After more than a year of blowing hot and cold, threatening to veto Sweden's membership of NATO and trying to haggle over the lifting of his veto to suit his own interests, on 10 July the Turkish President finally agreed to Sweden's membership of NATO. This decision came after a long telephone conversation with President Biden on the eve of the NATO summit in Vilnius. It was announced by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and hailed by Western leaders as good news, indeed "a historic step that benefits the security of all NATO allies" (Jens Stoltenberg). The Swedish Prime Minister, who had been repeatedly admonished and humiliated by the Turkish President, spoke with relief of a "good day" for his country.
Ratification by the Turkish Parliament should take place "as soon as possible but not before October", according to Erdogan. For his part, his Hungarian counterpart and associate Victor Orban said that Hungary could ratify the accession treaty "quickly" (see Le Monde, 11 July). President Biden, who played a decisive role in resolving this crisis, said he was "impatient" to welcome Sweden as a 32nd NATO member state and "ready to work with President Erdogan to strengthen defence and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area". He received his Turkish counterpart on the fringes of the Vilnius summit. The Turkish President described the hour-long meeting as "historic" and saw it as "a first step towards a stronger relationship" (New York Times, 11 July). It must be recalled that President Biden has never received Erdogan at the White House and has even chosen not to invite him to the summit of democracies that Washington organises every year. The Vilnius meeting is therefore the first substantial direct dialogue between the two leaders. Apart from the promise to support Turkey's requests to Congress for the acquisition of F16 fighter jets, President Biden does not seem to have acceded to other recurring demands, such as the expulsion to Turkey of the Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen, the end of American support for the Syrian Kurds or the amicable settlement of the political and financial imbroglio of the Turkish state bank Halk Bank for financial transactions with Iran in violation of American sanctions. A warming of Turkish-American relations remains unlikely as long as Biden is in power. But Erdogan believes that the beginnings of dialogue and a few gestures could help to improve his country's largely negative image in the eyes of public opinion and, above all, investors, who are urgently needed in Turkey's economy, which is in crisis.
It is this urgency, too, that has led the Turkish president to tone down his anti-European and anti-American diatribes during election periods and to seek a renewal of ties with Europe. He even went so far as to call for the resumption of negotiations on Turkey's accession to the European Union, which have been at a standstill for several years. Sweden has pledged to support Turkey's request, as has Hungary; the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the German Chancellor, Olat Schute, have contented themselves with a few vague statements. But the European Parliament, in a report adopted on 18 July by its Foreign Affairs Committee with 47 votes in favour, none against and 10 abstentions, clearly states: "Unless there is a radical change of course on the part of the Turkish government, Turkey's EU accession process cannot be resumed in the current circumstances". The MEPs point out that Turkey does not respect democratic values, the rule of law and human rights (see p. 42).
Western investors need a robust rule of law or, failing that, a stable legal framework in order to take the risks of investing. The same cannot be said of the Gulf petro-monarchies, which the Turkish President is actively courting in his customary 180-degree about-turn. Turning the page on the conflicts and fiery diatribes of the past, he visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, his adversaries of yesterday, as well as his friend and ally the Emir of Qatar, to solicit massive and urgent financial aid to bail out the Turkish economy. Major contracts worth billions of dollars were announced to give confidence to the markets, but without a precise timetable or the exact content of these contracts.
These announcements of unbridled openness have not yet had the desired effect. Inflation, officially down to 44.5% but in reality over 108% according to an independent Turkish organisation, is wreaking havoc and throwing the middle classes into precarity. Property prices have risen by 152% since the start of the year, and petrol prices have doubled. Violence, sometimes deadly, between landlords forced to substantially increase their rents to keep up with inflation and tenants unable to pay them is a daily feature of the courts. Students are protesting in the streets and on social media against the unaffordable cost of student accommodation. The Turkish lira is depreciating week by week, to the point where a dollar is now worth 27 lira and a euro around 30 lira, compared with 1 euro for 2 lira just 10 years ago. Interest rates have climbed to 17.5%, making borrowing unaffordable.
In this very tense social context, the government continues to play up the theme of the homeland in danger, defended by the incessant operations of the valiant Turkish army against the "PKK/PYD terrorists in Syria and Northern Iraq", and to present the soldiers who have died in these wars of aggression as "martyrs" whose funerals with great pomp and ceremony saturate the screens of Turkish television. The opposition parties dare not criticise this brainwashing out of atavistic nationalism or for fear of being branded terrorists by the powerful government propaganda machine. Most of them, notably the Republican People's Party (CHP) and its former ally the Good Party, have been plagued by internal quarrels and score-settling since their defeat in the elections.
