 November 1914.

This is where the treaty touches ordinary life. If you take the ferry to Bozcaada for a summer weekend, you are landing on an island that Article 12 kept Turkish in 1923.

Capitulations, debts and war damages

Article 28 accepted the complete abolition of the capitulations in Turkey, in every respect. These were the special privileges foreign nationals had held. Their end was one of the core demands of the Turkish side.

Money followed borders. Article 46 divided the Ottoman public debt between Turkey and the states that had taken Ottoman territory or separated from the empire. Article 59 dealt with Greece. Greece recognised its obligation to make good the damage caused in Anatolia by acts contrary to the laws of war. Turkey, taking Greece’s financial situation into account, renounced its reparation claims.

That renunciation was part of a trade. Leaving Karaağaç station to Turkey formed part of the settlement of the reparations dispute at the conference.

Treaty of Lausanne population exchange

The population exchange was not written into the peace treaty itself. It came in a separate convention signed at Lausanne on 30 January 1923, six months before the treaty. The convention set a compulsory exchange of Greek Orthodox Turkish nationals living in Turkey and Muslim Greek nationals living in Greece.

Two groups were left out. Article 2 excluded the Greeks of Istanbul and the Muslims of Western Thrace, as the convention defined them. Article 3 reached backwards in time. It covered Greeks and Muslims who had already left the relevant territories since 18 October 1912.

The peace treaty backed this with a mirror clause. Article 45 stated that the rights recognised for non-Muslim minorities in Turkey would also apply to the Muslim minority in Greece.

Treaty of Lausanne and Kurdistan

The treaty contains no special provision on the Kurds or on Kurdistan. Rafaat’s study, published by Brill in its Kurdish Studies series, records this point. If you search the 143 articles for the word Kurdistan, you will search in vain.

The Straits: from Lausanne to Montreux

Lausanne also produced a Straits Convention. Its regime did not last. The Montreux Convention, signed on 20 July 1936, replaced the Lausanne regime for the Straits. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs still publishes the Montreux text in its Straits Report.

Treaty of Lausanne 1912: two treaties, one name

Searches for a 1912 Treaty of Lausanne are not a mistake. The Treaty of Ouchy, signed on 18 October 1912, is also known as the Treaty of Lausanne. Article 22 of the 1923 treaty abolished the rights over Libya that remained from that 1912 text. One article thus tied two peace treaties with the same place name together.

The date matters elsewhere too. The population exchange convention used the same date, 18 October 1912, as its cut-off in Article 3.

Does the Treaty of Lausanne expire in 2023?

No. The claim that Lausanne would end in 2023 circulated widely before the centenary. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey answered it in a statement dated 4 January 2023. The treaty has no time limit and contains no hundred-year clause.

A related claim says secret articles ban Turkey from extracting boron and oil. The Turkish Wikipedia entry on the treaty records this as a conspiracy theory. On 4 January 2023, Speaker of the Assembly Mustafa Şentop stated that the treaty has no secret articles.

Treaty of Lausanne text, PDF and map

The English text is public. It appears as a PDF on the United Nations website, in Volume 28 of the League of Nations Treaty Series under number 701. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes the English text in parts: political clauses, financial clauses, miscellaneous provisions and the exchange convention.

The treaty also came with maps. Article 4 stated that the maps annexed to show the borders were drawn at a scale of 1:1,000,000. If the map and the text disagreed, the text was to prevail.

Timeline

1. 18 October 1912 The Treaty of Ouchy is signed; it is also called the Treaty of Lausanne.
2. 10 August 1920 The Treaty of Sèvres is signed.
3. 20 November 1922 The Lausanne Conference opens.
4. 30 January 1923 The convention on the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations is signed.
5. 4 February 1923 The Lausanne talks break off.
6. 23 April 1923 The Lausanne talks resume.
7. 24 July 1923 The Lausanne Peace Treaty is signed.
8. 23 August 1923 The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratifies the treaty.
9. 6 August 1924 The treaty enters into force.
10. 20 July 1936 The Montreux Convention is signed, replacing the Lausanne Straits Convention.

Details you won’t find in guidebooks

• The missing table. The signing table is no longer in the Palais de Rumine. The President of the Swiss Confederation gave it to the President of Turkey in November 2008.
• One original copy. The closing record of the treaty provided that the single original be deposited in the archives of the Government of the French Republic. The parties received certified copies.
• Text beats map. Article 4 fixed the annexed maps at a 1:1,000,000 scale and ruled that the written text prevails over any conflicting map.
• A cut-off in 1912. Article 3 of the exchange convention included people who had left the relevant territories since 18 October 1912, more than a decade before the signing.
• Two treaties, one article. Article 22 of the 1923 treaty abolished rights over Libya left over from the 1912 Treaty of Ouchy, itself known as the Treaty of Lausanne.
• A railway station in the balance. Karaağaç station was left to Turkey as part of the settlement of the reparations dispute with Greece.

FAQ

Sources

1. Palais de Rumine — Salle de l’Aula palaisderumine.ch
2. Ministry of National Defence of Türkiye — Republic Era ata.msb.gov.tr
3. French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs — Centenaire du Traité de Lausanne diplomatie.gouv.fr
4. Grand National Assembly of Türkiye — Lausanne Peace Conference (PDF) cdn.tbmm.gov.tr
5. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Türkiye — Lausanne Peace Treaty, Part I: Political Clauses mfa.gov.tr
6. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Türkiye — Lausanne Peace Treaty, Part II: Financial Clauses mfa.gov.tr
7. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Türkiye — Lausanne Peace Treaty, Part V: Miscellaneous Provisions mfa.gov.tr
8. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Türkiye — Convention concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations mfa.gov.tr
9. Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Türkiye — 1923 ktb.gov.tr
10. Wikipedia — Treaty of Lausanne en.wikipedia.org
11. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi — Lozan Antlaşması islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
12. Brill — Kurdish Studies, Rafaat (PDF) brill.com
13. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Türkiye — Turkish Straits Report 2024, Montreux Convention text (PDF) mfa.gov.tr
14. Grand National Assembly of Türkiye — Speaker Şentop’s statement on claims about the Treaty of Lausanne (4 January 2023) tbmm.gov.tr
15. Vikipedi — Lozan Antlaşması tr.wikipedia.org
16. United Nations — League of Nations Treaty Series, Volume 28 (PDF) treaties.un.org

Image: Treaty of Lausanne 1923 (Greek).jpg — Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece // Υπουργείο Εξωτερικώ, Public domain