The Treaty of Lausanne and the Construction of the Arab Middle East

In July 1923, Turkey and the Allied Powers signed the Treaty of Lausanne. As stated in the Treaty's preamble, they signed it with the desire to end "the state of war which has existed in the East since 1914."¹ There is by now a large and highly useful body of scholarship on this Treaty.² However, historians have yet to invest sufficient attention into the Treaty's role in a laborious process that took place in multiple countries throughout and beyond the 1920s: the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. This brief essay explains and emphasizes this point with reference to specific articles in the Treaty, with a focus on Turkey and its southeastern neighbors in the 1920s, the French and British Mandates in Syria–Lebanon and Iraq.

In the immediate aftermath of the Ottoman defeat, inhabitants of the former Ottoman domains were still linked to the Ottoman past through their relations to the former state, to each other, and to the lands they inhabited under Ottoman rule. The partition of imperial territories did not render these links obsolete overnight. The newly established governments had to manage these links while constructing new state-subject relations in Turkey and the League of Nations Mandates in the Arab East. The Treaty of Lausanne played a critical role in this arduous process. As a peace treaty concluded after an imperial collapse, it served not only to end a "state of war," but also to address problems of state succession. This was a key aspect of the Treaty's role in the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, and merits close attention within frameworks that transcend national and regional divides. State succession in former Ottoman territories remained an ongoing process throughout the 1920s, not only in Turkey but, most notably, also in the Empire's so-called "Arab provinces." In the course of World War I, the Ottoman bureaucratic and military presence in these provinces had become more extensive than ever before.³

Reference to specific articles will help illustrate how the Treaty of Lausanne played a role in addressing problems of state succession. Some articles in the Treaty provided a framework for diplomatic interaction; some prepared the grounds for managing specific problems within particular states; some were useful simply as acknowledgment of agreement on a particular issue. Take, for instance, Article 61 of the Treaty, which simply reads as follows: "The recipients of Turkish civil and military pensions who acquire under the present Treaty the nationality of a State other than Turkey, shall have no claim against the Turkish Government in respect to their pensions." Even this article, which does not really "solve" any problem on its own, is highly significant. Most discussions of the Treaty of Lausanne do not leave much room for thought as to why a peace treaty would need to include an article about pensions. That article was there, however, precisely because the Treaty had a role to play in ongoing processes of state succession. It had to contribute to the (re-)configuration of relations not only between states but also between states and their subjects.

Consider in this connection also Article 139. This was one of the articles which factored into state succession more positively. Especially after the ratification of the Treaty in August 1924, this article provided a regulatory framework for reference to "archives, registers, plans, title-deeds and other documents of every kind relating to the civil, judicial or financial administration, or the administration of Wakfs" in former Ottoman territories. On the basis of this article, states and former Ottoman subjects mobilized Ottoman records for a wide range of cross-border purposes. Certification of biographical information, verification of professional background, and proving ownership of land and property were among these purposes. Article 139 helped to meet some of the most basic administrative needs in former imperial territories. The word "helped" is key here, because simply the inclusion of relevant stipulations did not guarantee the desired outcomes. In the 1920s, the majority of Ottoman records were in Istanbul, and the...