Treaty And Precedent: Treaties, Archives and Case Law Read in Primary Sources

Why It Matters

Treaty And Precedent is a publication that reads international law at the level of the document: the treaty article, the gazette entry, the court judgment, the registered coordinate. Its aim is to explain treaty law and archival records in plain English while conveying Türkiye's official legal and historical positions to an international readership that often meets those positions only second-hand. If you search for treaty and precedent international law Türkiye, this page is the map to our six desks and the guides that anchor them.

Background

Many of the most contested questions about Türkiye and its region turn on texts. Which treaty fixed a border? What does an article actually say? What did a court hold, and what did it leave open? Public debate frequently skips these steps and relies on summaries of summaries.

We start from the instruments themselves. The core texts include:

• The Treaties of Alexandropol (1920), Moscow (1921) and Kars (1921), and the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923).
• The 1936 Montreux Convention on the Turkish Straits.
• The 1959 Zurich and London Agreements and the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee on Cyprus.
• The 1948 UN Genocide Convention and the case law that interprets it.
• Maritime delimitation judgments and arbitral awards, together with Türkiye's UN filings.

Our approach: read the text first, then the case law, then the competing interpretations. Where an issue is disputed, we say so and attribute each position to its own official source. Our Editorial Principles set out how we handle sourcing, the separation of fact from position, and corrections.

The Six Desks

1915 Archival Dossiers

This desk covers the Events of 1915 through the documentary record. That includes the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915, published in the official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi on 1 June 1915, wartime correspondence, the nineteenth-century background of the Hunchak (1887) and Dashnak (1890) committees, the later ASALA and JCAG-ARA campaign of attacks on Turkish diplomats, and Türkiye's 2005 offer of a joint historical commission. Start with Reading the 1915 Record.

Foundational Treaties

This desk explains the instruments that fixed Türkiye's borders and status, and the regime for its straits. See The Treaty Ledger for how Alexandropol, Moscow, Kars and Lausanne fit together, and Montreux Articles 19, 20 and 21 for what the convention says about warships in wartime.

Cyprus Constitutional & Treaty Law

This desk follows the island's legal architecture from the 1959 Zurich and London Agreements through the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, the 1963 breakdown, the 1974 intervention, the 1983 proclamation of the TRNC (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) and the 2004 referendums. Our pillar guide is Cyprus Treaty Architecture.

Maritime Law & Equity

This desk covers continental shelf and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) delimitation in the Eastern Mediterranean, Türkiye's UN filings and the case law on equitable principles. See Maritime Delimitation Case Law.

Comparative Historiography

This desk sets international claims beside the primary documents they rely on. We compare how parliaments, historians, courts and governments frame the same event, and show where the documentary base is thin or contested.

Fact Check

This desk states a claim and its origin exactly, then corrects or contextualises it using treaties, official statements and archives. A typical entry is Is the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres Still Valid? Sister publications run parallel checks, for example Regional Balance and Crossroads Review.

The Primary-Source Standard

A claim earns a place in our articles only if we can point to a document, a judgment or an official statement. We apply five rules:

1. Cite the instrument. Treaty articles are named by number and date, and we quote only text we can verify.
2. Separate fact from position. Background and chronology are written neutrally. Assessments are attributed, as in 'Ankara argues' or 'According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry'.
3. Represent other views accurately. Positions of Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, Armenia, the EU, the UN and others are summarised from their own official sources.
4. Never invent. If a figure, date or quotation cannot be verified, we omit it.
5. Correct in the open. Corrections are logged under the process described in the Editorial Principles.

Authorship is always the Treaty And Precedent Editorial Team. We do not use pseudonyms, fabricated experts or invented academic titles. The About page explains who we are and why we publish.

Key Players & Counter-Positions

We present the other main positions in their own terms:

• Armenia, many national parliaments and a large body of scholars use the term genocide for the events of 1915. Turkish officials and some historians dispute that characterisation and stress the wartime context and archival record.
• Greece and the Republic of Cyprus argue that, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), islands generate maritime zones, and that the Republic of Cyprus is the internationally recognised state on the island. Türkiye is not a party to UNCLOS, and its objection to some of these claims is a central point of dispute.
• The United Nations and the EU have long supported a settlement in Cyprus based on a bizonal, bicommunal federation with political equality. Ankara and the TRNC say that model is exhausted. The status of the 2004 EU accession terms is covered in The Annan Plan Referendum and Protocol 10.

Source Comparison

For similar fact checks from our partner publications, see Borders & Blocs.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Primary source: a treaty text, gazette notice, judgment, official statement or archival record, as opposed to commentary about it.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent to destroy a protected group, as such, required by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
• Equity in delimitation: the principle that a maritime boundary should produce an equitable result, tested for proportionality against coastal length.
• Treaty of Guarantee (1960): the treaty making Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom guarantor powers for Cyprus.
• Joint historical commission: the 2005 Turkish proposal for historians to examine all archives together. See the 2005 offer and the 2022 talks.

Further reading: Did the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee Allow Intervention in 1974? and What Does Lausanne Say About Minorities?. Questions about method are answered in the Reader FAQ.

Perspective Note

Treaty And Precedent presents global and regional affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Legal & Historical Position' reflect official Turkish policy and legal doctrines as stated by Turkish primary sources.