The Convention, signed in Ankara on January 4, 1932, by the Italian Plenipotentiary, Ambassador Pompeo Aloisi, and the Turkish foreign minister Tevfik Rüştü Aras, settled a dispute that had arisen in the aftermath of the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, about the sovereignty over a number of small islets and the delimitation of the territorial waters between the coast of Anatolia and the island of Kastellórizo, which had been an Italian possession since 1921.

The names in italian and Turkish languages in the area around the Bodrum area (of the western Anatolia peninsula) are shown in the following section: Moreover, the Italian Government recognised the sovereignty of Turkey over the Aegean islet of Kara Ada (Greek: Arcos), situated in front of the town of Bodrum.

In an Appendix signed in December of the same year, the two countries agreed to extend the convention delimiting the sea border between the Anatolian coast and the Italian Dodecanese.

The Turkish government has rejected it as legally invalid, on the grounds that it was not deposited at the League of Nations in Geneva.

This, according to the Turkish view, means that the sovereignty over an unknown number of small islets and rocks in the Dodecanese may be still undefined.