Crackdown on the Treaty of Lausanne .. Is the approach of the agreement that established the emergence of the Middle East countries close?

Click to listen

Uninterrupted political crises, sectarian and ethnic civil conflicts, proxy wars, forced mass displacement and displacement of tens of millions of displaced people and refugees, separatist outposts and rebellion areas spanning vast geographical areas the size of countries like Britain as happened in northeastern Syria and western Iraq, buses and car bombs Suicide bombings and killings in the tens and hundreds every week and sometimes every day, mass demonstrations, incendiary bombs and burning tires whose black fumes are rising to cover the skies of Baghdad and Beirut.

This is how the reality of the region came after 100 years of the First World War, which was followed by negotiations and settlements that led to the Second Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which together with the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Great Britain contributed to drawing the political borders of the modern Middle East that we know today.

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the second Treaty of Lausanne, which organized the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, today the composition of the Middle East region is analyzed and returns again to conditions similar to what the region was before Lausanne, as the region witnessed Turkey's return to the most important countries and regions that it withdrew from after signing that The agreement, by pushing it with military forces in the field through military operations or troop deployment agreements, as was done in Libya recently according to the agreement with the Al-Wefaq government in Tripoli headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, and before that in Syria through the operations of the "Euphrates Shield" in 2017 and the Olive Branch In 2018 and “Spring of Peace” in 20 19, and then the ongoing military operation in Idlib, and years earlier, in Iraq in the Bashiqa area north of Mosul in 2015.

These conflicts, civil and regional wars, uprisings and revolutions, which brought the various interventions that have been witnessed and witnessed in the region, reflect the fragility and structural tension of the Middle East, and express a chronic vacuum in power and the absence of a strong and strong political identity that protects its structure from fragmentation. Here we are looking at the backgrounds of that treaty, which is at the root of most of the problems of the contemporary Middle East, so we may understand the background to Turkish military intervention in the region again in more than one Arab country, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire some 95 years ago.

From "Sefer" to "Lausanne": The nation-state industry in the Middle East

After Mustafa Kemal Ataturk rejected the Treaty of Sefer, which was concluded by the victorious countries in the First World War and imposed on Turkey, after most non-Turkish nationalities such as the Kurds were given their independence, Ataturk fought a fierce war with Greece and the Allies, which ended with the signing of a new agreement in the "Beau-Rivage Palace" hotel Lausanne, in the south of Switzerland, on July 24, 1923, between Turkey, Britain, and France.

That new treaty was called the Treaty of Lausanne II, as a distinction from the first Treaty of Lausanne, the “Oshi Agreement” concluded between Italy and the Ottoman Empire on October 18, 1912. The Treaty of Lausanne II was the official death certificate of the Ottoman Empire at the international legal level, and birth Contemporary Turkish Republic in 1923, before the famous declaration of the abolition of the Ottoman Islamic Caliphate in 1924.

The Treaty of Lausanne consisted of 143 articles, related to organizing Turkey's new international situation, arranging its relationship with the countries of the victorious allies in the war, drawing the political geography of modern Turkey and setting its borders with Greece and Bulgaria, and the final Turkish waiver of claiming any political and financial rights and any sovereign right in the Levant, Iraq, and Egypt Sudan, Libya and Cyprus, in addition to regulating the use of the Turkish naval straits in wartime and peace.

The Treaty of Lausanne played the same historical role that the Treaty of “Westphalia” played in 1648, one of the most prominent legal and political results of which was the emergence of the concept of the nation-state on the basis of the concept of (nation-state), as Lausanne drew up the boundaries and features of the political geography of the entire Middle East during the decades following the signing of That treaty. [1] In this context, Turkey is the only country in the Middle East that won from that treaty, after it survived the fate of the division prepared by the major powers through the Treaty of Sevres, where Turkey remained the only truly independent country among the other countries in the region that It was named independent while in fact it was occupied. [2]

The Treaty of Lausanne determined the fate of the inhabitants of the region according to two main principles: the dedication of national political borders, and the principle of nationality, which was linked to the "identity" of the new states that the treaty created, or resulted from, or painted its borders as a substitute for the former Ottoman nationality. In this context, Lebanon and Syria were placed under the French mandate, and Palestine and Transjordan under the British mandate, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Hijaz, which refused to sign the treaty, was removed from existence, after the British allowed Abdulaziz Al Saud to annex the Hashemites' possessions to it. [3]

The Impossible Structure of the Middle East: An Arab or Islamic World?

