Treaty of Lausanne

Audience

The members of the Conference of Lausanne were the treaty's initial audience. The treaty was first introduced in the newly elected Grand National Assembly of Turkey and was ratified on August 23, 1923. Mustafa Kemal made a speech in support of the terms of the treaty, and members of the assembly welcomed the treaty.

Another significant audience of the treaty was the Turkish population. Most of the Turkish people of the era considered the treaty a major Turkish victory, as it overturned the vindictive provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres, which was used as a means to destroy the national identity of Turkish people by the Allies. However, some people, from the time of the signing of the treaty until the present, have considered the treaty a defeat, behind the notion that if Ismet Pasa and the Ankara government had held out longer and even refused to sign the treaty, they could have gotten much more of the territories included in the National Pact, such as Western Thrace, Mosul, and the port of Batumi. These places had substantial Turkish populations that could well have justified their inclusion in Turkey. Also, Turkey might have received considerable war reparations from all the Allies, particularly from Greece, for the monumental damage caused during their occupation. Detractors of the treaty also claim that negotiators should not have allowed the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate to remain in Constantinople and that Turkey should never have agreed to allow the international community to maintain a role in establishing regulations for passage through the straits. Kemal responded to these conservative critiques by asserting that after twelve years of war, the Turkish people had reached the limit of their endurance, and the Turkish army had gone as far as it could. Further efforts might have jeopardized all the achievements of the national movement. The arguments made by both sides have remained a matter of dispute in Turkey to the present day.