A former U.S. diplomat tweeted that it is worth looking "at restoring the Treaty of Sèvres."
Alberto Miguel Fernandez, a former U.S. diplomat, made the comment in a retweet of an Ahval article.
The article quoted Turkey’s Energy Minister Fatih Dönmez calling for the renegotiation of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty which set the borders of Greece and Turkey.
In response to the article, Fernandez said it is "certainly worth looking at restoring the Treaty of Sèvres in place of the Lausanne Treaty."
Certainly worth looking at restoring the Treaty of Sèvres in place of the Lausanne Treaty. https://t.co/5oIgAFXVpf
— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) December 30, 2020
The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres that preceded the Treaty of Lausanne had radically different borders for Turkey.
Eastern Anatolia and Pontus was to be within Armenia's borders, an independent Kurdistan would be establishment, and the region of Smyrna (Σμύρνα, Turkish: İzmir) and most of eastern Thrace would unite with Greece.
Turkey are so paranoid that the Treaty of Sèvres could return that there is the Sèvres Syndrome (Turkish: Sevr Sendromu), and the former diplomat's tweet would have surely created irrational fear in Ankara.
Turkish historian Taner Akçam describes this syndrome as an ongoing perception that "there are forces which continually seek to disperse and destroy us, and it is necessary to defend the state against this danger."
Historian Nick Danforth said that “Sèvres has been largely forgotten in the West, but it has a potent legacy in Turkey, where it has helped fuel a form of nationalist paranoia some scholars have called the ‘Sèvres syndrome’”.
