The Treaty Record: Lausanne, Kars, Montreux and the 1960 Cyprus Accords as Primary Documents

Why It Matters

Four live questions in Türkiye's region are anchored in a small set of treaty texts: the Armenia–Türkiye border, passage through the Turkish Straits, the legal basis of the Cyprus settlement, and the standing of the unratified Treaty of Sèvres. Reading Alexandropol, Moscow, Kars, Lausanne, Montreux and the 1959–60 Cyprus accords as documents, with their dates, parties and operative articles, is the quickest way to separate what is written from what is asserted. This guide explains what each text establishes, which provisions are cited most often, how Ankara relies on them, and where other parties read them differently.

Background

The treaties below form a sequence rather than a collection. Each answers a problem left by the previous one: the collapse of the Ottoman state, the contest over Anatolia and the South Caucasus, the regime of the Straits, and the end of British colonial rule in Cyprus. The table gives the core data; the sections after it explain how to use them.

The Instruments at a Glance

Alexandropol, Moscow and Kars: The North-Eastern Border

The Treaty of Alexandropol was signed on 2–3 December 1920 between the Ankara government and the Armenian Republic's government, ending the autumn 1920 war. Within days Armenia's government was replaced by a Soviet one, and the later Kars settlement superseded the text. Armenian accounts commonly describe Alexandropol as concluded under military duress; Turkish sources treat it as the first treaty recognition of the new boundary and of Sèvres's rejection.

The Treaty of Moscow (16 March 1921) is the political foundation of the border. Its Article 1 contains a non-recognition clause, under which neither party accepts international acts imposed on the other by force, and Article 3 places Nakhchivan under Azerbaijan's protection on the condition that it is not transferred to a third state. The Treaty of Kars (13 October 1921) confirms these arrangements with the participation of the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian Soviet republics, with Soviet Russia a party to the process. Kars repeats the Nakhchivan guarantee in Article V, and it remains the usual citation for the Türkiye–Armenia and Türkiye–Georgia boundary segments.

Three later documents matter for reading Kars today. The Alma-Ata Declaration of 21 December 1991 recorded the post-Soviet states' acceptance of existing borders. The Zurich Protocols of 10 October 2009, which were signed but never ratified, included a reaffirmation of the existing border 'as defined by relevant treaties of international law'. The Armenia–Türkiye talks that began on 14 January 2022 are covered in Kılıç and Rubinyan Talks Since 14 January 2022: The Record of Armenia–Türkiye Normalization.

Lausanne: The Settlement Treaty

The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923 and entered into force on 6 August 1924. It is long and technical, and different clauses serve different debates:

• Borders (Articles 2–3): the land frontiers with Greece, Bulgaria, Syria and Iraq (the latter settled separately by the 1926 Ankara arrangement).
• Aegean islands (Articles 12–13): the allocation of islands and the provision that Greece should not use Mytilene, Chios, Samos and Nikaria as naval bases or fortify them. Greece and Türkiye read the later demilitarization debate differently.
• Cyprus (Articles 16 and 20): Türkiye renounced rights over territory outside its frontiers and recognized the British annexation of Cyprus proclaimed on 5 November 1914.
• Capitulations (Article 28): abolition of the extraterritorial privileges that had constrained Ottoman sovereignty.
• Minorities (Articles 37–45): protection for non-Muslim minorities on the basis of equality before the law, with reciprocal provisions that Greece and Türkiye apply, and dispute, regarding Western Thrace and Istanbul.

A separate Convention on the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations (30 January 1923) and the Straits Convention annexed to Lausanne belong to the same package.

Montreux: The Straits Regime

The Montreux Convention (20 July 1936, in force 9 November 1936) replaced the Lausanne Straits Convention, which had demilitarized the Straits and placed them under an international commission. Its Article 1 affirms freedom of transit and navigation, and Article 2 gives merchant vessels freedom of passage in peacetime. Articles 10–18 regulate warships, including limits on aggregate tonnage in the Straits and on the tonnage and length of stay of non-Black Sea powers in the Black Sea.

The provisions that matter in wartime are:

• Article 19: when Türkiye is not belligerent, warships of belligerent powers may not pass the Straits, subject to the exceptions in the text (including Article 25 and assistance to a victim of aggression under a qualifying treaty).
• Articles 20–21: where Türkiye is a belligerent, or considers itself threatened with imminent danger of war, passage is at its discretion.
• Article 28: the Convention remains in force subject to a denunciation procedure requiring two years' notice after the initial twenty-year period.

