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100th Anniversary of Treaty of Lausanne establishes modern Turkey, Greece, etc.

Posted by (northern CA) on

On 24 July 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne was signed there in Switzerland to settle disagreements over the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of modern Turkey and Greece and Bulgaria, etc.

An earlier attempt to pick apart the empire at Sevres in 1920 was never ratified, and in this newer treaty Turkey gained and Greece lost territory and resources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne

British and French pursuit of corporate interests in this period set in motion problems that continue to this day, not least involving Kurdish politics and the Greek economy.

Treaty negotiations were very complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lausanne_Conference_of_1922–1923

Posted by
4 posts

Thank you for posting this. (Perhaps the world would not be in such a sorry state if more people studied history.)

If you have not read it, I suggest Margaret Macmillan's 2007 book, "Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World." There is an excellent chapter on the struggles of Ataturk and his followers to free Turkey of foreign armies, which had mistaken Anatolia as a prize ripe for the plucking. She also explains the many complications of the treaty negotiations, which, as you pointed out, resonate to this day.

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