Lausanne lies!

Before the 2023 elections, I ran into İsmail, a shoeshine man on Karanfil Street in Kızılay.

İsmail had been shining shoes for about 30 years in Kızılay, Tunalı, Atatürk Boulevard, and the surrounding streets, and he knew almost everyone who worked in that area.

It was as if there wasn't a single person he didn't greet or ask how they were doing when he went out on the street.

Among those whose shoes he shined were members of the Council of State and the Court of Cassation, ministers, members of parliament, doctors, lawyers, and journalists.

Because he was a good talker, he had become friends with many important people over the years.

He followed politics closely, and within the three or five minutes he spent shining your shoes, he would ask a series of remarkable questions about the current agenda. If he wasn't satisfied with your answers or if your answers didn't make sense to him, he would state his own opinion, point out the parts he disagreed with, and explain his reasoning in an extremely logical way.

Since there were newspaper stands among his customers, he would always have one or two daily newspapers under his arm. In his spare time, he would sit in a quiet corner and read the newspapers almost down to the obituaries.

About 10 days before the election, I saw him at the corner where Tunalı intersects with Bestekar Street, went up to him, and said, “İsmail, who are you going to vote for?” I knew he was very troubled by the AKP. He was very angry at political Islamists. He thought none of them worked for the benefit of the country and that they were always lining their own pockets.

Because I knew this, I expected him to answer, “Of course, for the CHP.”

But he said, “Brother, I’m going to vote for Tayyip.”

“What do you mean, are you joking?” I retorted.

“No brother, why would I joke, I’m telling the truth,” he began, explaining that since the 100-year term of the Treaty of Lausanne would expire in July 2023, Turkey would start extracting its mines and oil. It turns out the reason we had remained poor until today was that İsmet İnönü had a secret clause added to the Treaty of Lausanne and fell into the British trap. According to these secret clauses, he had promised not to extract our mines and oil until 2023. Now, if Tayyip wins the election, we would extract our underground resources and become rich; this was our last chance, and so on and so forth...

I was very surprised; it meant that this lie, which the AKP fed under the table through its whisper network, was seriously working. He must have heard this from many people whose shoes he shined during the day. Otherwise, he wasn't someone whose mind could be swayed by what one or two people said.

“Don't you at least fall for this despicable propaganda, İsmail,” I said, and then I left him.

A day or two later, I had done some shopping at one of the discount supermarket chains. While waiting to pay for my items, I heard the cashier girl talking knowingly about the secret clauses of Lausanne. She was explaining it to an elderly aunt, going on and on, getting more and more excited. When it was my turn, I first asked which school she had graduated from and then who she had learned what she was saying about Lausanne from.

She had finished a primary school teaching degree at a provincial university and then started working at the market through an acquaintance. She had heard about the secret clauses of Lausanne from her professor who taught the educational psychology course at the university.

“It's not true, my dear. Not only are there no secret clauses in Lausanne, but its term won't end this year either,” I started to say, but she scolded me nicely by saying, “Is our professor going to know better, or are you?”

While I was pondering this issue, some posts on social media started to catch my attention.

In family, hometown, friend, professional, or neighborhood groups, I noticed Lausanne posts that gave the impression of having come from the same center. These posts were decorated with flashy graphics and marketed well with stupid slogans like “Turkey is breaking its chains,” “End to the captivity of Lausanne,” and “Now our oil and mines will be ours.”

Especially since the comments made under political posts were very useful for me in terms of keeping a pulse on society, I felt that the people of my country were inclined to fall for the Lausanne lies as if voluntarily. Without ever asking or questioning, without saying, “Hey, every part of the country has turned into a mine site, just yesterday many people died in a collapse at a gold mine, and besides, if we couldn't extract oil, was the oil coming out in Batman just cherry soda?” they were getting caught up in the wind of this propaganda.

Finally, when my barber İlyas said the same thing, I realized that this issue was much more serious than it appeared. As I asked around, there were believers in almost every segment of society, and their numbers were not to be underestimated.

These lies were spreading among people with geometric growth and were taking hold of those looking for hope in their own imaginary worlds.

Unfortunately, at that time, the opposition could not see, or did not want to see, that this propaganda had found enough supporters in society to make them lose the election.

After the election, they realized how the Lausanne lies had enchanted at least a portion of the people of my country, but it was too late.

Özgür Özel, while confessing his sins after May 28, said in a television program, “We never thought our people would fall for these lies. We thought they would say, 'Can such a thing even happen?'” He made a statement to that effect. This was a scandal in the truest sense of the word, but the so-called opposition press chose not to hear these words, which were politically extremely grave, because they were preparing him for the CHP Chairmanship.

How could the main opposition party fail to keep a pulse on society?

The day before was the 101st anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, which is in a sense the title deed of Turkey's sovereignty and independence.

Unfortunately, the Treaty of Lausanne is at the top of the list of historical issues about which enemies of the Republic and Atatürk have been producing despicable lies since the 60s. Political Islamists cling to these lies whenever they are in a tight spot.

It was the same in the 2023 elections.

But afterwards, no one brought this to the agenda. No one asked, “What happened to the secret clauses of Lausanne? We were going to break our chains when the 100 years were up, we were going to freely extract our mines and oil.”

Since it didn't leave much of a mark in the goldfish memory of the people of my country, it was forgotten.

The government now seems to be trying to create an artificial history through Vahdettin. We will wait and see what lies they will use to feed their whisper network in the coming period to try to influence the people of my country.

As we conclude our article, let us end with these words that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk said about Lausanne in his Nutuk (Speech):

“This treaty is a document that announces the collapse of a great assassination attempt that has been prepared against the Turkish nation for centuries and was thought to have been completed with the Treaty of Sèvres. It is a work of political victory unprecedented in Ottoman history.”