The only glimmer of hope in the short term is tourism! The devaluation of the Turkish lira has made Turkish tourist sites more accessible, particularly to tourists from Russia, Eastern Europe, Iran and the Middle East. Turkey hopes to welcome 50 million tourists by 2023 and to collect over 30 billion dollars in tourism revenue. These are welcome revenues, as the Central Bank's coffers are almost empty and Putin, himself in a difficult position, will not be long in demanding payment of the heavy bill for gas imports, which was postponed in order to facilitate the election of his friend Erdogan.
The Kurdistan Regional Government's Statistics Office published a statement on 10 July indicating that the Kurdistan Region currently has a population of 7,426,000. According to the Director of this Office, Shiwan Mihemed, quoted by Rûdaw (10/07/2023) this figure includes the 660,000 internally displaced persons, the vast majority of them Arabs, from other provinces of Iraq and 266,000 refugees, mainly Syrian Kurds and Iranian Kurds.
According to the same source, the Kurdish population of the Kurdistan Region should reach 6.55 million by the end of the year. There are also large Kurdish communities in the so-called "disputed" territories under Iraqi administration, notably in the predominantly Kurdish province of Kirkuk, in Mosul and in the districts of Sinjar and Khanaqin. In the absence of a reliable census, as required by Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, and in the absence of accurate statistics, the population of these communities living outside the Kurdistan Autonomous Region is estimated at between 3 and 3.5 million people. This means that there are between 9.5 and 10 million Kurds in Iraq out of a total population officially estimated at 43 million, or around 22-23% of the population of the Republic of Iraq, which has experienced a demographic boom since the fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and the improvement in living standards.
The political news of July were dominated by controversy over the budget adopted in June by the Iraqi parliament. On 3 July, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani lodged an appeal with the Federal High Court, claiming that 12 articles of this budget law were contrary to the Constitution. For its part, the Kurdistan Regional Government also lodged an appeal with the same court on 12 July, claiming that articles 2, 11, 12 and 13 of the new Iraqi budget law violate articles 110, 111, 112, 114 and 115 of the Constitution. Article 115 sets out the powers shared between the KRG and the Iraqi government and in its complaint the KRG believes that the requirement in the draft budget law that the KRG must supply 400,000 barrels of oil per day to the federal government in exchange for its share of the national budget is unconstitutional. The Supreme Federal Court, which is highly politicised and predominantly Shiite, is due to rule on these disputes within a few weeks.
The issue of Kurdistan's oil exports, interrupted by Turkey since March 2023, has still not been resolved. On 12 July, the Turkish President said: "We have no problem receiving Iraqi oil, the current problem is the conflict within Iraq between the central government and the government of northern Iraq. Once these problems have been resolved, we are in favour of opening pipelines". The Iraqi authorities, through their oil minister, rejected the Turkish presentation of the dispute. According to the minister, "there is no political problem between the KRG and the Iraqi government. Turkey does not want to resume exports as long as Iraq does not waive the compensation awarded to it by the International Court of Commerce". Baghdad and Ankara are therefore passing the quid on to the Kurds. Exporting Kurdish oil via alternative routes to the Basra terminals or to Jordan remains unlikely in the absence of suitable pipelines.
In addition, the date of the future parliamentary elections in Kurdistan, set for 18 November 2023, continues to be debated. The Iraqi High Electoral Commission in charge of organising the elections, arguing that it is already very busy organising the Iraqi provincial elections in December 2023, is proposing to postpone the elections in Kurdistan until February 2024. Consultations between the main Kurdish parties have resumed. The Americans, the Kurds' main military allies, have threatened to stop supporting the Peshmergas if the KDP and PUK do not quickly resolve their internal divisions. Faced with this threat and pressure from Kurdish public opinion, the two parties reached a 5-point agreement on 30 July. According to this agreement, their political differences should not hinder their cooperation within the Kurdistan Government to provide essential services to the population. An American delegation met the Peshmerga Minister to discuss the rapid implementation of the reforms agreed in September 2022.
Also worth mentioning is the visit by French Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu, first to Baghdad where he was received on 18 July by his Iraqi counterpart and the Iraqi Prime Minister, and then to Erbil where he was received at length by the President of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, to discuss peshmerga training projects and the challenges of the war against ISIS (see p. 78).
