Oh people, what happened to me today! I made a video this afternoon in which I also mentioned the Treaty of Lausanne, because when I woke up, I suddenly thought about that agreement of a century ago. After making the video, I wanted to know a few more things about that treaty and so I started a little search on Mr. Internet. What do you think? In giant letters everywhere articles that claimed the Treaty would end this year in July. More in this article!
What is the Treaty of Lausanne and: does it end?
For anyone who doesn’t know what by all heavens the Treaty of Lausanne is: it is the forcefully signed in 1923 “agreement”, after the Turks had first committed the genocide on the Armenians in 1915, then through the Sefoy another genocide on the Assyrians, next on the Greeks in 1921 and in the meantime inceasingly on the Kurds. The more brutal a nation is, the more rights it receives – just look at Ukraine in our time – and I am far from being the only one who says that. Here is what a few historians and other prominent people who lived a century ago or studied the events, said – I quote the Wikipedia:
Lloyd George declared the treaty an “abject, cowardly and infamous surrender”.
Historian Norman Naimark states, “The Lausanne Treaty served as a pivotal international precedent for transferring populations against their will throughout the twentieth century.”
Historian Ronald Grigor Suny states that the treaty “essentially confirmed the effectiveness of deportations or even murderous ethnic cleansing as a potential solution to population problems”.
Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser states, “Lausanne tacitly endorsed comprehensive policies of expulsion and extermination of hetero-ethnic and hetero-religious groups, with fatal attraction for German revisionists and many other nationalists”.
Let us start with the question that lives in both Greece and Turkey: does this Treaty of Lausanne have a – secret or not – end date and what would that mean? I did the best work I could to answer the question and found that this is not true. You will find my sources underneath the article. First of all the Wikipedia teaches us that treaties don’t always end in a 100 years. They either end on an agreed date or just continue to be valid. The oldest treaty that is still valid until today is between Portugal and England and dates from the 14th century. Foreign Policy immediately called out anyone who thinks the treaty ends this year a conspiracy thinker, totally according to the latest fashion of framing anyone who thinks something else than you yourself do. Best thing from their article is that they don’t give any answer to the question if the treaty has an end date. Well it doesn’t! I read the whole thing both in modern Greek and in English and nowhere was any end date mentioned in the contract.
So no-one needs to fear that Turkey will grab the rest of Greece the moment the Treaty of Lausanne, that defines (among a lot of other things) the borders between Greece and Turkey, expires. Not to forget that just before this treaty was signed, there was another one, called the Treaty of Sèvres, in which the Turks had to give eastern Thrace back to Greece, where Smyrna (Izmir) would become an apart state and Kurdistan would have some kind of autonomy. If Lausanne’s treaty expires, it can as well be that that older treaty starts working. That would be total chaos, wouldn’t it? So no, don’t be afraid. I think something completely different is going to happen this year and I hope I will be right about it. You can’t predict the future!
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The situation in 1923
In 1921 the Greek army honestly and fairly reconquered the forever having been Greek territories of Anatolia or Asia Minor – the Asian part of Greece where I myself come from as well. But when they arrived just past Ankara, the British were waiting for them. They sent the Turks upon them to murder all of the Greek army and many of the Greek civilians of Anatolia: 1.5 million people. They burnt down all our cities, killed and raped wherever they could and only 4 million Greeks made it to Athens or Thessaloniki. Among who my grandparents from both sides. Another circa 5 million Greeks survived the genocide and Greece was packed with another 4 million new inhabitants in the already rocky, dry and hot piece of the country they had been able to reconquer from the 400-year long Turkish occupation. The Turks never owned Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Kurdistan, Syria, Palestina or North-Africa: they occupied it and reigned it with the worst terror you can even imagine.
If you have ever listened to Turkish President Erdoǵan’s rhetorics, you know he finds it totally normal that his country is going to reoccupy not only Greece, but the old Ottoman Empire in its entirety. The man is delusional, but the problem is that the majority of the people in modern day Turkey think exactly like him. The whole world belongs to the bold and brutal Ottomans, according to them and this is the most important reason why Recep Tayyip Erdoǵan has so much support in that country and among Turkish citizens abroad. Children are brought up with these crazy ideas and there is a historical figure they understand completely wrong: Mustafa Kemal, also known as Atatürk.
Very democratically this man was the first President of the Turkish Republic from … 1921 to his death in 1938. He was very close with the Order of Freemasons, an English occult society club with kinda weird ideas about the world and its power. Both in Izmir and in Istanbul there was a huge department of this club and I can’t imagine any other reason why only the Turks came out of the Treaty of Lausanne with this huge country, while Greece lost not only 2/3 of its terrain to them, but also the Dodecanese – and the Cyclades and the Ionian islands – to the Italians and Cyprus to the English. The other countries that signed the treaty were Romania, Italy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croates and Slovenes, England, France and Japan.
Rights of minorities in the Treaty of Lausanne
Now children in Turkey learn at school and from their parents that this Atatürk was such a very modern figure, that implemented democracy in Turkey. Well, maybe in their dreams! In 1921 there was first of all the genocide of the Greeks under his presidency – not the most democratic or peaceful event ever – and after signing the agreement, the Kurds were next. I have already told a few times that Kurds were most of the time not Muslims and if they were, they had become Muslims with the sword on their neck. Kurds have their own religion, that is an extension of the Persian Zarathustra religion. the Kurds call it Yezdan, in English Yazidism. Another time I will tell more about it, but for now it is enough to say that Islam doesn’t recognise Yazidism and the Turks immediately began forcing the Kurds to become Muslims. And so the Kurds became Alevites, another current in Islam, in order to differ from the Turks. It was their way not to be forced to merge with the Turks and to lose their language, culture and identity.
