Mosul question

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Location of the Vilayets Mosul
The disputed Mosul area was not completely congruent with the earlier vilayet. Areas to the west of Wadi Tharthar were not included.

The problem of the international legal status of the former Ottoman Vilayet Mosul after the First World War was called the Mosul question .

Mosul and its surrounding area aroused the interest of Great Britain, France, Germany and the USA because of its oil reserves . The area was awarded to France under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. At the Sanremo Conference of 1920, France ceded territory to Great Britain, which then supported France's interests in the Middle East.

Armistice between Mudros and Ali İhsan Paşa (Sabis)

The Mudros armistice allowed the Entente to conquer "any strategic point" in the event of a threat to Allied security. Ali İhsan Pascha (Sabis) evicted Mosul on orders from İstanbul after an ultimatum from the British Commander-in-Chief in Mesopotamia, William Marshall . The British soldiers then marched there in early November 1918 without any resistance. On the same order Mustafa Kemal Pascha should evacuate Adana and Hatay (see also Hatay State ). He refused to do so in a telegram to the War Department on the grounds that the order was illegal. When the Minister of War suspended him and ordered him back to the base, he distributed his weapons to the people so that they would not fall into the hands of the enemy. Some weapons were brought to the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa on the Eastern Front.

Lausanne Conference

At the Lausanne conference, Turkey gave two reasons why Mosul should remain with Turkey. First, when the Mudros armistice was signed on October 30, 1918, Mosul was under the control of the Turkish army and within national borders. Second, the majority of the population in the Mosul and Sulaimaniyya areas would be Turks. Great Britain objected to this, because in fact the majority of the region's population was Kurdish. According to the third article of the Lausanne Treaty, a British-Turkish commission was set up to resolve this problem within nine months. At the Lausanne negotiations, the Turkish commission under Ismet Inönü presented the following population statistics:

Sanjak Kurds Turks Arabs Jews Non-Muslims total
Sulaimaniyya 62,830 32,960 7.210 - - 103,000
Kirkuk 97,000 79,000 8,000 - - 184,000
Mosul 104,000 35,000 28,000 18,000 31,000 216,000
Entire Vilâyet 263,830 146.960 43.210 18,000 31,000 503,000

The British under Lord Curzon, on the other hand, presented these figures, according to which the Turks should only make up 1/12 of the population.

Ethnicity number percent
Arabs 185.763 23.65
Kurds 427.720 54.45
Turks 65,895 8.39
Christians 62,225 7.92
Jews 16,865 2.15
Yazidis 30,000 3.82
total 785.468

The Iraqi government (1922-1924) provided the following figures:

Ethnicity number percent
Arabs 166.941 16.29
Kurds 720.007 70.24
Turks 38,652 3.77
Christians 61,336 5.98
Jews 11,897 1.16
Yazidis 26,257 2.56
total 1,025,090 100

The conference at the Golden Horn and Ali Fethi Bey (Okyar)

The first talks began at the Golden Horn Conference on May 19, 1924, but no agreement was reached. Turkey insisted that the Mosul and Sulaimaniyya areas must remain within its borders. Great Britain rejected this request and also laid claim to the Hakkari area .

The Istanbul conference ended with no results and relations between Turkey and Britain grew strained as unrest broke out on the border of the British mandate of Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Therefore, both sides agreed to bring the problem to the League of Nations according to the Treaty of Lausanne . Even so, Turkey was dissatisfied with this agreement because it was not a member of the League of Nations and Great Britain was influential in the League of Nations.

The planned Mosul maneuver and Cafer Tayyar Paşa (Eğilmez)

In 1924, Mustafa Kemal planned to occupy Mosul and drive the British out of the area. The Greeks, supported by the British, fled Anatolia, leaving 150-200,000 soldiers and 70% of their weapons behind. The government of David Lloyd George had to resign because of the Chanak crisis in Great Britain, but Turkey refrained from invading after urgent threats from the British, at the same time the nationalist politics of Turkey led the minorities in Anatolia to organize uprisings, first the Nestorian uprising, then the Sheikh Said Uprising . Mustafa Kemal realized, given the circumstances in his own country and the British superiority of 140,000 soldiers in Iraq, that his exhausted troops would hardly stand a chance.