It should also be noted that the Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, feels "harassed" in Baghdad and has decided to move to Erbil in Kurdistan (see p. 78-79).
The Iranian killing machine is running at full speed. According to a count carried out by the Norwegian-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IRH), at least 354 people were hanged in Iran in the first half of 2023, up 36% from 2022. In its press release of 3 July, the IRH quoted by AFP states that the Iranian authorities are using capital punishment "as a means of crushing the protests that began in September after the death of a young Iranian Kurd (Jina Mahsa Amini) who was arrested by the morality police and died in custody".
By 2022, a total of 582 people had been executed, a figure 75% higher than in 2021, according to the IHR. However, this infernal increase in state killings is deemed insufficient by Shiite religious dignitaries who, according to a survey published in the Catholic daily La Croix on 2 July, are "calling for an acceleration in the rate of executions carried out in the name of Islam". Against this backdrop of one-upmanship, the few voices of more moderate clerics challenging the "instrumentalisation of religion for political ends" remain unheard.
Faced with the country's terrible economic crisis, which is driving many desperate Iranians into exile (see New York Times pp. 56-57) because even middle-class households can no longer afford to pay the rent (see Le Monde, 24 July, p. 51), the clerical regime is opting for a return to the fundamentals of the Islamic Republic by brutally repressing all dissent and all critical voices.
On 4 December 2022, the Iranian Prosecutor General had declared "the dissolution" of the morality police, but it has now been reactivated. In a report published on 28 July, Amnesty International states that "the Iranian authorities are considerably stepping up their repression of Iranian women and girls who defy the degrading legislation requiring them to wear the veil". According to Amnesty, which cites figures attributed to the Iranian police spokesman, between 15 April and 14 June "nearly one million text messages containing warnings to women photographed without veils in their cars were sent. 133,174 text messages were sent ordering the (temporary) immobilisation of the vehicle, while 2,000 cars were "confiscated" and "4,000 repeat offenders were brought to justice". According to the NGO, hundreds of businesses have been closed for failing to enforce laws on compulsory veiling, and women have been denied access to the education system, banking systems and public transport (see also Le Monde, 16 July, NYT, 27 July).
This mass surveillance has become possible thanks to sophisticated surveillance tools, including facial recognition cameras, supplied by China, which has become "a strategic ally of Iran". Security cooperation and economic exchanges between Iran and China will be complemented by a cultural dimension.
Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei has approved the addition of Chinese to the list of languages offered in Iranian schools. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi approved the change, which reflects the growing ties between Iran and China. In 2016, Khamenei had criticised the promotion of the English language in Iran. Meanwhile, an Iranian MP has said that the country's annual inflation rate is much higher than official government figures and currently stands at 120%.
Ordinary repression is continuing, particularly in Kurdistan.
The Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights reported that Iranian security forces arrested 168 Iranians, including 77 Kurds and 50 Baluchis, in June. At the same time, the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Ilam sentenced a Kurd to nine years in prison for "disrespecting the leader of the Islamic Republic" and participating in anti-government demonstrations. Another Kurdish demonstrator, Mehdi Sadiqi, took his own life two weeks after spending six months in Iranian prisons. Several human rights organisations have claimed that Sadiqi was tortured during his imprisonment. Finally, Iranian forces continued to attack several villages along the Iranian-Turkish border near Urmia with indirect fire and seized at least 700 head of cattle belonging to local Kurds.
In mid-July, the Iranian authorities arrested dozens of other Kurds, including ten in Shino, five in Piranshahr, four in Naghadeh, a Kurdish journalist in Tehran, an athlete in Saqqez and a civilian in Urmia. Most of the detainees are accused of protesting against the death of Jina Mahsa Amini. Meanwhile, a protester, Halima Hasannajad, died after being in a coma for nine months after being hit by a military vehicle in Saqqez. In addition, the Iranian authorities have told the families of two imprisoned Kurds to recover their remains in Mahabad and Piranshahr. According to the Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights, 20 prisoners, including 13 Kurds, died in Iranian prisons in 2023. At the same time, Iranian courts sentenced a teenager in Mahabad to two years in prison for "gathering and plotting to commit crimes against the country's internal security" and an activist from Senna, Hashem Saadi, to six months and 15 days in prison and 40 lashes.
Hengaw also reports that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has clashed with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants along the Iran-Turkey border near Khoy and that the Iranian army has subjected the areas around Khoy to intense artillery bombardment.