We can state that this Atatürk was far from being a democrat or a peaceful leader. While the Treaty of Lausanne imposes equal rights for each and every minority in the new state of Turkey, nothing like that ever happened. Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, Syrians, Persians, Assyrians and Jews were horribly discriminated and this would only stop if they stopped speaking their language, expressing their culture and following their religion. They were obliged to call themselves Turks or else they would have no job, no freedom and no safety at all. This situation is the same until today, a 100 years later. The Turkish state didn’t even keep up with the new treaty for one day, but there was a problem:
Catches in the treaty
In the Treaty of Lausanne no implications or punishment was described for the Turks if they wouldn’t stick to the agreement. I read the whole thing from beginning to end and back, but found not even one word about the case in which the Turks would violate the treaty. For the borders with Greece on the islands and northern Greece there was and is still someting like a complaint that can be filed with the UN or nowadays the EU. But the violations of the Turkish army at the Greek borders happen on a daily basis, quite a lot of young soldiers are killed every year and instead of punishing Turkey, the west just couldn’t care less. About the thousands of violations of human rights every year in Turkey no-one cares either. The west created a monster of brutal power by giving that enormous piece of land to the Turks without any restrictions and even they themselves don’t know how to solve the issue now.
Another fishy thing in the treaty is the horrible fact that Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians were just supposed to instantly forget the bloody genocides on their people that had just just taken place. Turkey was simply declared immune to any crimes they had committed and everyone had to accept it, if they wanted or not. It was an immensely bitter and painful pill for all parties of the treaty except the Turks, who went partying the very next day after the signing of the agreement. The other countries at least more or less got their countries back, but Greece didn’t even receive 1/4 of Greece back. They also had to sent all Muslims from Greece, who were supposed to be Turks but often were Greek that had been forced to become Muslims, to Turkey. Turkey sent Christian people to Greece, who also often weren’t Greek at all. Plus the Greeks were not allowed to ever, ever, ever think again of reuniting their rightful country. The Kurds were totally overlooked and received nothing at all. Not even an autonomous region within Turkey. This treaty has been the death of the Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds.
Is there hope for a better future?
I know that most people in western countries think the Turks are nice and civilised people. They go on holidays to the beautiful coasts there and don’t realise that the people who live there, are most of the time Greek and sometimes Kurdish. Real Ottoman Turks are a completely different story that I can tell you stories about that could fill three books. Real Ottoman Turks are tough, brutal and undemocratic people, who are very often with the facistoid Grey Wolves. This is a movement that wants the Turks to be wild nomads again like they have always been and to go on raping, torturing, killing people as well as burning other nations’ cities and land. They are also very hypocrite, which can make it difficult to recognise them if you aren’t acquainted with them.
And: is there a chance for a better future, in which it will finally be the turn of the Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds to live in freedom again without being terrorised by Turks? Well, actually yes! If the Treaty of Lausanne expires or not, the fact that the thing was signed exactly a 100 years ago is a very good moment to evaluate what Turkey has done with this agreement. It is high time for a thorough research on human rights and on how Turkey deals with minorities. If such a research is conducted, their crimes against humanity will for sure be found and they will be declared incapable of ruling that country. Don’t forget the economy is also beneath zero and the country swims in the debts to both the EU and the US. Greece’s debts to the EU are peanuts compared to those of Turkey, that owes in total $459,031,000 ($459 billion) to other countries. The EU, America, Saudi Arabia and the IMF are among the creditors. After a thorough research both Greeks, Kurds, Armenians and Assyrians can claim their rightful territories.
I am very aware that even thinking this is considered a great taboo in Greece. People have been hit so hard by the genocide in 1921 and the Treaty of Lausanne, that they don’t dare to dream of a reunited country anymore. And then there is Cyprus which is torn apart by again the Turks, who occupied 1/3 of the island in 1974 and no-one can get them out, even if their occupation of Famagousta isn’t recognised by anyone. So actually it is high time to start thinking big and fair again. Greece has always been an enormous country with a lot of power, but not brutal. I am really not writing this, because I am Greek and not objective. Or because I am being unrealistic. No, not at all. Think about it. Always in peace and never by war, but still a reunited country is not impossible. We Greeks aren’t just Europeans, but Asians too. I myself am an example of an Asian Greek and it hurts to have lost my roots.
Sources:
- The Lausanne Project
- MiDaS, Malaysian Institute of Defence and Security, End of the Treaty of Lausanne
- FP, Foreign Policy, Notes on a Turkish Conspiracy
- Wikipedia, Treaty of Lausanne (and more pages for more information about the historical details and politicians who signed the Treaty)
- Wikipedia, Treaty of Sèvres
- Wikipedia, Treaty
- Britannica, Treaty of Lausanne-1923
- CNN.gr, Συνθήκη της Λωζάνης: Τί έχουν υπογράψει Ελλάδα και Τουρκία
