One hundred years after the Treaty of Lausanne: the disprotection of minorities in Greece and Turkey

Abstract

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne is the only international convention still in force that stems from the minority protection system established after the First World War. The other conventions and unilateral declarations that made up that pioneering system lost their validity after the Second World War. In the Treaty of Lausanne, several guarantees and rights are recognised for non-Muslim minorities in Turkey and for Muslim minorities in Greece in order to ensure their non-discriminatory treatment and the maintenance of their distinct identity.

The objectives of this paper are, on the one hand, to analyze the degree of compliance with the Convention after one hundred years of being in force and, on the other hand, to identify its specificities both in its initial drafting and in its subsequent application. In order to fulfill the first objective, we will carry out a legal analysis of compliance with the minority rights provided for in the Treaty using concurrent normative, doctrinal and jurisprudential sources. In order to address the second objective, it will be necessary to analyze other previous legal documents, basic data and the most expert doctrine on the interpretation of the historical-political variables that have accompanied the treaty over the last 100 years. The work also has the subsidiary aim of extending the knowledge of this important document and its political context in the Spanish language.

The content and official interpretation of the Treaty, read from its historical and political context, show an important ideological legacy of the Ottoman Millet system. Its consequences are projected to the present day, particularly within minority communities where internal assimilation movements towards the group identified with the historical tradition can be observed. This is the case in Western Thrace of the Pomak and Roma communities with respect to the Turkish language and identity. In the Turkish Republic, this is the case for the Arab Orthodox Christian communities in the process of assimilation towards the Greek language and identity. Although the Treaty incorporates content similar to other international conventions of the time which included clauses for the protection of minorities, Lausanne establishes a significant difference in terms of the holders of the rights provided for; that is, by excluding racial and linguistic minorities and reducing the religious factor to minorities that do not share the majority creed. This fact shows a connection between the religious tradition and the national identity that the young states intended to promote. It also shows the link with the previous Millet tradition inherited from the Ottoman Empire. This tradition, which exacerbates the religious factor in national identification, reaches its peak in the parallel agreement negotiated in Lausanne, whereby thousands of people were expelled from their places of residence without taking into consideration other elements of identity, such as language or their ethnic identity.

This historical tradition of the Millet system, which is deeply rooted in both Greek and Turkish policy, and an inadequate interpretation of reciprocity, have greatly conditioned the application of the protection regime provided for in the Treaty.  This gives rise to numerous breaches and disputes that have prevented the protection envisaged from being effective. The current reality, as can be seen from basic demographic statistics, shows that the provisions on minorities in the Treaty of Lausanne have not fulfilled their original purpose and that they need to be reinterpreted in accordance with the more recent legal and political developments on the protection of persons belonging to minorities. The situation of all minorities that could in one way or another come under the protection of the Treaty today appears to be significantly worse than it was in 1923. The best current situation can be seen in the Turkish Muslim Minority in Western Thrace, although this may be due to the fact that it was initially the largest, to its settlement in rural and peripheral areas of Greece and to the phenomenon of gradual assimilation of the Pomak and Roma Muslim communities around it. In addition, the role of Turkey as a protective kin-state during these hundred years cannot be underestimated.

In any case, the mistrust of the two obligated countries regarding minorities on their territory is at the root of a deficient application of the protective norms of this convention. This mistrust is due to a construction of national identity based primarily on religion, and to the strong identification of the state with that national identity. Although this is not exclusive to Greece and Turkey, analyzing the origin and evolution of this treaty over the past 100 years allows us to understand the position of these states- vis-a-vis a large part of their internal diversity- and to raise the need to reinterpret the content of the treaty.  This would include the protection of human rights, as well as denouncing the inappropriate use of the idea of reciprocity in an area of protection of individuals and groups.

Indeed, a characteristic element of the implementation of this treaty is the idea of reciprocity, which is rooted both in the states involved and in the protected minorities themselves. This idea of reciprocity was in fact desired from the outset by deliberately excluding the Muslim minority in Western Thrace from the forced population exchanges, to serve as a counterweight to the Greek minority in Istanbul. The resulting situation of mirror minorities, and the way in which both national identities have been constructed, have contributed to a flawed state interpretation that identifies internal minorities as external agents and not as genuine citizens of their own. This logic explains the attempts at assimilation on both sides of the border or, in other cases, segregation and separation from the majority community.

With the aim to carry out this analysis as clearly as possible, we will first present the historical context in which the Treaty is set. Subsequently, we will recall the two documents resulting from the Lausanne Conference of 1923, with attention to the rights recognised for minorities. In the central part of the article, we will systematize the main legal and practical controversies raised by the interpretation and application of the Treaty over the last 100 years. Finally, we will present the main conclusions of the analysis carried out in the light of the actual impact of the Treaty on protected minorities.