A member of the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDKI), Siamand Shaboie, was murdered north of Erbil. Shaboie was from Shino. He had joined the Party when he was a teenager. Several Kurdish parties have accused Iran of carrying out the assassination, but no one has yet officially claimed responsibility. Meanwhile, Iranian security forces killed a Kurd from Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan who was helping to put out a forest fire near Mount Bamo. This coincided with the arrest by the Iranian authorities of dozens of civilians and former demonstrators in Senna, Saqqez, Piranshahr, Bokan, Mahabad and Marivan. At the same time, the regime summoned 54 lawyers for expressing their support for Jina Amini's family and publishing images, documents and films. Finally, the regime executed five Kurds in Naghadeh, Urmia and Lorestan.
Iranian regime forces arrested dozens of demonstrators in the village of Aqdara, in the province of West Azerbaijan, and seriously injured three of them. The raid on Aqdara began when several Kurds gathered outside a gold mine and demanded a job. Iranian security forces and Ilam municipal officials destroyed a Kurdish house, broke up a small demonstration, injured three Kurds and arrested six others. The regime has also arrested a number of activists throughout Iranian Kurdistan, including Mohammed Haseli in Sarabbagh, Assad Mohammadi, Massoud and Ibrahim Mirzaie, and Hozan Baba Karimi in Senna, Omed Mazloum in Mahabad, Murad Tajgarodun in Naghadeh, Yassir Noori in Juwanro, Hussein Chokali in Urmia and Haider Qubati in Kermanchah. Finally, the Islamic Revolutionary Courts sentenced Burhan Saedi to two years' imprisonment for "forming groups against national security" in Senna, Bayan Salehian to eight months' imprisonment in Saqqez and Waran Mohammadnejad to one year's imprisonment.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced in early July that US forces, along with coalition and other partners, conducted 37 anti-ISIS operations in Iraq and Syria in June, resulting in the deaths of 13 ISIS members and the capture of 21 others. CENTCOM announced that a US drone strike had killed ISIS leader Osama al-Muhajir in eastern Syria on 7 July. Meanwhile, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested two ISIS terrorists on 8 July and captured an ISIS emir in Deir Ez Zor on 9 July. Meanwhile, some ISIS prisoners were repatriated to their home countries from the al Hol camp, including ten women and 25 children from France (see AFP p. 69), two women and three children from Canada and 168 Iraqi families.
Russian SU-35s forced three US MQ-9 Reaper drones, carrying out a mission against ISIS targets over Turkish-occupied north-western Syria, to carry out evasive manoeuvres on 5 and 6 July. Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder responded by calling on the Russian forces to "cease their reckless and unprofessional behaviour". The Russian military then accused the US of violating Syrian airspace 12 times and claimed that Syrian airspace was off-limits because of Russian training exercises with the Assad regime. Around 900 US troops remain in Syria to help the SDF fight ISIS.
On 28 July, special security units affiliated to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested five ISIS terrorists in the al Hol camp another ISIS operative outside Deir Ez Zor on 30 July. For its part, ISIS launched two attacks against the SDF and Assad's forces that killed 11 people. Meanwhile, on 27 July, an abandoned landmine injured four children who were collecting scrap metal near Deir Ez Zor.
On 25 July, Turkish forces shelled the SDF-controlled village of Qabur Qaranja near Tel Tamer. The following day, Turkey bombed the villages of al Darara and Tal Qara. On 28 July, a Turkish drone strike on a SDF training camp near Khirbet Khoy killed four people and wounded eight others. On 30 July, Turkey and its mercenaries injured three civilians in a bombardment of Tal Laban and Tal Tamer. On Monday 31 July, a Turkish bombardment wounded a woman and her child in Afrin, and Turkish artillery killed two members of the SDF east of Ain Issa. AANES condemned the US-led coalition's silence on Turkey's ongoing aggression and warned that it could weaken the willingness of the SDF and other allies to participate in future joint operations.
In parallel with its low-key war against the SDF, Turkey continues to use the terrible weapon of water.
On 3rd July, the Water Directorate of the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria (AANES) declared Hassakah, Tel Tamer and the camps of Washokani and Serêkani "disaster areas" due to water shortages caused by Turkey. Turkey controls the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and has cut water supplies to AANES-controlled territories more than forty times since 2019, affecting more than one million Syrian citizens. Meanwhile, a member of a pro-Turkish militia sexually assaulted a child in Afrin. The following day, Turkish mercenaries from Djaich al-Watan seized 112 sacrificial animals given to refugees in the north of Hassakah for Eid al-Adha and took them to their headquarters. These Turkish mercenaries also imposed a tax on the Kurds in Afrin, demanding 100 dollars from each citizen and 1,000 dollars from each trader.