How Türkiye applied these provisions after 28 February 2022 is examined in Montreux Article 19 on the Record: How Türkiye Applied the Straits Regime to Warships in 2022.

Zurich, London and the 1960 Treaties

The Zurich Agreement of 11 February 1959 between Greece and Türkiye, and the London Agreements of 19 February 1959 with the United Kingdom and the two Cypriot communities, produced the instruments signed in 1960. Cyprus became independent on 16 August 1960 under three treaties: the Treaty of Guarantee (Greece, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and Cyprus), the Treaty of Alliance, and the Treaty of Establishment (British sovereign base areas).

In the Treaty of Guarantee, Article I commits Cyprus to maintain its independence, territorial integrity, security and constitutional order and bars union with any other state or partition. In Article II the three guarantors recognize and guarantee that state of affairs and the Basic Articles of the Constitution. Article IV provides for consultation if the treaty is breached and then states that, if concerted action proves impossible, each guarantor 'reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs established by the present Treaty'.

The Constitution gave the President (a Greek Cypriot) and the Vice-President (a Turkish Cypriot) each a final veto over foreign affairs, defence and security, and fixed communal ratios in public bodies. Its Basic Articles were designated unamendable. The amendment proposals of 30 November 1963 and what they would have changed are set out in The 13 Amendments of 30 November 1963: What Makarios Proposed and What the 1960 Constitution Provided.

Why the Unratified Sèvres Draft Has No Force

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920 by representatives of the Ottoman government in Istanbul, never entered into force, and the legal reasoning rests on four independent points.

1. No completed ratification. A treaty that makes its binding force depend on ratification does not bind until the required ratifications are completed. This is a long-standing rule of treaty law, later codified in Article 14 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (which is not retroactive but records customary practice). Sèvres's own final clauses made its entry into force depend on ratification, and that process was never completed.
2. No consent from the authority that governed Anatolia. The Grand National Assembly, opened in Ankara on 23 April 1920, rejected the treaty, and the sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922. The territory Sèvres purported to dispose of was held by a government that never accepted it.
3. Replacement by a later treaty. Lausanne was negotiated and signed by the principal Allied powers themselves, and it settled the same subject matter, including the borders, on different terms. Where a later treaty between the same parties covers the same ground, the later text prevails.
4. Subsequent treaties and practice on the eastern border. Alexandropol, Moscow and Kars fixed the north-eastern boundary with the neighbouring states, and the Alma-Ata Declaration later confirmed existing borders.

Other perspectives deserve an accurate statement. Some Armenian diaspora organizations and commentators point to the arbitral award of 22 November 1920 by US President Woodrow Wilson, who had been asked under Sèvres to fix the boundary in four eastern provinces, as an international determination. They also note that Armenia is not a party to Lausanne. The response in the record is that the Wilson award rested on a treaty that never came into force and that the United States never ratified Sèvres. The sister-site analysis Archive of Nations: Fact Check: Is the Treaty of Sèvres Still Valid? What Lausanne, Kars and the Treaty Record Say About Türkiye's Borders covers the same record.

A Reader's Map: Where to Find the Texts and How to Read Them

The fastest route to a reliable text is the official treaty series, followed by government collections and then commentary.

• League of Nations Treaty Series and United Nations Treaty Series. Lausanne and Montreux appear in the League series (commonly cited as 28 LNTS 11 and 173 LNTS 213); the 1960 Cyprus treaties are in the UN series. Both are searchable through the UN Treaty Collection.
• Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Foreign Affairs (mfa.gov.tr). It publishes the Montreux text and policy pages on the Straits, Cyprus and Armenia relations. Use these for Ankara's stated position, not as a neutral edition.
• UN Peacemaker and national archives. The UN's Peacemaker database and UK government publications carry the 1959–60 Cyprus instruments.
• University and library collections. Yale's Avalon Project and the Library of Congress hold widely used English texts of Sèvres and Lausanne.

