Transcript 2. Turkish diplomacy during the Lausanne Conference: İnönü factor

2. Turkish diplomacy during the Lausanne
Conference: İnönü factor
 M. Kemal asked Yusuf Kemal’s resignation and
requested İsmet İnönü to become foreign minister of
his government and the head of the Turkish
delegation that would send to Lausanne. He then was
elected by the Assemby to this mission: İnönü has
less diplomatic experience than military experience(
general staff and the commander of the Western
front). Dr. Rıza Nur was the second and Hasan Saka
was the third delegate of Turkish delegation.
 The British delegation was headed by an experienced
diplomat: British foreign minister, Lord Curzon.Even if
Turkey was the victorious nation, she was generally
treated like a defeated nation by the Allied powers’
representatives, particularly by Curzon.
 The Turkish objective at Lausanne: Nothing but the National Pact
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The Lausanne Conference was unique among post-war conferences in
that it was the only one in which the Allies met the defeated enemy on
anything like equal terms. Turkey aimed at proving that it wasn’t the
defeated party that had signed the Sevres treaty, but was rather a new
state which had fought for its independance and didn’t come to
Lausanne as a supplicant.
The Turkish delegate’s aim at Lausanne was to add a diplomatic
victory to the military victory which had been achieved in the field.
Their stand-point was the Mudania Convention, signed by the
Nationalists, whereas the Western Powers tended to rely on the
Armistice of Mudros.
Turkey was to rely on its military position in order to strengthen its
negotiating position. At almost every opportunity, İnönü repeated that
he wasn’t the representative of the defeated Ottoman Empire but that
of a victorious Turkey determined to negociate peace on equal terms.
The priority of İnönü was to secure the National Pact that formed the
basis of all negociations with the Allied powers.
Ankara had a definite programme:
The complete scrapping of the Treaty of Sevres
A plebiscite for Western Thrace
The restoration of Mosul which has been under British control since
1918.
4. The freedom of the Straits
5. No military restrictions
6. No minority provisions other than those in the European treaties.
7. No financial and economic control
8. No Capitulations but the full sovereignty and independance of
Turkey
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Instructions taken from Ankara were as follows:
The Eastern frontier: no armenian homeland to be admitted.
Negociations to be broken off if Allies insisted
The Frontier of Iraq: Suleymanie, Kerkuk and Mosul to be
claimed and new instructions to be asked from Ankara
concerning new situations
The Frontier of Syria: efforts to be made to improve it along the
following route: Re’si Ibn Hani-Harim-Muslimiye-Meskene-FiratDerizor-Col-Mosul
The Aegean islands: policy to be determined in the course of
the negociations. Islands to be claimed on account of their
proximity to the Dardanelles.
The Frontiers of Thrace: efforts to be made to secure 1914
frontier.
The Frontiers of Western Thrace: to be determined in
conjunction with the National Pact. ( ex. Plesbicite)
7. The Straits and the Gallipoli: no foreign military force to be
admitted. Ankara would be inforces in advance if the
negociations to be broken off.
8. The Capitulations: Under no circumstances capitulations to be
accepted. Delagation has the right to break the negociation.
9. Minorities: To be solved by the mutual exchange of population.
10. Ottoman Public Dept: To be distributed among the successor
states. Greece’s debt to be renounced in return for its
recognition of reparations. Failing that that the question to be
postponed for twenty years.
11. Army ana Navy: No limitation to be accepted
12. Foreign Institutions: To be subject to Turkish Law
13. The Succession States: Article 1 of the National Pact to be
applied.
14. The rights of the Islamic foundations and Institutions to be
determined under the guidance of previous agreements.
 To sum up, the realisation of the National Pact and nothing but
the entire Pact and the recognition by the Allies representatives
of the government of Ankara as the sole representative of Turkey
were the sole considerations by which the Nationalist
government was guided.
 Turkey’s strategy at Lausanne was based upon the
arrangements by the GNA. Turkey’s standpoint could be
summarised in three points:
1. The Turkish Empire has ceased to exist ; in consequence, the
Treaty of Sèvres and all other treaties concluded by the Empire
with any other state had become void and the new Turkish State
had never been at war with the Allies, but only Greece, and the
peace treaty was only necessary so far as Greece was
concerned.
2. The Turkish delegation was to take every advantage of
differences of opinion ana rivalries between the powers and
conclude seperate treaties with them.
3. The most important advantage Ismet Pasha enjoyed was the
weakness of Allied unity. At Lausanne, he established his
strategy of destroying Curzon’s unity of promised by offering
reasonable concessions. The initial Turkish strategy was to
enter into seperate arrangements with the Allies and then to
enter into struggle with Britain. As the negociations progressed,
Inonu revised his strategy and decided to come to terms with
the British first. The Turks seemed to have made every effort to
convince the British that their prime objective was to make
peace with Britain. However, they regarded Curzon as
unconvinced of the desirability of good Anglo-Turkish relations.
