The career of Ozdemir: a Turkish bid for northern Iraq, 1921–1923 (original) (raw)

2017, Middle Eastern Studies

From 1921 to 1923, Turkey and the United Kingdom, then the mandatory power in Iraq, contended for control of the Vilayet of Mosul, now known as northern Iraq. Although this crisis, known as the Mosul affair, was settled in 1925 in favour of Iraq, Turkey never totally relinquished its historical claim to this strategically important border region. Turkey's persistent claim to the area, and the fact that the region is predominantly inhabited by Kurds whose nationalism shows no signs of waning, make northern Iraq a potentially destabilizing factor in the region. This article will discuss the historical roots of Mosul frontier affairs, a legacy of colonialism in the Middle East. This international conflict has many dimensions, but the article confines itself to the study of the distinguished career of Ali Shafiq, also known as Ozdemir, a Turkish statesman and the architect of Turkish policy during the Mosul affair. 1 This is, to a large extent, a political history of the conflict and British and Turkish archival material and contemporary memoirs, journals, and relevant secondary sources in Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, and English have been used. The Cairo Conference of 1921 and northern Iraq The Cairo Conference of 1921 was held by British officials in the Middle East to deliberate on policies to be pursued in Iraq and also aimed at securing Iraq's frontier against Turkish claims. To this end, a two-pronged policy was followed. On the one hand, the British fostered Kurdish nationalism in northern Iraq in order to counter Turkey's pan-Islamic appeals to the Kurdish population. On the other hand, however, the British government attempted to reconcile the aspirations of Kurdish nationalists with the objectives of British policy in Iraq: the consolidation of King Faisal's government in Baghdad, and the maintenance of the territorial integrity of Iraq so that it would become a viable state. British control over Iraq as a Persian Gulf state was deemed necessary by British imperial policy-makers in order to secure strategic routes to India, and in 1920, the British government secured a mandate over Iraq. 2 The outlines of British policy had been worked out at the Cairo Conference in March 1921. The losses incurred by the anti-British rebellion in Iraq in 1920 had resulted in increased demands from the British public that the government reduce its expenditure on commitments abroad. However, Turkey seemed to be an unrelenting challenge to the CONTACT Othman Ali