On the diplomatic front, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani met Syrian President Bashar al Assad in Damascus on 16 July. While Iraq maintained ties with Syria throughout the Syrian civil war, relations between the two countries improved further when the Arab League normalised the Assad regime. Sudani and Assad discussed a range of issues, including cross-border drug trafficking, the return of Syrian refugees from Iraq, the lifting of Western sanctions against Syria, Israeli attacks on Syrian soil and water shortages caused by Turkey's control of the Euphrates. President Erdogan has also expressed his willingness to meet Assad and normalise relations, but Turkey refuses to accept Syria's demands for a prior withdrawal of Turkish forces from northern Syria.
On 13 July, the Assad regime said it would allow the United Nations (UN) to continue using the Bab al-Hawa border crossing to deliver humanitarian aid to the earthquake-ravaged areas of north-west Syria for six months. That said, the regime has forbidden the UN from communicating with any entity designated by the Syrian government as "terrorist" and has demanded that all UN aid be provided "in full cooperation and coordination with the Syrian government". The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described the Assad regime's demands as "unacceptable". On 10 July, Russia vetoed a nine-month extension of the aid operation at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
On 27 July, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that normalisation between Damascus and Ankara would continue via the Astana process, although it was not clear where future meetings would be held. In June, Kazakhstan announced that it would no longer host such talks. Nevertheless, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Miqdad met Iranian officials in Tehran on 30 July to discuss strengthening ties between the allied countries.
A Kurdish designer at Paris Fashion Week: it was a new and unexpected event that took place on 3 July in the heart of Paris. On that day, young Iraqi Kurdish designer Lara Dizayee presented the Parisian public with some thirty sumptuous creations inspired by traditional Kurdish costumes in the historic salons of the Maison de l'Industrie on Place Saint-Germain des Prés. The beauty, diversity and harmony of the colours, materials, arrangement of shapes and accessories evoked in the collective imagination the princesses of the Thousand and One Nights, and dazzled the Parisian public, fashion professionals and the media.
After the show, the designer made a point of meeting the Kurdish community in Paris on Saturday 8 July at the Kurdish Institute. In front of an audience packed with young people, she spoke about her career path, initially as a journalist in the United States, then as a communicator for a major foreign oil company in Kurdistan to ensure her financial independence. Once this was achieved, she set to work hard to appropriate and publicise the rich Kurdish cultural heritage in the field of dress, an area she masters better than any other, even though she has been immersed in a musical atmosphere since childhood. Her father, Homer Dizayee, is a famous Kurdish songwriter, regarded by his fans as the Adamo of Kurdistan because of his beautiful love songs. A polyglot, he is equally at home singing "Ma liberté" or "Les Feuilles mortes" in French, Sinatra in English or the classics of Persian, Arabic or Turkish music.
After years of hard work and thanks to social networking, Lara Dizayee attracted the attention of the fashion magazine Vogue, which devoted a long and glowing report to her. This must have caught the attention of the organisers of Paris Fashion Week, who contacted her and invited her to come to Paris to present her creations.
"This is the beginning of the realisation of my childhood dream", said Lara Dizayee at the meeting with the Kurds, before adding: "I want to say to young people: go all the way with your dreams! Never give up. In any case, it's better to try a new experience and risk making a mistake than not to try it and then have regrets".
A great encouragement for his young listeners, some of whom may well be inspired by her career (see also Rûdaw p. 6 and Myluxury p. 84 in the press review).
The 8e Kurdish cuisine festival was inaugurated on 4 July in Mesbaret Zion, near Jerusalem, in the municipal park by Mayor Yoran Shimon and Yehuda Ben Yosef, President of Israel's Kurdish community.
Around twenty chefs from all over Israel presented visitors with the great specialities of Kurdish cuisine. These included dozens of varieties of kutilk or kofte, finely crushed wheat dumplings stuffed with various vegetables, condiments, minced meat, dried fruit and other condiments, prepared using cooking methods that vary from one region of Kurdistan to another. Another speciality is the countless varieties of dolmas, aubergines, courgettes, peppers, onions, vine leaves or ivy stuffed with rice, savar (bulgur) with sumac spices and various condiments in vegetarian versions or with stuffed meat. And then there are dozens of dishes based on cereals and dairy products, lentils and chickpeas, a feast of the agricultural riches of Upper Mesopotamia in a variety of culinary specialities down the centuries, not forgetting the many delicious pastries made with honey, pistachios and hazelnuts or cheese. A treat for the 20,000 visitors to the festival, especially vegetarians. According to a report by the Kurdish news channel Rûdaw on 6 July, Kurdish flags were waving in the air and Itzek Kala gave an open-air concert of Kurdish music to liven up the festival, which over the years, along with the celebration of Newroz, has become a ritual for Kurdish Jews who are nostalgic for Kurdistan and its traditions.
