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His movements Tayyip erdogan on the geopolitical chessboard they show panic. The constant interventions in collapsing countries, the arms trade and threats against Greece, show today, more than ever, that the Syndrome of the Treaty of Sevres occupies and guides the Turkish president …
But why are we restoring the Treaty of Sevres? The truth is that it is topical as Tayyip Erdogan himself often puts it in the public debate in an attempt, parallel to 1920 with 2020, to unite the Turkish nationalists against Greece and the… international factor that wants its dismemberment. Turkey.
But before we move on to Erdogan and his anti-Greek delusions, let’s briefly recall why the Treaty of Sevres remains a fear and terror to Turks today.
What was included in the Treaty of Sevres
100 years ago, in 1920 and specifically on July 28 / August 10, 1920 and a few months after the liberation of Smyrna from the Turkish yoke, by order of the Allies, the Treaty of Sevres was signed in the French city of the same name. .
The treaty provided: the Ottoman Empire surrendered the sovereignty of Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine and Upper Jordan to Great Britain as a protectorate of the League of Nations, Syria and Lebanon to France, also as a protectorate, and accepted in the sphere of influence of Italy. The Hejaz (part of present-day Saudi Arabia), Kurdistan, and Armenia would become independent states.
In Greece, the islands of Imbros and Tenedos and eastern Thrace were ceded to the Tsataltza line near Constantinople. The Smyrna region remained under the nominal sovereignty of the Sultan, but would be governed by a Greek commissioner as representative of the Allies and could be annexed to Greece after five years by referendum.
Article 26 of the Treaty also stipulated that, if the Ottoman authorities did not consent to its implementation, they would cede their sovereignty over Constantinople, which could be occupied by Greece, something that Eleftherios Venizelos had skillfully promoted.
Because Erdogan constantly mentions the Treaty of Sevres
Since then, despite the victory of the Turks and the defeat of the Greeks in the Asia Minor campaign, the Treaty of Sevres passed into the collective memory of the Turks as an international conspiracy plan to “dismember the fatherland”, which the great western powers have never forgotten. and they are ready to bring it back any occasion.
The nearly one hundred years of the Kemalist educational system has also contributed to this, creating generations of Turks who have been nurtured by this fear and now prevail as an obsession not only in Kemalist circles but in society as a whole, including extremist Islamists and moderate. neo-Ottomans, nationalists, even liberals and a significant portion of the left, with a different narrative, of course, for each side.
The Turkish political leadership believes that events in the Eastern Mediterranean run the risk of trapping it in a new “Treaty of Sevres”, which this time will involve the distribution between third countries of the vital maritime space around Anatolia.
His basic strategy in the “Blue Homeland”, as he calls it, is control of this space. Everything else is regular moves that focus on this strategic goal, including the recent deal with Libya. The same is true of the “gray areas” of the Aegean.
On the occasion of the centenary of the now deadly Treaty of Sevres, Washington Post columnist Ishan Tarur recalls that in Turkey (eventually in Turkey, not just “in your Turkey Tayyip erdogan“) The harsher conditions to the detriment of the Ottomans fed a nationalism based on the feeling of injustice born of the West’s” anti-Turkish conspiracy. “In other words, he writes that these were and are believed by the Turks.
It is characteristic of the text that Tharour titles his text: “A century-long treatise stalks the Mediterranean.” So, at this point, the columnist is rather embracing the rhetoric of the Turkish president. Tayyip erdogan that last year he had said (in a meeting with Libya’s “recognized”) that Turkish-Libyan cooperation “annulled the Treaty of Sevres”!
Erdogan’s Neo-Ottomanism
The recent discovery of gas deposits in the Mediterranean has rekindled old tensions in the region. Ankara saw the agreement between Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt as an “anti-Turkish front”. She believes that deposit trading cannot be done with her outside of the game. And that was the main reason for the agreement with the Tripoli government with which Ankara acquired a broker, which supposedly allows it to carry out investigations against Kastelorizo.
The diplomacy of cannons, drones and research ships in the eastern Mediterranean is not only aimed at protecting national sovereignty, the limits of which are established in the Treaty of Lausanne, but also protecting the borders of the former empire that Tayyip erdogan wants to resurrect. THE Turkey of Tayyip erdogan he now sees many areas in the Middle East and the Balkans as former Ottoman provinces.
The objective of the doctrine of the “blue homeland” is to guarantee, in the name of the country’s security, “the control of an extensive maritime space that will include the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean”, explains Johann Beheim.
Supporters of this policy question the regime that was established in the region, not only after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but also the establishment of the Turkish state. In their eyes, the Treaty of Lausanne is a second Treaty of Sevres.
And this suit is tight for Turkish ambitions. So it was no coincidence that the date was chosen by Tayyip erdogan for the first sentence in Hagia Sophia. July 24 marked the 97th anniversary of the signing of the Lausanne Treaty, for which the Turkish president also has revisionist aspirations.
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