In 1920 Syria formally became a French mandatory territory, being initially split into a number of states, including the French-controlled Sanjak of Alexandretta (modern Hatay province).[5] By the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres Anatolian Turkey was to be partitioned, with the Syrian-Turkish frontier placed further north than its current position.[6]Turkish nationalists protested the treaty, contributing to the outbreak the Turkish War of Independence; the Turkish success in this conflict rendered Sèvres obsolete.[5] A new border more favourable to Turkey was drawn by the Franco-Turkish Treaty of Ankara in 1921 after negotiations between French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and Turkish Foreign Minister Yusuf Kemal Bey.[5][7][8] By the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne Turkey's independence was recognised and a more generous territorial settlement was agreed upon, with Turkey formally renouncing any claim to Arab lands.[9] Following Lausanne, the Syrian-Turkish frontier was delimited more precisely between Meidan Ekbis and Nusaybin in 1926, and between Nusaybin and the tripoint with Iraq in 1929.[5] A Final Delimitation Protocol covering the entire boundary east of Hatay was then confirmed and deposited with the League of Nations on 3 May 1930.[5]
Turkey's borders as determined by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Note that Hatay province is shown as Syrian territory.
A special case was Turkey's Hatay province, which remained autonomous until 1923. In 1938, in the wake of the Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence (1936), the Sanjak of Alexandretta became the Hatay State and was annexed by Turkey as Hatay Province in 1939.[10] The Hatay section of the boundary was delimited in 1938 and confirmed the following year, being marked on the ground by numerous pillars. Hatay was then formally transferred to Turkey on 23 July 1939.[5]
Syria gained independence in 1944, and the frontier then became the border between two sovereign states.[5] When Turkey joined NATO (1952) and the OSCE (1973), its boundary with Syria
was recognized as a border by these organisations. Syria continued to claim Hatay province as part of Greater Syria, depicting the region as part of Syria on official maps.[11][12][13][14]
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, tensions across the border have increased. In addition to repeated border incidents there has also been a substantial influx of refugees across the border to Turkey.[15] Turkey began construction of a border barrier in 2014.[16][17]
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 471 Syrians civilians, including 86 children and 45 women, have been killed by the Turkish gendarmerie at the Syrian–Turkish border since the beginning of the Syrian civil war.[18]
^
The village's population was 583 in 1980 (Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları Vakfı, 1986, p. 142); it was later evacuated due to landslides. A police station and a monument mark the southernmost point of Turkey. Topraktutan forms a small salient into Syrian territory. It corresponds to the Turkish airspace claimed to have been violated prior to the 2015 Russian Sukhoi Su-24 shootdown.
^Lundgren Jörum, Emma: "The Importance of the Unimportant" in Hinnebusch, Raymond & Tür, Özlem: Turkey-Syria Relations: Between Enmity and Amity (Farnham: Ashgate), p 114-122.
^Lundgren Jörum, Emma, Beyond Syria's Borders: A history of territorial disputes in the Middle East, (London & New York: I.B. Tauris), p 108