According to current estimates, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel. Apart from Jerusalem, where there is a Kurdish quarter, they live scattered throughout Israel. They play an active role in the country's economic and political life. One of them, Itzhac Mordekhaï, became Minister of Defence for a time, while another, Mickey Levy, a Jew from Cizira Botan in Turkish Kurdistan, was Speaker of the Knesset in the previous parliament.
Since ancient times, Jews have been an important part of the population of Kurdistan, both in the towns and in the countryside, until the 1950s when they moved to Israel. Since then, only a few thousand binecû (of Jewish origin) remain, converted Jews who, since the end of Saddam Hussein's regime of terror, are once again asserting their Jewishness and, with the help of the Kurdistan government, are restoring their places of worship and remembrance.
One hundred years ago, on 24 July 1923, in Lausanne, the victorious Allies of the First World War signed a peace treaty with the Delegation of the Government of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, victorious in a war of independence against a Greek army supported by the British. The main battles took place in 1921 and 1922, resulting in around 10,000 deaths on the Turkish side.
Unlike the treaties of the Versailles system, the terms of which were dictated by the Allies to the defeated powers, sometimes in a humiliating manner with the consequences that we know, the Treaty of Lausanne was the culmination of more than eight months of bitter negotiations and represented a compromise in which each of the signatory states, first and foremost Turkey, Great Britain and France, seemed to find something to their liking. Its signing at the Palais Rumine in Lausanne was the occasion for a grandiose ceremony attended by, among other leaders of the day, French President Raymond Poincaré, Benito Mussolini, British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, former viceroy of India, and, of course, the head of the Turkish delegation, Ismet Pacha, who, buoyed by his diplomatic success, would later become Prime Minister, then President and "national leader" of the Turkish Republic.
The treaty established in international law a sovereign Turkish state within recognised borders and abolished the capitulations and other privileges granted by the defunct Ottoman Empire to the nationals of certain European powers, who thus enjoyed a right of oversight over Turkish trade, finance and justice. The Turkish territorial claims formulated in their recent National Pact (Misak-i-Milli) were satisfied, with the notable exception of the vilayet of Mosul, corresponding to present-day Iraqi Kurdistan and already de facto occupied by the British like the whole of Mesopotamia, and a few Greek islands close to the Turkish coast.
Before coming to the negotiating table, the Turks had meticulously prepared the ground in order to strengthen their hand against their main adversary, the British Empire. An agreement signed on 3 December 1920 with the Soviet Republic of Armenia establishing the border between the latter and the new Turkey served as a powerful argument for refusing any negotiations on the Armenian question, claiming that it had already been settled. At the same time, on 26 March 1921, Ankara concluded a highly advantageous friendship treaty with Moscow guaranteeing the delineation of its borders with the Soviet Union, which since 1919 had provided crucial financial and military aid to Mustafa Kemal's Turkish nationalists, who readily presented themselves as "anti-imperialist", while also using the theme of the "Caliph of Islam captive of the Christian powers" to mobilise Muslim crowds. A French-speaking secularist, Kemal was also quick to win over the French who, after a few setbacks suffered by their meagre battalions in clashes with the population of Marash and Urfa, who were opposed to their presence, agreed to sign the Ankara Agreement on 20 October 1921 demarcating the border between the new Turkey and Syria under the French mandate. The predominantly Kurdish provinces of Jezirah in the east and Kurd Dagh (Afrin) in the west were thus incorporated into Syria. Paris went so far as to supply arms directly to the Turks at war with Greece and their British allies. Italy followed suit.
For their part, on 23 August 1921 the British enthroned in Baghdad Amir Faisal, son of the Sherif of Mecca whom the French had just driven out of Syria, as King of Iraq, the new name they gave to ancient Mesopotamia. They were assured of their domination in one form or another over the former Arab provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire, with the exception of Syria and Lebanon, which had fallen into the hands of France. All that remained was to fix the borders of a future Turkish buffer state between Communist Russia and the British and French possessions in the Middle East as quickly as possible, and to ensure that the new state was not Bolshevik.