The decision of the League of Nations

Because of these obstacles, Turkey had to accept the role of the League of Nations. He took up the topic in September 1924. Turkey proposed a plebiscite in the Mosul and Sulaimaniyya regions. Great Britain rejected this. The League of Nations set up a commission to deal with the issue. The commission of inquiry presented its report in September 1925. The commission stated that the people of Mosul did not want to join any side and be independent. Despite these findings, the investigative commission made the following suggestions:

  1. The Brussels line should be recognized as a border.
  2. Since the majority of the population of Mosul are Kurds, Mosul will be annexed to Iraq, but economic agreements are to be agreed with Turkey. When the mandate expires in 1928, this phase will be extended by 25 years, but the Kurds are to be given autonomy and cultural rights.
  3. If these two points are not respected, the Vilayet Mosul will be returned to Turkey.

The Assembly of the League of Nations accepted the Commission's proposal. This decision led to protests in Turkey. This went so far that there was a war mood between Turkey and Great Britain.

But thanks to Ataturk's realistic assessment, the situation calmed down, as the country had only recently been at war and the economic and social problems that had arisen had to be resolved. Turkey also had internal and external problems.

The external problems were that European-Christian states led the negotiations on Mosul. This isolated Turkey. Turkey signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in Paris. The aim was to find allies. The internal problems were riots organized by the British. Therefore Turkey accepted the decision of the League of Nations and signed a treaty with Great Britain on June 5, 1926 in Ankara in Ankara, which regulated the Turkish-Iraqi border and ended the Mosul question.

  1. The border should be the Brussels line set in Brussels, but slightly modified in favor of Turkey.
  2. According to Article 14 of the contract, the Turkish Petroleum Company receives 10% of the oil revenues for the next 25 years. Turkey later waived this right on payment of 500,000 English pounds in gold.

Turkish-British relations

Despite the 1926 agreement on the Mosul affair, Turkish-British relations did not normalize. Turkey felt cheated of what it believed to be a claim to power. In addition, through the Turkish nationalism it introduced, which it consistently imposed on all Muslim population groups, and the suppression of the Christian minorities, it finally lost all support for the Assyrian and Kurdish population in the Mosul region.

Finally, in 1929, the British Mediterranean fleet visited İstanbul. This visit was the first step in promoting Turkish-British relations. Admiral Field went to Ankara to meet with Ataturk and other important politicians, and so softened the hardened relations. Shortly after this visit, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, Karahan, also came to Ankara because the Soviet Union was concerned about the rapprochement between Turkey and Great Britain.

literature

  • İsmet Demir (ed.): Musul-Kerkük ile ilgili arşiv belgeleri: (1525-1919) . Başbakanlık Basımevi, Ankara 1993, ISBN 975-19-0757-8 , p. 734 (Turkish).
  • Mim Kemâl Öke: Belgelerle Türk-İngiliz ilişkilerinde Musul ve Kürdistan sorunu, 1918–1926 . Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enst., Ankara 1992, ISBN 975-456-052-8 , p. 208 (Turkish).
  • II Minz , AM Pankratowa , WP Potjomkin , EW Tarlé , NP Kolchanowski: Diplomacy in the period of preparation for the Second World War 1919–1939 . In: WP Potjomkin (ed.): History of diplomacy . 2nd Edition. 3rd volume, no. 1 . SWA-Verlag, Berlin 1948 (Russian).

Movies

  • Kaan Girgin: "Miras" ( Legacy ) (2008, Turkey)

Web links

International Court of Justice documents

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The frontier between Turkey and Iraq shall be laid down in friendly arrangement to be concluded between Turkey and Great Britain within nine months. wwi.lib.byu.edu
  2. İsmail Göldaş: Lozan - Biz Türkler ve Kürtler . Avesta publishing house, ISBN 975-7112-69-0
  3. a b c d Mim Kemâl Öke: Belgelerle Türk-İngiliz ilişkilerinde Musul ve Kürdistan sorunu, 1918–1926 . In: 123 . I. edition. tape III , A-33. Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü, Ankara 1992, ISBN 975-456-052-8 , Beşinci Bölüm: Musul Meselesi'nin Milletler Cemiyeti'ndeki Safhaları, p. 151 (Turkish).
  4. In the event of no agreement being reached between the two Governments within the time mentioned, the dispute shall be referred to the Council of the League of Nations. wwi.lib.byu.edu
  5. ^ A compromise report by the Mosul Commission , In: Vossische Zeitung , June 28, 1925, Sunday edition, p. 2.
  6. Viola Furubjelke, Omar Sheikhmous: Iraqi Kurdistan - A Study in Genocide / A draft report presented at Recognition of Kurdish Rights - An International Conference on Strategies for Action . Stockholm March 15-17, 1991.
  7. Ankara Antlaşması . 1926 ( Wikisource , Turkish)