The treaty of Lausanne and the 2023 myth

Until recently I tried to ignore most of the myths surrounding the treaty of Lausanne since nothing hurts your health more than a good old Turkish conspiracy theory, and believe me Turkish facebook pages, amateur historians and media outlets are masters when it comes to these issues, as long as this is kept contained to a small group, the societal impacts may be neglected until of course the man who represents your country brings it up, I'm obviously talking about president Erdogan's remark on the treaty:  “July 15 [coup attempt] is the second War of Independence for the Turkish nation. Let us know it like that. They [threatened] us with Sèvres in 1920 and persuaded us to [accept] Lausanne in 1923. Some tried to deceive us by presenting Lausanne as victory. In Lausanne, we gave away the [now-Greek] islands that you could shout across to,” he said.

For those who are new to Turkish politics and history, the Ottoman Empire was carved up into several pieces with the treaty of Sèvres which led to a revolt of several of it's officers led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who fought against the Ottoman government and the Allied forces for a 'better' treaty that would return some of the land (yet not everything) to the newly founded Turkish republic.

However, since a couple of years there have been circulating conspiracy theories around the internet in which Islamists claim that the treaty was actually "a defeat" and then come up with maps depicting the Ottoman Empire in 1914 as if it was taken during it's golden age, or say things that Turkey couldn't dig their own resources (notable 'boron') until 2023 (a date often referring by Erdogan as the time when "everything will change") despite that there is literally no proof of this in the whole treaty and the fact that Turkish state companies are actually already using boron or the classical: Turkey couldn't start manufacturing their own domestic car brand because of that treaty.

Now the reason why they attack that treaty which was signed by İsmet İnönü is pretty simple, first of al it's to blame Turkey's shortcomings on historical or foreign causes, why doesn't Turkey have it's domestic car brand yet ? "Well because of that old treaty forbids us." Instead of laying the blame on our cultural and political problems.

The second reason is because there is a sizable portion of Turkey's conservative population with disdain towards Atatürk that could be divided in to 2 groups: Those who hate him but don't attack him due to his military achievements and those who do and that's why the treaty is attacked, because they know that a lot of people don't attack Atatürk due to his victorious military achievements, by changing those to "not real victories" or "treaties that only have handicapped Turkey" in order to wipe away Atatürk's legacy and opening the opportunity to attack him on other issues like his secular reforms.

So our Greek friends can sleep well tonight too, knowing that the attacks on the Lausanne treaty could be seen as more of indirect attacks on Atatürk rather than hints to territorial expansion into the Greek Islands.