Erdogan violates Lausanne Treaty; harasses Greece

Ahmed Sami Abdel Fattah

Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 with a number of European states, including France; Italy; Bulgaria, and Germany.

Nevertheless, the treaty is still debatable 97 years later.

Boundary demarcation

The treaty defined the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, which are now the boundaries of Turkey.

It made it necessary for the empire to give up claims over a number of islands for Greece. The treaty also drew up Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq.

Nonetheless, the treaty did not have a validity period. This is why a number of Turkish legal experts claim that it would be invalid by the year 2023, or 100 years after its signing.

Disputes between Turkey and Greece in the Aegean Sea are very old. Each of the two countries claims ownership of some of the islands of the sea.

On May 17, Greece should have conducted naval drills near one of the disputed islands. However, it had to cancel out the drills after the Turkish navy deployed some of its units in the area.

The Treaty of Lausanne makes it necessary for the Aegean Sea islands to be disarmed, except for light weapons.

Beginnings

Disputes between Greece and Turkey started when the former signed the Treaty of Peace with Italy in 1947. The treaty made it necessary for Italy to cede control of some of the Islands it captured from Turkey to Greece. Nonetheless, Turkey considered the treaty a direct threat to it.

Turkey’s membership of NATO contributed to silencing its differences with Greece over the treaty.

Escalation

The Justice and Development Party has been eyeing European Union membership since coming to power in 2002.

The same desire forced Turkey to elevate its infrastructure to European standards.

However, Turkey’s occupation of large swaths of Cyprus sabotaged its European Union membership bid.

Having realized the difficulty of joining the European Union, the ruling Justice and Development Party has reverted to controlling the disputed islands with Greece.

This is especially true after huge natural gas reserves were discovered off the islands.