quoms:

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stirred up controversy over the treaty that almost a century ago set the borders of modern Turkey, alarming both neighbouring Greece and secular opposition at home.

In a speech Thursday, Erdogan for the first time rejected the notion that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was a “victory” for Turkey and wistfully lamented the loss of Aegean islands which are now Greek territory.

The treaty — the founding basis of the modern Turkish state out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire — has usually been seen inside the country as a triumph of its secular leadership led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

“You see the Aegean, don’t you?” Erdogan told local officials in the speech at his presidential palace.

“In Lausanne, we gave away islands (so near that) your voice can be heard if you shout across to them. Is this a victory?” he asked.

“They were ours. There are our mosques, our shrines there.”

Erdogan rounded on those who negotiated the treaty who included Ismet Inonu, Ataturk’s right-hand-man who would later succeed him as president and still a hero for secularists.

“Those who sat at that table could not make the best of the agreement. Today we are suffering the consequences.”

Turkey’s main opposition party leader spoke out against Erdogan’s comments, describing them as a betrayal of history.

“Don’t forget that you sit on that chair thanks to Lausanne,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the party founded by Ataturk which sees itself as the guardian of his secular principles.

“Nobody has the right to betray their history.”

Yusuf Kaplan, columnist in the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper, however described Lausanne as a “death warrant” and praised Erdogan for throwing “taboos on the trash.”

“Turkey could not be invaded from outside but was captured inside by being secularised from the top by secular elites.”