Delegates concluded months of negotiation at Lausanne, Switzerland, replacing the harsher, unratified Treaty of Sèvres with terms Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) could accept. The treaty recognized Turkish sovereignty over Anatolia and eastern Thrace, abolished capitulations granting foreigners special privileges, and mandated a large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey, formally establishing the borders of the Republic of Turkey, proclaimed later that year.
The Treaty of Sèvres, imposed on the defeated Ottoman Empire in 1920, had proposed dismembering Anatolia among Greek, Armenian, French, Italian, and British zones of influence, leaving only a rump Turkish state. Turkish nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal, rejected the settlement outright and fought the Turkish War of Independence, defeating Greek forces in Anatolia and forcing the Allies back to the negotiating table.
Negotiations at Lausanne, which began in November 1922, proved arduous, with British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon sparring repeatedly with Turkish delegate İsmet İnönü over borders, minorities, and the fate of the Turkish straits. The final treaty, signed on July 23, 1923, recognized full Turkish sovereignty over Anatolia and eastern Thrace and abolished the humiliating capitulations that had let foreign powers operate courts and businesses inside Ottoman territory exempt from local law.
One of the treaty's most consequential and brutal provisions mandated a compulsory exchange of populations, uprooting some 1.2 million Greek Orthodox Christians from Anatolia and roughly 400,000 Muslims from Greece, based on religion rather than language or self-identification. Families who had lived in their towns for centuries were forced into unfamiliar homelands. The treaty cleared the way for Turkey's proclamation as a secular republic on October 29, 1923.