There’s an interesting post at RealClearWorld from Reva Goujon providing the historical background behind the division of the Ottoman Empire after the Great War. I knew, of course, that under the Ottoman Mosul and its environs had been in one sanjak (subprovince) and Baghdad and its environs in another and those were in the vilayet (province) of Baghdad. I also knew Syria was cobbled together from a half dozen vilayets including those of Aleppo and Syria.
What I didn’t know was that Kemalist Turkey wanted to retain the Mosul sanjak. Or that Ismet Pasha wore earplugs whenever Lord Curzon spoke. I probably would have, too, in his position.
The entire situation in the Middle East and North Africa makes a lot more sense if you’re aware of the Ottoman divisions. Modern Libya, for example, was created from the vilayet of Tripoli and the independent sanjak of Benghazi and they had different ruling families, tribes, politics, etc. When we intervened in Libya we didn’t liberate the country. We intervened on behalf of the sanjak of Benghazi against Tripoli.
The bottom line is that the world is still reeling from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The survivors are still scrabbling in the rubble. Anyway, read the whole thing.
The issue with Mosul was founded foremost in the Turkish complaint that after the cease-fire armistice, the British kept invading up the Mesopotamian rivers so as to establish a “front line” that was treated as the armistice line, and which more or less became the southern border of Turkey. I think this is more of a grievance argument raised by a country occupied and in disarray.
The Ottomons sued for peace under Wilson’s XIV points, which called for a Turkish sovereign state, and an opportunity for self-determination for all non-Turks in the Empire. Like the Germans, the Ottomons thought Wilson’s terms more fair than what could be expected from the other parties, and like the Germans, the Ottomons found the process of negotiating out the details with the Allies led to more concessions than anticipated.
The eventual treaty was followed by occupation of Turkish areas, leading to Kemal’s uprising, but he was willing to accept Turkey’s borders being defined by Turkish nationality, excluding Arab and Kurdish areas. I think the context of the subsequent peace treaty with Turkey was Kemal adopting a maximalist position to get what he could. At the time he was pressing for revision of the Mosul border, the British are contemplating whether it made more sense for there to be an independent Kurdistan, or whether it should be governed from Baghdad.
Ultimately the British didn’t care to be bogged down in peacekeeping requirements, found the Kurds to be ungovernable by anybody and was worried that Kemal might align with the Soviets. On the other hand, the British were influenced by King Faisal of Iraq, who insisted that the border with Turkey not be negotiated away. While Kemal got a League of Nation inquiry into the border, claims to Turkish identity were either not substantiated, or the fix was in. And whether or not the fix included dropping the issue of Kurdish and Armenian independence, it should not be too surprising that the ultimate borders somewhat approximate where the fighting stopped (give or take some extra steps). The Turks liked to discuss the border issue in terms of where were the British when the armistice occurred; the British like to discuss whether these people are Turks.
Some of that is a conflict between the classical idea of a nation and the modern one. The classical view was that a nation was a linguistic community. If you spoke Arabic, you were an Arab. If you spoke Turkish, you were a Turk.
The modern view was more predisposed to divide nations along ethnic, familial lines. If you father was a Turk, so are you.
That’s something else we’re still struggling with today and I attribute it at least in part to the vacuum left by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Language was probably difficult in this area, which was probably had a lot of people speaking Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Turkish (Turkman).
I’m looking at some materials to give me an idea where the true armistice line was, and it was north of Kirkuk 20 miles, but hard to track city names because Turks were probably using Turkish names, which are mostly not used any more.