In his important book on the formation of the political map of the modern Middle East, "Peace Beyond Peace", the American historian and writer David Fromkin says that the British occupation has led everywhere to destroy the political structures of the indigenous citizens and replace them with new structures on the European style under European laws according to concepts European, whether we are talking here about the Americas, Australia, New Zealand or sub-Saharan Africa, which are no longer divided along tribal lines, but rather divided into countries as is the case in Europe. However, the man stops at one part of the world to wonder if the European occupation has brought about a deep and lasting effect in other places? [4]

Fromkin says that the Middle East has become what it is now because European countries have taken it upon themselves to reshape it after the Ottoman rule of the Arabic-speaking Middle East was destroyed by an inevitable destruction, and for Europe, or rather Britain and France, to take the place of the old regime, created countries, and appointed rulers And, it drew borders and introduced political systems of the kind found throughout the colonial world. [5] According to Fromkin, during the period between 1914-1922 negotiations, agreements and post-war settlements put an end to the conflict over the Middle East issue among European powers, but it resulted in the birth of a Middle Eastern issue in the heart of the Middle East itself.

The thing that distinguished the "Eastern Question" according to what the Europeans termed on the eve of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, or the Middle East issue as we know it today, is that it differs from the traditional differences that we find in other places of the world, such as disputes over rulers and borders, where there are demands raised to this day. More related to substance, in a manner that discusses the same right to exist in existing countries on the ground, and nationalities still searching for the right to self-determination, so the Middle East remains the hottest region in the world because of the frequent wars for survival and national destiny. [6]

Behind all the problems the contemporary Middle East is experiencing, such as the political future of the Kurds or the political fate of the Palestinians, a question still remains to be answered: Can this modern political system that Europe brought to the region from its historical experience after the reconciliation of Westphalia remain in the soils of the Middle East alien to Europe, Which of its characteristics is dividing the land into secular states based on national citizenship, which represents the opposite of the various foundations upon which the Ottoman Empire plurinationally spanned three continents? [7]

David Fromkin says that European statesmen of the First World War realized the existence and importance of the problem, as it was soon that the Allied leaders began planning to include the countries of the Middle East with their countries, until they realized that the authority of Islam over the region is the main characteristic of the political map of the Middle East, and therefore they sought To create competing loyalties to Islamic unity, however, according to Fromkin, these European politicians' understanding of Islam has been minimal, as there has always been a specific characteristic of the region after the removal of its historical religious reference, namely the absence of a sense of legitimacy, as there is no single faith in which all the actors involved Yin, and there are clear rules of the political game. [8]

The primary reason that Islam has given its advantage in this context as a major and common determinant of the identity of multiple peoples and regions, in the view of many Western specialists in the affairs of the Islamic world, is the assumed influence of religion on power and individuals, and the fundamental relationship in Islam between religion, politics, faith and power, in a manner that is not He has an equivalent outside Islam, according to the famous orientalist Bernard Lewis, where Muslims still have a deep and lasting awareness of the concept of the nation, even if it is not possible to achieve it politically, as the well-known French orientalist Claude Kahn mentioned. [9]

In this context, one of the most prominent figures in the field of Arab and Islamic studies, French historian and orientalist André Miquel, believes that Islam in one word is indivisible, and cannot be excluded as a religious message from the life of Islamic societies, as there is no existence in the eyes of a Muslim for two separate areas of time and spirituality . Mikel believes, in turn, that the material and historical influences appear to be less influential and profound in Islam compared to other societies, and that Islam on the cultural level provides a fortress that has a tremendous ability to face the harassment coming from foreign culture and from the transformations of the infrastructure of society - i.e. changing economic and social relations - and that Under different social systems, places, and times, Islam demonstrates a great ability to always evoke constant principles that define and define it. [10]

The Treaty of Lausanne led to the creation of chronic crises in the legitimacy of the new political entities, and to the bloody massacres and forced mass displacement of Christian minorities

communication Web-sites

Promises to start, the Treaty of Lausanne, which came as the Westphalia agreement in the seventeenth century to redraw political geography in the Middle East, does not belong to the boundaries of the relationship between religion and the public sphere in Turkey and then in the Arab world by virtue of the influence of the caliphate institution that was breathing its last on the East The whole Middle East, but is at the heart of the wars and current conflicts in the Middle East, and a goal to address it year after year for decades in the streets of Cairo, the countryside of Aleppo, Damascus, and the alleys of Beirut and on the banks of the Tigris, Euphrates, and the Jordan River, where the eyes of Western political officials did not extend far to see the future Full of The problems with the settlement they set. [11]

