According to KurdPress, for many people in the world, Lausanne is the name of a peaceful city in Switzerland; but for the Kurds, more than being a city, it is the name of a treaty that shaped the course of a century of Turkish policy towards Kurdish identity. A treaty that stabilized the borders of the fledgling Turkish Republic after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but at the same time, removed the Kurdish issue from the agenda of the international community.The Treaty of Lausanne, unlike the Treaty of Sèvres, which had limitedly spoken of the possibility of a Kurdish entity, abandoned all those commitments and paved the way for the formation of a state based on the principle of “one nation, one language, and one identity.” From then on, the Kurds were defined only as part of the Turkish population, and their political and national rights were removed from official equations.

Modern Turkey was not only the heir to the Ottoman territory, but also to the Lausanne political order, an order whose survival depended on ignoring the Kurdish identity. The question arises whether the Western powers truly failed Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, or whether they essentially managed the formation of the Turkish Republic in a way that both protected their interests and prevented the emergence of a Kurdish entity. The policy of Britain and France was based more on maintaining the balance of power in the Middle East than on the rights of nations.The analysis then turns to Turkey today. Although some limited reforms have been made regarding Kurdish language and culture in the past two decades, these reforms have never amounted to a genuine acceptance of Kurdish identity. Allowing Kurdish programming to be broadcast for a limited time, requiring the use of Turkish subtitles, restricting Kurdish language teaching, and even banning the use of certain letters of the Kurdish alphabet such as Q, W, and X in naming children are examples that demonstrate the Turkish government’s continued security perspective on the Kurdish issue.

Citing Hamit Bozarslan’s research, it can be argued that these restrictions have their roots in the same framework that Lausanne created for the Republic of Turkey; a framework that recognized only the minorities defined in the Treaty of Lausanne and excluded the Kurds from this definition.Therefore, many of the reforms implemented in practice have failed to solve the Kurdish issue and have been mostly tactical.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policies are also evaluated along this historical legacy. Despite distancing himself from some components of Kemalism, Erdogan has continued to move within the framework of Lausanne on the Kurdish issue and has tried to preserve the territorial integrity and the model of the Turkish nation-state. Turkey's military operations in northern Syria and Iraq, the use of religious discourse in these operations, and opposition to any formation of a Kurdish political entity on the southern borders are all a continuation of the same security logic that was established a century ago after Lausanne.

Although the text of the Lausanne Treaty is still valid, the developments of the past century have shown that the Kurdish issue will not disappear by ignoring it.The experience of Kurdish self-government in Syria, the status of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and the continuing political and cultural demands of the Kurds in Turkey show that the question that remained unanswered in Lausanne remains one of the most important challenges for Turkey's domestic and regional politics. For this reason, "Lausanne did not know the Kurdish language, but history has forced it to hear it."

Center for Kurdish Studies