A five-step method works for every instrument:

1. Identify the parties, and check which of them actually ratified.
2. Note signature, ratification and entry-into-force dates; they often differ by months or years.
3. Read the operative articles and annexes before the preamble.
4. Check which language versions are authentic, because several of these treaties exist in more than one language and the wording can differ.
5. Distinguish the text from later practice, resolutions and commentary, and cite each separately.

The same documents-first method applies to the Ottoman record; see The Ottoman Archives and the Events of 1915: What the Records Establish and What They Cannot.

Key Players & Positions

• Türkiye. Ankara treats Lausanne as the founding settlement, Kars as the final word on the eastern boundary, Montreux as a sovereign regime it implements impartially, and the 1960 treaties as the legal basis of its Cyprus role (see the next section).
• Armenia. The Republic of Armenia is not a party to Lausanne, and its political discourse has historically referred to Sèvres and the Wilson award. In the talks begun on 14 January 2022 both governments have described the aim as normalization without preconditions, and under the 2009 Zurich Protocols (never ratified) the existing border was to be reaffirmed.
• Greece. Athens relies on Lausanne's Aegean provisions and on its reading of the law of the sea. It disputes Ankara's reading of the Aegean islands' status, and it calls the Muslim minority in Western Thrace by that name rather than 'Turkish'.
• The Greek Cypriot side. The Republic of Cyprus (referred to in Turkish official usage as the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus) and most international bodies treat the Treaty of Guarantee as not authorizing military action. UN Security Council Resolution 353 (20 July 1974) called for withdrawal of foreign military personnel 'present otherwise than under the authority of international agreements', and Resolution 541 (1983) deemed the 1983 declaration of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus legally invalid.
• The United Kingdom. A signatory of Lausanne, Montreux and the 1960 treaties and a guarantor of Cyprus, it declined to join Türkiye in joint action in 1974 and has stated that it does not interpret Article IV as authorizing the use of force.
• Russia and Ukraine. Both are Black Sea states. Ukraine publicly asked Türkiye to close the Straits to Russian warships in February 2022, while Russia's Black Sea bases make it the main party affected by Montreux's exception for vessels returning to their home bases.
• The United Nations. The UN holds the treaty record, administers the Cyprus good-offices mission, and has not endorsed a settlement model since the 2017 Crans-Montana Conference.

Source Comparison

The gap between columns is usually one of emphasis rather than fact. International coverage often compresses a text into a single phrase, while Turkish sources cite specific articles. Readers should note that the Greek Cypriot, Greek, UN and European court records (for example the European Court of Human Rights judgments in Loizidou v. Turkey and Cyprus v. Turkey) read the post-1974 situation differently from Ankara. The text of a treaty and the legal consequences of how it was later applied are separate questions. The network's wider checks are in Region Scope: Fact Check: Common Claims About Türkiye in International Media, Checked Against Primary Documents, and Irrecord's own source rules are in Editorial Principles: How Irrecord Handles Sources, Positions and Corrections.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Ratification: the formal act by which a state consents to be bound. Signature alone does not bind a state where the treaty requires ratification, which is why Sèvres never took effect.
• Lex posterior: the rule that a later treaty between the same parties on the same subject prevails over an earlier one.
• Basic Articles: the provisions of the 1960 Cyprus Constitution designated as unamendable, including the communal structure and the Vice-President's veto.
• Guarantor powers: Greece, Türkiye and the United Kingdom under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee.
• Belligerent: a state party to an armed conflict; the term triggers Montreux Articles 19–21.
• Capitulations: pre-Lausanne extraterritorial privileges for foreign nationals, abolished by Article 28.
• Non-recognition clause: a Moscow and Kars provision under which neither side accepts international acts imposed on the other by force.

Related guides:

• Montreux Article 19 on the Record: How Türkiye Applied the Straits Regime to Warships in 2022
• The 13 Amendments of 30 November 1963: What Makarios Proposed and What the 1960 Constitution Provided
• The Ottoman Archives and the Events of 1915: What the Records Establish and What They Cannot
• The Eastern Mediterranean Record: Coordinates, Licences and Agreements in One Dated Chronology
• Irrecord FAQ: Sources, Method and Perspective, About Irrecord, and the Irrecord home page

For the Cyprus treaty framework from a sister publication, see The Political Anatomy: The Cyprus Issue Explained.

Irrecord presents global and regional affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Position' reflect official Turkish policy and legal doctrines as stated by Turkish primary sources. — Irrecord Editorial Team