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'PEACE PROCESS' NOT A CHALLENGE TO LAUSANNE
Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Sept 24 2013
ISTANBUL - Hurriyet
Turkey's ongoing peace process to resolve the decades-long Kurdish
issue would not challenge the Lausanne Treaty, Zafer Toprak, history
professor at Bogazici University has said.
"Turkey will protect its nation state identity at some point. This
includes the country's borders too. However it is important to realize
that Turkey must enable internationally acknowledged norms of human
rights, individual freedoms for [Turkey's citizens]. If Turkey gains
ground on this issue I do not sense a threat factor about national
borders," Toprak, who is the founder and president of the Ataturk
Institute of the Bogazici University told daily Hurriyet when he was
asked if recognition of ethnic identities in Turkey regarding the
Kurdish issue would reach a point of challenging the Lausanne Treaty.
"Lausanne is not open to debate because at this point the whole
process [in the Middle East] proceeds independently from Lausanne. The
arguments are not linked to Lausanne, it's mostly linked with people's
ethnic identities," he said.
The Treaty of Lausanne was a peace treaty signed in Lausanne,
Switzerland, on July 24, 1923, before the founding of the Turkish
Republic. It officially ended the state of war that had existed between
Turkey and the Western Alliance since the onset of World War I. The
treaty set the structure of Turkey's minority laws accepting only Rums
(Anatolian Greeks), Jews and Armenians as ethnic minority groups.
September/24/2013
Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Sept 24 2013
ISTANBUL - Hurriyet
Turkey's ongoing peace process to resolve the decades-long Kurdish
issue would not challenge the Lausanne Treaty, Zafer Toprak, history
professor at Bogazici University has said.
"Turkey will protect its nation state identity at some point. This
includes the country's borders too. However it is important to realize
that Turkey must enable internationally acknowledged norms of human
rights, individual freedoms for [Turkey's citizens]. If Turkey gains
ground on this issue I do not sense a threat factor about national
borders," Toprak, who is the founder and president of the Ataturk
Institute of the Bogazici University told daily Hurriyet when he was
asked if recognition of ethnic identities in Turkey regarding the
Kurdish issue would reach a point of challenging the Lausanne Treaty.
"Lausanne is not open to debate because at this point the whole
process [in the Middle East] proceeds independently from Lausanne. The
arguments are not linked to Lausanne, it's mostly linked with people's
ethnic identities," he said.
The Treaty of Lausanne was a peace treaty signed in Lausanne,
Switzerland, on July 24, 1923, before the founding of the Turkish
Republic. It officially ended the state of war that had existed between
Turkey and the Western Alliance since the onset of World War I. The
treaty set the structure of Turkey's minority laws accepting only Rums
(Anatolian Greeks), Jews and Armenians as ethnic minority groups.
September/24/2013