Contrary to what the secular nationalist “Westphalian State”, which no longer bears the multiplicity of the national identities of its citizens, did in reorganizing the authority and social ties in Europe, in a way that presented a final practical solution to the dilemma of religious and sectarian wars between Protestants and Catholics that threatened the future of Christian societies, led The Treaty of Lausanne, on the other hand, which was imposed on the lands of the multi-ethnic and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, which represented a more stable political structure compared to the European societies divided by wars, to create chronic crises in the legitimacy of the new political entities, And to the bloody massacres and forced mass displacement of Christian minorities in the context of broad population exchanges, and created a state of general collective anxiety, and a permanent struggle for identity between the components of the multi-ethnic and multi-ethnic Middle East, which previously could be felt on one's land at the same time And Arabic because he speaks Arabic, or Christian and Ottoman together, and to speak at the same time Arabic, Greek or Turkish. [12]

The main result of the Lausanne Agreement was the division of the Ottoman Empire into two main parts according to the dominant language: the Turkish regions to the north, and the Arab regions to the south. Contrary to what happened in Turkey in which a strong national movement formed, which turned around Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the loose Arab region was divided into states, sheikhdoms and autonomous regions according to the interests of Britain, France and their local agents, and in this way disappeared from the world map "the empire that gave most of the Middle East its structure Politician for nearly four hundred years, "according to American historian Mary Wilson. [13]

In this context, the Turkish Republic was born in the remaining lands of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat in the war as a nation-state based on the overwhelming Muslim majority after population exchange and the displacement of non-Muslim minorities. But the external identity of the Turkish state as a Muslim state contrasted sharply with the new internal identity that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk wanted to impose, by abandoning the Islamic identity and the institution of the caliphate and the role of religion in public life, and by evading the burdens of conflict with the forces of the colonial regime, which led to the dissolution The Ottoman Empire in 1924 expelled the Ottoman Sultan and his family from the Turkish lands, and created a new international situation in the Middle East, and a void of legitimacy "in which it is impossible" during which a natural alternative to the ruins of that state is found, according to the expression of Ahmed Davutoglu in his book "The strategic depth: the location of Turkey and its role in the International fairway. " [14]

In this context, the expressions indicating the impossibility, starting with George Corm’s expression of the “impossible structure” of the region geopolitical, and the expression of a professor of sociology at American Columbia University, Wael Hallaq, about “the impossible state”, which he meant The latter is that the historical Islamic state that prevailed in the region has become a political concept impossible to achieve, as a result of its incompatibility with the nature of the current political, legal and social modernization, which is morally imperative, which does not meet the minimum standards and expectations of that ruling, so we have come here before a complex of inevitable impossibilities on More than one level As Pat poses challenges are unreasonable in front of each genuine attempt to change the political reality is difficult and complex created by the Treaty of Lausanne in the region, through its transformation into a "Westphalia" in the new Middle East.

The Soft Loin of the World: The Power Void in the Middle East

After signing the second Treaty of Lausanne, the new Turkey adopted a defensive strategy based on the idea of ​​border security for the nation-state with a narrow geographical area, and it sought to be part of the emerging West axis and not a substitute or opposition to it. In this context, the Turkish Republic has moved to join under a new geopolitical security umbrella aimed at addressing the threat of the Soviet Union, namely the North Atlantic Treaty, and then moved away from its traditional vital field and lost its historical influence in its vast Islamic environment, especially the Arabic-speaking, and has become alien to the geological culture of the region, and from Then she lost money financially and the inflation in her economy increased at the end of the seventies, due to its dimension and deprivation of joint economic benefit with its newly wealthy neighborhood in the Arab world. [15th]

The separation between the Turkish and the Arab world created a crisis in defining the political identity of tens of millions of residents of that large geographical area of ​​the world.

communication Web-sites

After the fission that took place between the Turkish world in its broad concept, which extends from Chinese Turkestan and the north of the Indian subcontinent in the east, through Central Asia to Anatolia, the Balkans and the Caucasus, and between the Arab world, it has become difficult today to develop a definition of the Middle East region that delineates its geographical borders, where the definition of this identity was involved. The anthropological, historical, cultural and political region is dense and foggy, which can only dissolve by reference to the definition of the “Islamic world”, which alone explains only the living organic ties between the parts of that “Near East” according to European colonial literature or the “Middle East”. Seen, "according to the official US geopolitical definition in the era of Bush administration.

