Treaties of Erzurum

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Map of the Ottoman Vilâyets Mosul from 1897 with the border line at that time

The Treaties of Erzurum were two treaties concluded between the Ottoman Empire and Iran on the border between the two domains. They were closed in 1823 and 1847.

background

The Treaty of Qasr-e Shirin of 1639 and the Treaty of Kordan of 1746 only vaguely regulated the border between the Ottomans and the Persians. As a result, there were several clashes between the Persian and Ottoman military in the 1820s. Unlike in previous border wars, this time the Sunni Ottoman clergy did not draft anti-Shiite fatwas . To initiate peace negotiations, the Ottoman Sheikh al-Islam wrote to the Persian commander Abbas Mirza , emphasizing the fundamental friendship between the two countries, which are like one body. The first Treaty of Erzurum, signed in 1823, ended the war, renewed the guarantees of the Treaty of Kordan and added regulations for subjects of the Ottoman Empire and Persia in the other country. For the first time in the history of the Orient, people were no longer identified as citizens of a certain state by their religion but by their place of birth.

The British and Russians , who had imperial intentions in the region in the course of the “ Great Game ”, were alarmed by the agreement between the Ottomans and Persians without any action on their part and pressed for the conclusion of a second treaty, which they were involved in drafting. In this second treaty of Erzurum, which was concluded in 1847, the Ottoman Empire was implicitly assured control over the entire breadth of the Shatt al-Arab , in return this area between Khorramshahr and Abadan ceded to Persia. The British and Russians interpreted the Persian rights on the left bank of the Shatt al - Arab very restrictively, which the Persian government rejected. The exact course of the Ottoman - Persian border was to be determined by a commission in which, in addition to the Ottomans and Persians, British and Russian representatives were also involved. The commission began its work in 1848, but was interrupted by the Crimean War. In 1869 she made a very imprecise map of the planned demarcation.

In the period that followed, negotiations were on hold until in 1911 a new commission, again consisting of Ottomans, Persians, British and Russians, was convened to draw up precise borders. In the Protocol of Constantinople in 1913 the exact course of the border line was finally determined. The course of the border in the Shatt al - Arab remained a matter of dispute.

consequences

Estuary of the Shatt al-Arab with the cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr

The Erzurum Treaties defined people as members of certain states and tried to draw an exact border between the territories of states, which was a novelty in the region of the Middle East . In this way, European ideas of sovereignty were transferred to the Orient. The Ottoman Empire and Persia set up consulates to look after their own citizens in the other national territory. The legal security for travelers in the other national territory increased, from which pilgrims to the Shiite holy places of Najaf and Karbala particularly benefited. After the end of the Ottoman Empire, Iran declared the treaty of 1847 invalid, which led to tensions with the Kingdom of Iraq , which was founded under British tutelage . In 1937 Iraq and Iran stipulated in the Treaty of Tehran that Iran should control part of the course of the river in the Shatt al - Arab between the Abadan oil refinery and Khorramshahr. This was of great importance for access to the British oil concessions of the " Anglo-Persian Oil Company ".

Iran revoked the Treaty of Tehran in 1967. In 1975 a new agreement was reached between Iraq and Iran in Algiers , which enabled Iraq to overthrow the Kurdish Peshmerga in the border area and which left half of the Shatt al - Arab to Iran. In 1980 Saddam Hussein revoked this agreement and used the unresolved border issue in Shatt al - Arab and in the Iranian province of Khuzestan as a pretext for the start of the First Gulf War .

Sources and web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b IRAQ v. AFSHARIDS TO THE END OF THE QAJARS , Ernest Tucker, Encyclopædia Iranica
  2. ↑ a b c d From fellows to foreigners: the Qajar experience in the Ottoman Empire , Beeta Baghoolizadeh, University of Austin (Texas), 2012, pp. 1, 2, 9, 11-18.
  3. ↑ a b c d e The Iran-Iraq Border: A Story of Too Many Treaties , Randall Lesaffer, Oxford Public International Law
  4. ↑ International Boundary Study, No. 28: Iran – Turkey Boundary , College of Law, Florida State University, Digitized Legal Collections
  5. ↑ Nationalism in Kurdistan , prehistory, conditions of origin and first manifestations up to 1925 Günter Max Behrendt, series: "Politics, Economy and Society of the Middle East" ed. from the Deutsches Orient-Institut, Hamburg, 1993, ISBN 3-89173-029-2 , p. 33: “Definitive borders that can be made precise to the millimeter can only be produced and maintained over the long term by highly organized territorial states. This type of state has only existed for a historically short time, even the most powerful empires of the Middle Ages were not able to do so - however, it was not a desirable goal for them either.