Erdogan Wants to Challenge the Lausanne Treaty? Let’s Take a Look

Philippe Raffi Kalfayan

 

Observers were surprised when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan questioned the fair application of the Lausanne Treaty recently. In a visit to Athens in December, he asked for its revision, claiming that “the Muslim minorities on the Greek border of Western Thrace were not able to choose their own chief mufti, while the Christian communities in Turkey enjoyed greater freedom when choosing their Patriarch.” Previously, he had declared that Lausanne was not such a great victory, because Turkey had to give away some [now Greek] islands. Meanwhile, he praised the Lausanne Treaty as the result of the first victory for the independence of Turkey.

The reaction of the CHP [Republican Kemalist Party] was prompt, condemning those comments, recalling that the Lausanne Treaty is the title deed of the Republic of Turkey.

We should take a closer look at that treaty, especially the conditions in which the treaty was concluded, its consequences for Armenians inside or outside the country, and how it has been applied so far by Turkey. 

Bardakçı’s Chest as a Cognovit

 Ümit Kurt

In Kanunların Ruhu: Emval-i Metruke Kanunlarında Soykırımın İzini Sürmek (The Spirit of the Laws: Pursuing the Trace of Genocide on the Abandoned Property Laws), Taner Akçam and I exposed the ways in which the moveable and unmovable properties of the Armenians who were displaced and eliminated in 1915 were obtained and distributed, using all the vehicles provided by the “law,” first by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), and later the Republican regime with the Abandoned Property Laws (Emval-i Metruke Kanunları) that the government inherited.¹

Although all of the laws issued within the scope of the Abandoned Property Laws noted the Armenians’ entitlement to their property and assets, and stated that at the very least their value should be handed over to them, the process was obstructed in many ways. As a result, the Armenians’ material foundations were eliminated and their physical annihilation was complete. The measure of existence “granted” to the Armenians by these laws was reduced to nothingness.