It was in this particular context that the Allies, exhausted and ruined by the Great War, disunited and in a hurry to get it over with, began negotiations with a Turkey that had emerged victorious from a war for the first time in almost two centuries, albeit against the very modest Greek army, and confident and aware of the division and fatigue of its adversaries. In fact, Ankara's only real adversaries were the imperially superb British. It was the head of their delegation, the redoubtable Lord Curzon, who had chosen Lausanne as the venue for the conference because of its "excellent hotel facilities", a location that also suited the Turks because it was on the line of the famous Orient-Express linking Constantinople to Paris and had been home to a patriotic Turkish community since the end of the 19th century, a useful auxiliary for the practical work of the Turkish delegation.
In Lausanne, the British delegation's priority was the question of the borders of the new Turkish state. It did not want at any price to cede to the Turks the vilayet of Mosul, which it knew to be rich in oil and whose agricultural resources were essential for the economy of Mesopotamia under its mandate. It argued that the vilayet was Kurdish in character and refused to annex it to the future Turkish state. The Turkish delegation replied that it represented the Turks and the Kurds, that the National Assembly in Ankara included 72 deputies from Kurdistan and that the future state would be one of Turks and Kurds! The fate of the Kurdish people was thus at the centre of the debates and negotiations, in her absence. In the end, the contentious issue of the Mosul vilayet was referred to the League of Nations for arbitration. The League dispatched a mission led by the Hungarian Count Teleke. After an investigation, it concluded that the vast majority (7 out of 8 inhabitants) of the population of this vilayet wanted the creation of an independent Kurdish state, but the League of Nations, where the British were calling the shots, decided to annex this territory, which had a large Kurdish majority, to Iraq, in return for a vague promise of autonomy (self rule). In return for their support for this iniquitous annexation decision, France and the United States each received their share of the Kurdish oil cake, namely a 23.75% stake in the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), renamed Iraq Petroleum Cie, which exploited the rich Kirkuk oilfields. The Compagnie française du pétrole (CFP), the forerunner of Total, was created to exploit its share of Kurdistan's oil. The British companies BP and Shell were each entitled to an equal share of 23.75%, as was the American company Standard Oil. The remaining 5% went to the former Ottoman subject and fictitious manager of TPC Gulbenkian, known as Mr 5%. Kurdish oil made all these people happy and the Kurds unhappy.
The priority for the French, who had lent heavily to the Ottomans and invested in their fading empire, was the issue of settling the Ottoman debt. For the rest, they had already reached an agreement with the Turks and, as a sign of their good relationship, they stayed in the same Lausanne palace for the duration of the conference.
These substantive and priority issues took up many months of difficult negotiations, often so tense that they were suspended for several weeks. To ease their consciences, the Allies, who had promised the emancipation of all the peoples oppressed by the Ottoman Empire and had signed the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 providing for the creation of an Armenia and a Kurdistan, discussed the fate of minorities in a commission, but the Turkish delegation proved intractable. It finally agreed to grant non-Muslim minorities, which had become numerically residual after the Armenian genocide and the expulsion of the Greeks, the right to practise their religion freely, to set up and maintain schools, foundations and churches at their own expense, to have a press and publications and to enjoy all the political and civil rights accorded to all Turkish citizens. The Treaty of Sèvres was buried, as were the famous Wilsonian principles of the self-determination of peoples and the democratic demands expressed for a time by the Allies, who also agreed to the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece so that each of these states would become "homogenous". Thus, after the forced departure of almost a million Greeks from Anatolia, victims of pogroms during and in the aftermath of the Great War and the Greco-Turkish war that followed it, more than 1.2 million other Greeks were uprooted from the land of their ancestors, who had created every town and village there and developed one of the most brilliant civilisations in the world. This first act of ethnic cleansing was to inspire sinister vocations elsewhere throughout the 20th century.