Where that separation between the Turkish and the Arab world created a crisis in the definition of the political identity of tens of millions of inhabitants of that large geographical area of ​​the world, who prevented the concept of a nation-state between them and the expression of that political and cultural identity historically suppressed by colonialism and from most authoritarian regimes In the region nowadays.

Islam here represents the key to understanding the reality of that region of the world, whose religion enjoyed a global exception in the formation of political sociology, in a way in which religion was distinguished by the dominance over other elements of identity, therefore this region of the world was historically unique due to its geography and civilization being linked to the dominant religion in it, which limited By the great French historian Fernan Broadwell in his book "The Rules of Civilizations" to the adoption of the term Islam and the Islamic world, and taking religion as a basic reference for the identity of the societies of this region, unlike its geographical and ethnic division of the rest of other societies and human civilizations. [16]

Geographical data were not only in this context that dictated the geopolitical projects of the major powers towards the region, but also their growing belief that there is a kind of natural solidarity that would unite all Islamic peoples from China and Indonesia in the Far East and up to West Africa, and therefore the influencers of international politics In this context, thinking more about “Islamic policies” than thinking about “Arab”, “Iranian” or “Turkish” policies, and that is why the British and French colonialists sought to develop their knowledge of the region within the framework of policies aimed at “domesticating” Islam in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, i.e., suppressing it He goes to a religion whose job is to serve the nation-state or the narrow national identity. [17]

After the withdrawal of the colonial powers Britain and France from the region, a state of power vacuum that worried political and strategic decision-makers in the United States of America arose as a result of their fear of the Soviet Union and the region's transformation into a material for historical Russian ambitions to reach warm waters, and it was not enough in the eyes of the Americans for their efforts Britain launched the League of Arab States in the mid-1940s, and that is why the Americans sought in the 1950s to involve the Arab countries in military alliances with regional powers loyal to the West, as happened during the inauguration of the famous Baghdad Pact in 1955, which It consisted of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, alongside Britain. [18]

These American concerns also carried profound indications of the absence of a solid political identity in the region. However, this conversation does not apply accurately to Iran and Turkey because of the clarity of the political identity in both countries to a large extent, but rather applies more definitely to the Arab world, which, despite the deep partnership of most of its countries with the West, does not enjoy the prestige and respect that led the West to voluntarily welcome Turkey as a member. Essential in the military structure of NATO. [19]

Since that historic break between Turkey and the Arab world, Turkey has, throughout that time, become a missing factor in the Middle East stability equation.

communication Web-sites

When comparing here between Turkey and the Arab world on the political and military levels, it is sufficient to look at two issues. First: Turkey has passed the test of division historically successfully, after the Turks failed the Treaty of Sever, unlike the Arab world, which was divided into a large number of countries through the Sykes-Picot treaty. . The second is what happened in the Turkish War of Independence, in which Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish army defeated an alliance of the French, English and Greek armies, in exchange for defeating the armies of the most important Arab countries combined in front of the Zionist gangs during the 1948 war, and during the Six-Day War of 1967 in which Israel was defeated in a way ساحق ثلاث دول عربية هي مصر وسوريا والأردن واحتلت جزءا كبيرا من أراضيها، أمام هذا العجز السياسي والعسكري الواضح ظلّت بنية المنطقة مفقودة تماما، ولم تستطع أن تُشكِّل دولها حتى اليوم مجتمعات متماسكة في حدودها الجغرافية وفي هوياتها السياسية المعترف بها والمحترمة بشAll accomplished and real. [20]

Since that historic interruption between Turkey and the Arab world, Turkey has, throughout that time, turned into a missing factor in the equation for the stability of the Middle East, especially as it still represents a very important demographic extension of Sunni Islam in the Arab world versus Iran, which has converted to Shiism since the fourteenth century AD During the rule of the Safavid state.

Searching for a focused state: the Islamic world as seen by the author of "The Clash of Civilizations"

In his famous book "Clash of Civilizations: Rebuilding the Global Order," American political scientist Samuel Huntington provides a vision for the geopolitical future of the world that the cultural and civilizational factor will play a major role in the form of new international blocs in the twenty-first century.

Every major civilization, culture, or religion in the context of Huntington’s thesis possesses a major central state, such as China at the level of the Asian “Confucian” civilization spanning Taiwan, the two Koreas and Vietnam, and Russia at the level of the “Orthodox” civilization spanning Ukraine, Belarus, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Cyprus, and the civilization also owns "Protestant-Catholic Western Christianity" United States of America, in contrast, the Islamic world lacks a centralized state, which, as Huntington says, is political instability and the many conflicts that characterize it.

