'Mosul Question, Lausanne 1922-1923 and after - Papers, despatches, speeches - Hotel de la Mer at Lausanne - Correspondence about oil' [‎67v] (136/501)

2
Enclosure in No. 1.
Counter Reply to the Memorandum of the Turkish Delegation concerning the
Question of the Vilayet of Mosid.
THE memorandum of the Turkish delegation, far from being convincing, only
provides fresh support to the contention that the Mosul Vilayet is naturally and
must remain a part of the mandatory area of Irak. Many of the Turkish arguments
are disposed of by the previous British memorandum, dated the 14th December.
Nevertheless they have again been given full consideration.
1. Racial.
Although the Turkish Government ruled the Mosul Vilayet for many centuries,
no correct Turkish map of the vilayet exists, nor, so far as the British delegation is
aware, are there any pre-war statistics on a racial basis collected by the Turkish
Government. On the other hand, British officers during the last few years have made
accurate maps of the whole area and have visited every corner of it. The British
delegation has, therefore, good reason for thinking that its statistics are more
likely to be accurate than those of the Turkish delegation, which, it may be noted,
bear no date. The British figures for Kurds do not include those Persian Kurds
who simply pass part of their time in Irak. As to the nomad and semi-nomad Arab
tribes, the area to which they belong is perfectly well known. Only Arabs of the
Mosul Vilayet are included in the British statistics.
The nature of the Turkish statistics can be illustrated by reference to the figures
given by the Turkish delegation for the Sulaimaniyeh “ liwa.” The Turkish delega
tion states (1) that there are over 7,000 Arabs in this area, whereas not even the most
ardent Arab patriot claims that it contains any Arabs at all; and (2) that the Turks
are half as numerous as the Kurds, although every traveller knows that to meet a
Turk among the Sulaimaniyeh Kurds is almost as rare as it will presently be to meet
a Greek in Anatolia Peninsula that forms most of modern-day Turkey. . But still more open to question is the Turkish statement that
there are only 28.000 Arabs in the Mosul “ liwa," when it is notorious that Mosul
town alone contains twice that number of Arabs. Apart from the intimate know
ledge gained by British officials during the last few years, Mosul was well known to
travellers before the war as one of the great Arab towns; yet we are asked to believe
that a population who, with insignificant exceptions, talk only Arabic and call them
selves Arab, are really Turks who happen to have learned Arabic. This argument
is on a par with that in which the Turkish delegation attempts to establish the
Turkish character of an area by referring to the" Turkish names of some of the
villages, forgetting that in the preceding paragraph it had claimed as Turkish an
area bearing the purely Arab name of Ashair Saba. By a similar process of reason
ing it might be demonstrated that Diarbekr and Marmurat-al-Aziz are Arab towns
and that Constantinople, Adrianople, Konia and Angora are Greek cities, an argu
mentation that would probably not be welcome to the Turkish delegation.
Further, the Turkish contention that Mosul town is Turkish is confuted by a
map (Carte ethnographique de FEmpire ottoman) which was produced by Bekir
Sami Bey as an official map during the negotiations in London in March 1921. This
map, though it indicates as inhabited by Turks and Kurds rather more territory than
is actually occupied by those two races, nevertheless supports fully the claim put
forward in the British memorandum of the 14th, viz., that the whole of the great
town of Mosul, the whole of the country north of Mosul on the right bank of the
Tigris as far as the boundary of the vilayet, the whole of the country south of Mosul
on the right bank of the Tigris, and most of the country south of Mosul on the left
bank of the Tigris as far as the Erbil-Kirkuk-Kifri road, are Arab.
Unable, even with the aid of the contentions which have been demolished in the
preceding paragraphs, to show that there is a Turkish majority in the Mosul Vilavet,
the Turkish delegation then proceeds to reinforce its case by the astounding claim
that the Kurds and the Turks are of the same stock. The Turkish delegation can
hardly expect credence for such a claim in face of a people who speak an Iranian
tongue closely allied to Persian, whose national customs are unlike those of the
Turks, who in particular differ from the Turks in their attitude to women to such
an extent that the theory of a different origin for the two races could almost be
established by that difference alone, and who present in physical appearance so
striking a contrast to the lurks that a traveller in any area where the population is
mixed can tell merely by looking at the faces of the people whether a particular

'Mosul Question, Lausanne 1922-1923 and after - Papers, despatches, speeches - Hotel de la Mer at Lausanne - Correspondence about oil' [‎67v] (136/501)

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'Mosul Question, Lausanne 1922-1923 and after - Papers, despatches, speeches - Hotel de la Mer at Lausanne - Correspondence about oil' [‎67v] (136/501)

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