Companions in misery of the Armenians and Greeks, the Kurds were the big losers at Lausanne. It took them some time to realise that they had been masterfully duped by the Turkish nationalist leaders. Once their military victory had been won and their independence recognised, the latter were quick to betray their promise of a joint state of Turks and Kurds with an autonomous Kurdistan. A few months after Lausanne, on 3 March 1924, the National Assembly of Ankara, which included 72 "Kurdistan deputies", often dressed in their traditional costumes, as a token of the promise of a common state, was dissolved and the constitution on which it was based revoked. A decree-law banned all Kurdish schools and publications, as well as religious brotherhoods. The Caliphate, for the defence of which Mustafa Kemal had called on Muslims the world over, was abolished and the last Caliph forced into exile, first in Switzerland, where he was undesirable, and then in France, where he lived until his death in 1944. This marked the beginning of the final phase in the 'homogenisation' of Asia Minor, which had already been purged of its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian-Chaldean Christian populations: the forced assimilation of the Kurds, who made up more than a quarter of the population. From the ban on language, music and publications to mass deportations to Anatolia, where, according to a law passed in 1932, they were to be diluted and Turkified by the Turkish population, and genocidal massacres (Dersim 1936-1937), all means were used in the service of this "demographic engineering" of which the Turkish nationalist leaders, driven by social Darwinism and convinced that they belonged to a "conquering race" for which anything goes, had become experts. Ataturk was there truly heir to Talat Pacha, architect of the Armenian genocide, from whom he took the main cadres for the execution of his "Eastern Plan", i.e. Kurdistan, to wipe out the Kurds as a distinct people with its own language, identity and history. The words Kurdish and Kurdistan were banned, as were Kurdish first names; Kurdish geographical names, often ancient, were replaced by aggressive or simply ridiculous Turkish names, such as Tunceli, "bronze hand", to replace Dersim, "silver gate", because it nestles in a valley with snow-capped peaks, martyred and destroyed by the Turkish army, or Semsûr, home of the famous Lucien de Samsatte, renamed Adiyaman, "His name is terrible"! Having thus become strangers to a renamed homeland, Turkishised by the unashamed Turkish conquerors, the Kurds live as strangers hunted down on their own lands, given trivial Turkish names (black stone, white stone, rock) or deliberately denying their identity (pure Turk, son of a Turk, Turk).
The Kurds thus suffered a veritable cultural genocide under the dictatorship of Ataturk and his successors. The use of their language in public was banned until 1992. The Treaty of Lausanne, which established the partition of Kurdistan and the division of the Kurdish people into four new states, was the beginning of a century of misfortune and tragedy for the Kurdish people. A terrible trauma in the Kurdish collective memory.
With hindsight, we can blame the Kurdish leaders of the time, who had chosen in good faith to remain in solidarity with the Turkish people in distress, for having been fooled and duped with confounding naivety and imbecility by Mustafa Kemal, whom they thought they knew well because during the Great War he had spent almost a year in Kurdistan as Inspector General of the Russian front; he had frequented Kurdish notables and religious dignitaries whom he treated with respect, a deference that can be seen in the letters and messages he addressed to them during his war of independence, published in his famous Nutuk (Speeches) of 1927. In their defence, they were not the only ones: Kemal deceived and betrayed his own comrades-in-arms like General Karabekir, who as commander of the only Ottoman army left intact, that of the East, fought successfully against Armenia and played a decisive role in the Turkish War of Independence. Even the highly experienced and cunning Lenin was fooled by Kemal, who, for the sake of his cause and in order to obtain financial and military support from Moscow, had a Turkish Communist Party created from scratch, which was dissolved once victory had been achieved. Communist activities, which had been tolerated until 1924, were banned; the most prominent activists were assassinated or imprisoned for many years, like the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. His predecessor, Talat Pasha, until the eve of the Armenian genocide of 1915, of which he was the main architect, passed himself off and was considered by the Armenian organisations themselves to be "pro-Armenian". His "Union and Progress" party had come to power with the promise of establishing a constitutional monarchy guaranteeing the equality of all the subjects of the empire.
The use of political cunning, deception and concealment to achieve one's ends are methods as old as time, and they are not the prerogative of Turkey's leaders alone, who are devoid of any scruples because they come from autocratic systems where they are not accountable. It has to be said, however, that from Talat Pasha to Mustafa Kemal and Erdogan, Turkish leaders have surpassed themselves in the art of cynicism, deception and dissimulation, as well as the rarer art of "political and demographic engineering". Their diabolical art, effective in the short term, ended up like a poison destroying the social fabric and the foundations of living together. Despite a century of countless misfortunes, the Kurds are still there, continuing to resist and fight the consequences of the disastrous Treaty of Lausanne. The Allies who sacrificed them for their short-term interests should also remember and assume their share of responsibility for the current chaos in the Middle East and the fate of the Kurdish people.
(See also the press review in Le Temps of 12, 13 and 24 July, herodot.net of 23 July and the AFP dispatch of 22 July p.82).