Therefore, Huntington nominates 6 Islamic countries to play the role of the "central" state, namely, Indonesia by virtue of being the largest Islamic country in terms of population, and Egypt because of its population and its central location in the Middle East and the presence of Al-Azhar the largest institution for religious education in the Islamic world in it, and is also presented in This context includes the names of Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. [21]

Huntington excludes Indonesia because of its geographical location at the tip of the Islamic world, and excludes Egypt for economic reasons, and excludes Saudi Arabia due to the low population, Iran due to sectarian dissonance, and Pakistan because of ethnic divisions and political instability within it. Although he was excluded by Turkey due to the strictness of Ataturk secularism, which may prevent it from playing this role while his book was published in 1996, Huntington stops long in Turkey compared to his occasional approach to each of the previous countries, and he says in this context that Turkey has both history and a number Population, the average level of economic growth, national cohesion, military traditions and competence to be a centralized state. [22]

Then he asks: “What if Turkey redefined itself at some point?” In this case, Turkey would be able to give up its “frustrating and humiliating role as a beggar begging the membership of the West Club,” and would resume its more influential historical role as a political spokesperson in the name of Islam and as a rival to the West. Huntington poses two main conditions for Turkey to do so, the first is to abandon the Ataturk heritage in a more comprehensive way than Russia abandoned the legacy of Lenin, and the second is to find a leader the size of Ataturk combining religion and political legitimacy to rebuild Turkey, and convert it from a torn country into Center country.

The New Ottoman Empire: Turkey from "Kemalism" to searching for its strategic depth

After a long break from the region as a result of the Kemalist policies, Turkey has gradually returned as an important regional actor in the Middle East since the era of Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal between (1983-1989), and then significantly later after the Justice and Development Party came to power in the early years of this century . In the context of what happened after the AK Party took office, we can attribute the transformation that occurred in that period in Turkey's foreign policy to four main factors, two factors that formed the engine of these policies in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and two other factors that emerged early in the second decade of it .

The first undisputed factor was the vision of the “New Ottoman” that dominated the imagination of the decision-maker in the field of Turkish foreign policy in the era of justice and development, which views the Middle East region as a “strategic depth” according to the expression of former Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in his book, which With the same address. [23] The second factor was the Kurdish challenge, which remained an existential threat to the unity of political geography of Turkey in accordance with the perfected rules established for the republic, despite this contradiction with the reconciliatory tendency of justice and development regarding multiple identities in Turkey, which forced the current Turkish politicians to establish a cautious balance between conflicts And pent-up luxury instincts between the new Ottoman. [24] The last two factors, respectively, were: outbreaks of the Arab Spring, and discoveries of massive gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean basin.

Several years ago, during his meeting with the Turkish (local rulers) mukhtars, Erdogan spoke of the Second Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 that it represented a deep wound in the Turkish historical memory, and that it geographically reduced the map of the Turkish state and obliged it to cede 80% of its area, and Erdogan said literally in This context:

"There are those who want to convince us that the Treaty of Lausanne was a victory for Turkey and the Turks ... They threatened us with the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, to make us accept the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 ... They waved us with death to accept the permanent handicap." [25]

So far, Turkey has not forgotten that the Treaty of Lausanne was a punishment for it as a defeated party in World War I, as represented by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany after the war itself, and destroyed its economy, as famous British economist George Keynes warned in his book "The economic consequences of peace."

Under the pressure of the conflict over the eastern Mediterranean gas, the dispute over the maritime borders between Turkey, Cyprus and Greece, and after the agreement to demarcate the maritime borders between the Libyan national reconciliation government and Turkey, which took place directly and which clashes directly with the Treaty of Lausanne, and after Turkish military interventions in its regional neighborhood in Syria, Iraq and Libya in In recent years, the same question is being asked: Is Turkey going backward, backward, to the restrictions imposed on it through the Treaty of Lausanne?

It is a question that in turn raises another question here, which is: What is the price that Turkey and the entire Middle East will pay if Turkey gives up that treaty in its 100th anniversary in 2023, as it has been circulating for years among many in the media and popular circles in Turkey, since Erdogan denounced Publicly by convention?

Note that Germany's denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles was the most prominent cause of the Second World War. Is this abandonment a prelude to a regional war in the Middle East? A war that may expand to include the major powers, some of which are currently searching for a share in the cake of the Eastern Mediterranean fortunes, and also from the Middle East region, which led and leads the current gradual withdrawal of the United States of America to create a huge power vacuum that can entice many regional and international parties to try Find a foothold in this region.