Turkey applied to the League to reclaim its sovereignty over the straits in 1936. Turkish government made its case with reference to the principle of rebus sic stantibus that means obligations of treaty are terminable in the case of a fundamental change of circumstances. Turkey claimed that the circumstances of the Lausanne Treaty were altered so much that the provisions of the Lausanne Treaty concerning the status of the straits were no longer applicable. Turkey put forward several key issues that compromised the League’s capability to protect the Straits against a potential aggression.

In the Ottoman Empire, therefore, the non-Muslim communities had managed to preserve their separate religious In the Ottoman Empire, therefore, the non-Muslim communities had managed to preserve their separate religious identities and linguistic differences; however, these communities were naturally affected by the spread of nationalist and separatist ideas in the nineteenth century.

As the European attention on these communities grew stronger, the Western powers continuously involved in the domestic affairs of the Ottomans in a way to abuse the communities for their own political objectives.

While the millet system had once served as a brilliant instrument of government, it triggered the self-destruction of the Empire. Especially, the abuse of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian communities throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would later have reverberations for Turkish foreign policy such as creating problems with Greece over minority issues and with Armenia over “genocide claims.” Even, labelling the European Union as a “Christian Club” may be tied to the Western interference in domestic affairs of the Ottoman Empire through its Christian minorities.