Curzon was very much concerned about the possible
consequences of Soviet-Turkish friendship.
 Nevertheless, during the Straits question, Ankara favored the
British thesis on the Straits question,despite the fact that Soviet
proposals corresponded most closely to the Turkish view.
 Turkey needed an immediate peace. In order to secure peace, it
first needed Britain’s support which depended on arriving at a
compromise over the questions of Mosul and the Straits.
 Britain’s main interests: were to secure freedom of passage for
British warships through the Straits and the attachment of the
disputed province of Mosul to British-ruled Iraq rather than to
Turkey.
 Straits question: British and Soviets have different positions.
British sought to have the straigts opened to warships while
the Soviets aimed to keep them closed. ( Russian black sea fleet
was destroyed in the civil war, so they aimed to keep the British
fleet out of the Black sea. The result was a compromise under
which non Black Sea powers gained limited access to that sea
and both sides of the straits were demilitarised. A straits
commission was also established ( bu son ikisi montreux’de
kalkacak.)
 The Mosul question:
British and Turkish aims directly clashed. The Turks based
their claim to the province of Mosul on the grounds that it
was a part of non-Arab territories which were included
within the putative Turkish state under the national pact
and had not been under British occupation at the time of
Mudros armistice. The Turkish delagation claimed that the
Turks and the Kurds come from the same race and there
were no differences between the Kurds and the Turks; and
“the government of Ankara is also the government of the
Kurds”. The Kurdish supported the nationalist cause against
the Allied powers.
The question was left unsettled when the treaty was signed
with an understanding that both sides would come to an
agreement within nine months. Two parts engaged in
bilateral negociations ( Haliç negociations) during May-June
1924. They failed to make any progress and Britain referred
the question to the League of Nations. The council of the
League of Nations atter established a commission of enquiry
to investigate the position on the ground. The Commission
rejected that most of the local population preferred Turkey.
The report of the Commission issued in July 1925 awarded
the province to Iraq. This decision was opposed by Ankara
which opposed the Council’s right of jurisprudiction.
This led to a referral to the permenant Court of International
Justicewhich on 21 novermber 1925 decided that a decision of
the Council would be binding on both sides. On 16 december,
the Council made a unanimous decision in favor of Iraq.After the
re-opening of bilateral negociations between Ankara ana London
in april 1926, Turkey accepted the League’s decision subject to a
formula under which Turkey was to receive 10% of the oil
royalties payabşe in the Mosul province for the next 25 years.
The agreement was formalised in a treaty signed in Ankara on 5
june 1926: Ankara treaty
Great Britain on the eve of the Conference: Great Britain
seeks tranquility and requires a united allied front
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In the aftermath of the war, it was proved that the British wouldn’t
continue to dominate the region militarily and the strength of Russia
couldn’t be crippled. As a consequence, the economic effects of the
Great War eroded the very foundation of British military strength and
the Turkish nationalist revival in Anatolia resulted in the collapse of the
entire Sevres settlement.
In the aftermath of the war, Britain had three general elections and Irish
question dominated the country’s domestic politics. The country had
also big economic problems, including mass unemployment. Britain
was overextended and it lacked resources to defend it.
Why did Britain find peace with the Turks desirable after Ankara’s
victory in 1922?
The reperation issue: Britain demand of compensation of war
damage. This problem caused friction between French and British.
The Muslim factor: The British empire includes a vast population of
Muslim inhabitants: Indian muslims must have been taken into
account. During the National war of Independance the Turks had
enjoyed the admiration and support of the Indian Muslims. The British
believed that Turkey was successful in upholding the caliphate against
The Christian world.
LAUSANNE BAĞITLAR
1.
2.
3.
Barış Antlaşması
Barış Antlaşmasını bütünleyen sözleşme, anlaşma, bildiri, protokol gibi
ek belgeler: Toplam 17 adet
Devletlerin birbirine verdiği mektuplar
143 MADDE, 18 BAĞIT
Önemli bağıtlar:
1. Barış anlaşması
2. Nüfüs Mübadelesi Sözleşmesi
3. Boğazlar Sözleşmesi
4. Yerleşme ve yargı yetkisine ilişkin sözleşme
5. Ticaret sözleşmesi
6. Sağlık Sorunlarına ilişkin bildiri
7. Yargı Yönetimine ilişkin bildiri
8. Osmanlı İmp. Verilmiş imtiyazlara ilişkin protokol ve bildiri
Lausanne’ın önemi:
• Lausanne eşitlik belgesi: müzareke sonucu
imzalandı
• İktisadi bağımsızlık ve millileştirme belgesi
• Siyasal bağımsızlık belgesi