Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [297]
The one unreconciled dispute at Lausanne was over Mosul, in the north of Iraq. The Turkish delegation, arguing along lines that Turkish governments have used ever since, claimed it, on the grounds that its Kurds were really Turks. After all, said the chief Turkish negotiator triumphantly, the Encyclopaedia Britannica said so. Curzon, who was determined to hang on to Mosul, for the sake of its oil rather than its Kurds, was withering: “It was reserved for the Turkish delegation to discover for the first time in history that the Kurds were Turks. Nobody has ever found it out before.”71 The issue of Mosul came close to breaking up the conference; both sides eventually agreed to refer it to the League of Nations, which finally awarded it to Iraq in 1925.
The Kurds were left under different governments—Atatürk’s in Turkey, Reza Shah’s in Persia, and Feisal’s in Iraq—none of which had any tolerance for Kurdish autonomy. Within Iraq, the British for a time toyed with the idea of a separate administration for the Kurdish areas, recognizing that the Kurds did not like being under Arab rule. In the end, the British preferred to do nothing; Iraq became independent in 1932 without promising any special consideration to the Kurds. In Turkey, Atatürk and the nationalists dropped their earlier emphasis on all Muslims together and moved to establish a secular and Turkish state, to the dismay of many Kurds. The language of education and government was to be Turkish; indeed, between 1923 and 1991 Kurdish was first discouraged then outlawed. In 1927, the Turkish foreign minister assured the British ambassador that the Kurds were bound to disappear like what he described as “Red Hindus”; if the Kurds showed any disposition to turn nationalist, Turkey would expel them, just as it had done with the Armenians and Greeks.72
The Kurds have never accepted their fate quietly, and Kurdish nationalism, a tenuous force at the time of the Paris Peace Conference, grew stronger over the years under repression. The promises made in Paris and by that first Treaty of Sèvres became part of Kurdish memories and hopes. In the summer of 1919, the leader of the first of a series of uprisings in Kurdish territory strapped a Koran to his arm; on a blank page were written Allied promises—including the one of Wilson’s Fourteen Points which talked about autonomous development for the non-Turkish nationalities.73
Ismet returned from Lausanne to a hero’s welcome, and the treaty is still seen as modern Turkey’s greatest diplomatic victory. In the autumn of 1923, the last foreign troops left Constantinople. The sultan had gone the year before, spirited out of his palace in a British military ambulance and carried by British warship to Malta. He died in exile in San Remo, impoverished and lonely. His cousin, a gentle artist, became caliph for just over a year until Atatürk abolished the caliphate as well. What was left of the royal family was sent into exile, where they gradually dissipated what meager funds they had left. A handful have made their way back to Turkey; one princess runs a hotel, and a prince works in the archives in the Topkapi palace.
Curzon died in 1925, worn out by years of overwork. Atatürk died in 1938, of cirrhosis of the liver, and Ismet succeeded him as president. In 1993, on the seventieth anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, Ismet’s son and Curzon’s grandson laid a wreath together on Atatürk’s grave. 74
PART EIGHT
FINISHING UP
30
The Hall of Mirrors
ON SUNDAY, May 4, 1919, the Council of Four, after dictating some last-minute changes, gave orders that the German treaty should go to the printers. Lloyd George went off to a picnic at Fontainebleau, the others to rest. Two days later, a rare plenary session was called to vote on the terms. Since there was no final version ready, the delegates had to listen to André Tardieu reading a lengthy