Three days from now, we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne. With this treaty, signed 60 years ago in the city of Lausanne in Switzerland, Turkey had had the outcomes of the War of Independence ratified by the whole world.
Sixty years later, in the same city of Lausanne in Switzerland, a “World Armenian Congress” is being organized. This must carry a special meaning. To evaluate its meaning, one must briefly look at the period before the War of Independence and recall how and by whom the Armenians and Greeks were supported during those years.
Before the War of Independence, the attempts by imperialist powers to establish Greek and Armenian states on Turkish territory and to tie them to their own control were frustrated by the War of Independence. The United States, which sought to tie Turkey to itself with a system called a “mandate,” also aimed to assume the “guardianship” of an Armenian state to be established on Turkish land.
The Erzurum and Sivas Congresses activated the national consciousness against the foreign-backed plans to establish Armenian and Greek states on Turkish land, and the anti-imperialist struggle of the War of Independence was shaped and directed by these congresses.
Since our recent history, imperialist powers have always sought to organize and support separatist forces in Turkey. The goal is the same goal, the plan is the same plan. These efforts, seen before the War of Independence, continued right after the founding of the Republic of Turkey, and rebellions based on ethnic origin and foreign support were encountered.
We have not forgotten these.
It is documented today how American missionaries and missionary schools established in Anatolia pursued a separatist policy over Armenian and Greek communities before the War of Independence. It is now proven with American and British secret documents that arms were supplied to the Armenians by Americans at that time, and that the occupation of our eastern provinces by American soldiers was considered, under artificial reasons such as guaranteeing security for the Armenians. Provided that we know how to read and interpret these documents in the archive of history...
It is written in the records of the Lausanne Conference that American delegates brought an “Armenian homeland project” and defended it until the end of the congress. The proposals for an “Armenian state” by the famous U.S. President Wilson are also in the archive of that same recent history. One of the reasons why the U.S. government did not ratify the Treaty of Lausanne was the failure of the project to establish an Armenian state.
We have not forgotten these either.
The Armenian politics and terrorism that were initiated after the 1974 “Cyprus Peace Operation” and were at times continued with Greek support, undoubtedly today also possess multinational and differently motivated support. France’s shameful attitude towards Armenian terrorism, the Armenian monuments erected in America, are all related to this new “Crusader mentality.” Let us not be mistaken; Armenian terrorism is not merely a matter of terrorist activists. What matters are the relations Armenians have built worldwide, the support they have gained, and the political nature of this support. What must be brought to the forefront is this political support.
It is becoming more clearly understood, day by day, that terrorism has for years aimed to drag Turkey into an environment of anarchy and a power vacuum, called “destabilization.” And day by day, just like before the War of Independence, Armenian-Greek and other separatist forces are seen uniting with multinational support.
The aim is to nullify the Treaty of Lausanne and to put the Treaty of Sèvres into effect.
Just like in the past, Turkey will once again know how to throw this outdated and dirty game of imperialism into the trash bin of history.
In the face of this “wolf trap,” the only option is to revive the sacred “National Forces spirit” of our War of Independence, and to wave Atatürk’s belief and policy of “full independence” like a flag. The power to defeat imperialism lies in national unity. We will expose these plots one by one and overcome them as a nation.
As long as we revive the spirit and consciousness of “full independence,” and come together as a nation in the “songs of the National Forces” ...
