They All Made Peace – What is Peace?

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne may have been the last of the post-World War One peace settlements, but it was very different from Versailles. Like its German and Austro-Hungarian allies, the defeated Ottoman Empire had initially been presented with a dictated peace in 1920. In just two years, however, the Kemalist insurgency turned defeat into victory, enabling Turkey to claim its place as the first sovereign state in the Middle East. Meanwhile those communities who had lived side-by-side with Turks inside the Ottoman Empire struggled to assert their own sovereignty, jostled between the Soviet Union and the resurgence of empire in the guise of League of Nations mandates. For 1.5m Ottoman Greeks and Balkan Muslims, ‘making peace’ involved forced population exchanges, a peace-making tool now understood as ethnic cleansing. Chapters consider competing visions for a postOttoman world, situate the population exchanges relative to other peace-making efforts, and discuss economic factors behind the reallocation of Ottoman debt as well as refugee flows and oil politics. Further chapters consider Arab, Armenian, American and Iranian perspectives, as well as the long shadow cast by Lausanne over contemporary politics, both inside Turkey and out.

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