The Conference of Lausanne was a peace conference held in Lausanne, Switzerland between Allies and Turkey during 1922 and 1923 following the Turkish victory and the defeat of Allies in the Turkish War of Liberation and the following Armistice of Mudanya. Its purpose was the negotiation of a peace treaty after Turkish War of Liberation and Armistice of Mudanya and to replace the Treaty of Sèvres, which, under the new government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was no longer recognized by Turkey.
The conference opened in November 1922, with representatives from Great Britain, France, Italy and Turkey. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey selected İsmet İnönü, Rıza Nur and Chief Rabbi Chaim Nahum as their representatives. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, was the co-ordinator of the conference, which he dominated. France and Italy had assumed that the Chanak Crisis had caused British prestige with Turkey to be irrevocably damaged, but they were shocked to discover that Turkish respect for Britain was undiminished. British troops had held their positions at invaded Çanakkale, but the French had been ordered to withdraw.
The conference lasted for eleven weeks. It heard speeches from Benito Mussolini of Italy and Raymond Poincaré of France. The proceedings of the conference were notable for the stubborn diplomacy of İsmet İnönü towards full independence of Turkey (istiklâl-i tam). Already partially deaf, he would simply turn off his hearing aid when Curzon launched into lengthy speeches denouncing the Turkish position. Once Curzon was finished, İsmet İnönü (İsmet Pasha or General Mustafa İsmet back then) would restate his original full independence demands and be oblivious to Curzon's denunciations.
At the conclusion, Turkey assented to the political clauses and the "freedom of the straits", Britain's main concern. The matter of the status of Mosul (Britain invaded after armistice) was deferred since Curzon refused to be budged from the British position that the area was part of newly founded Iraq state. The French delegation, however, did not achieve any of its goals. On 30 January 1923, it issued a statement that it did not consider the draft treaty to be any more than a basis of discussion. The Turks, therefore, refused to sign the treaty. On 4 February 1923, Curzon made a final appeal to İsmet İnönü to sign, and when he refused, Curzon broke off negotiations and left that night on the Orient Express.
The Treaty of Lausanne was finally signed on 24 July 1923.
Background
The harsh Treaty of Sèvres imposed upon the government of the Ottoman Empire after World War I by the Allied Powers included provisions that demanded the partition of Anatolia. The treaty demanded the occupation of French and Italian zones of occupation in the southeast and southwest, the cession of much of western Anatolia to Greece and the establishment of two independent states: Armenia and Kurdistan in the east and the southwest. The Ottoman state was to have a small army and navy without heavy artillery, aeroplanes or battleships, and its budget was to be placed under the supervisions of an Allied financial commission. Turkish nationalists were vehemently opposed to those clauses and decided to fight to inhibit their effectiveness.
In the Turkish War of Independence that followed, the Turkish Nationalist Army defeated the Greeks and created resolutions with the French and Italians to secure a sovereign, independent Turkish state in Anatolia.
Preliminary meetings The location of Lausanne, Switzerland, was chosen as a neutral venue by Britain, France and Italy to discuss their new policies in the Near East. Representatives of the Soviet Union would be invited solely to renegotiate the Straits Convention. Before the conference even began, Lord Curzon of Britain expressed doubts upon the reliability of France and Italy for support and stated, "I am not going into the conference in order to find myself let down very likely on the first day by the French or Italians". He demanded a preliminary meeting of the three nations to reach a preliminary strategy before he travelled to Lausanne. Curzon prepared a list of British demands separated into two categories. Essential ones included the Greek retention of Western Thrace, the freedom of the Straits to shipping, demilitarised zones on the coasts and the retention of Allied troops in Istanbul until a new treaty was ratified. Most desirable ones included measures for the protection of the minorities in Turkey, preliminary safeguards of the Armenian population, the satisfaction of Allied requirements of the Ottoman debt, capitulations and the future financial and economic regime in Turkey.
Preliminary meetings, taking place in Paris between Curzon and French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré on 18 November 1922, lasted five hours. Poincaré addressed each of Lord Curzon's aims point by point and reluctantly agreed to most of them. Both then met with Benito Mussolini who quickly agreed to the agenda because of his overall indifference to the negotiations.
The first official meeting of the Lausanne Conference was held on 21 November 1922, and Curzon appointed himself president of the conference and instituted three subcommissions. The first and arguably most important one addressed territorial and military questions, the second one addressed the financial and economic questions and the third was meant to answer the future of judicial status of foreigners in Turkey. The first was chaired by Lord Curzon, the second by French Ambassador Camille Barrère and the third by the Italian diplomat Marquis Garroni.
On 23 November, Curzon's commission began its processions. İsmet Pasha delivered a long speech in which he demanded the cession of Karaagac, a suburb of Edirne, which had been retained by Greece as part of Western Thrace. Curzon responded by chastising the Turks for making what he considered to be excessive demands. He was met with widespread support by the French and Italians and went on to state that the "exhibition of so firm an Allied front at this stage and on so important an issue took [the] Turks very much by surprise and will probably exercise a decisive influence in our future proceedings". That feeling did not last, however, since by December, Turkish obstruction and stubbornness and Italian concessions had all but halted negotiations.
The Soviet delegation arrived in Lausanne on 28 November 1922 with Georgy Chicherin as its chief spokesman. It demanded to be admitted to the conference as a whole, and when the Straits Commission officially met on 5 December, it also demanded the closure of the Straits, both in peace and war, to warships and aircraft of all nations except Turkey. Both proposals were rejected, and any Soviet protest was ignored. Soviet envoy Vatslav Vorovsky was granted entry as an observer to the orient conference, but not as an official delegate, and the Soviets were not granted diplomatic protections by the Swiss government.
On 16 December, Curzon decided that he would remain at the conference over the Christmas holiday to expedite the conference's conclusion. He intended to draw up a preliminary treaty containing the points already agreed to in the meetings with the Turks and then he would invite İsmet Pasha to accept or reject it as a statement of agreed principle. Curzon would let experts fill in the rest. After Christmas, however, the increasing Turkish inflexibility on generally all significant clauses and rumors of an imminent Turkish military advance on Istanbul led Curzon to seek a private meeting with İsmet. Curzon found the Turkish foreign minister "impervious to argument, warning or appeal, and can only go on repeating the same catchwords, indulging in the same futil quibbles, and making the same childish complaints".
Curzon's intention of presenting the Turks with a preliminary treaty was further hindered by a lack of correspondence from Poincaré in regards to the acceptability of the conditions presented to France. In mid-January 1923, Maurice Bompard, who had taken the place of the sickly Barrere as chief French delegate, visited Paris to relay with Poincaré and returned to the Conference with a document of 24 headings dictated by Poincaré that represented a French demand for substantial concessions to Turkey on most issues to bring about a faster conclusion. Curzon described an "unconditional surrender to the Turks", adamantly refused to accept any of the "eleventh hour proposals" and went on to decide on a fixed date for the departure of the British delegation from the conference. On that day, he explained, the Turks would be asked to accept or to reject the text of the treaty that Britain was drawing up without including any of Poincaré's amendments.
When the draft was presented to the Turks on 31 January, İsmet asked for an adjournment of eight days. There were further meetings of the Allied delegations on the morning of 2 February during which Curzon reluctantly agreed to further modifications on capitulations and the tariffs, the abandonment of reparations due from Turkey and the removal of all restrictions on the size of the Turkish Army in Thrace. On 4 February, the Turks accepted all territorial terms of the draft treaty with a reservation about Mosul, but they rejected the judicial, economic and financial clauses and demanded reparations from Greece for the damage its army caused in İzmir, a demand that Curzon had already rejected because of the poverty of Greece. Although the Allies agreed to further slight changes in the economic clauses, the Turks still refused to sign the treaty on the grounds that the economic and the judicial clauses were still unsatisfactory.
It was then reported that for the next several hours, İsmet Pasha feigned total ineptitude in the understanding of the simplest of propositions. The ploy of stubbornness aimed to force another revision of the treaty. Every warning, argument or plea to İsmet lacked even the smallest effect. Then, negotiations broke down, and all parties returned to their respective capitals.
Resolution In early March 1923, a Turkish note suggested new propositions towards the still-unsettled financial, economic and judicial questions. Curzon accepted the Turkish proposals on the basis that the conference would be revived, but he ruled out any further revisions of the territorial clauses already resolved. Between 21 and 27 March 1923, British, French, Italian and Japanese experts met in London to discuss Allied criteria for the settlement of the still-unresolved issues of the conference.
The conference eventually reopened at Lausanne on 23 April 1923. Once again three commissions were set up. The first dealt with the remaining territorial questions and the rights of foreigners and was chaired by Sir Horace Rumbold, the primary British delegate, since Curzon refused to return to Lausanne. The second was under General Maurice Pellé, now the main French delegate, and dealt with financial questions. The third was under , the chief Italian delegate, and dealt with economic questions. Most of the proceedings were of a highly-technical nature and progressed slowly. France renewed its demand for the payment of reparations to the Allies by Turkey although, as Curzon pointed out, the Allies had agreed to abandon them in February.