Map of Sèvres for an Independent Kurdistan (1920). Source: Mehrdad Izady.
The Sèvres Treaty
In addition to the ideological background of Turkey’s ruling elite based upon the foundational principles of the republic, Turkish nationalism, which obstructs Kurdish national aspirations even at a minimum, the ill-fated Treaty of Sèvres signed on August 10, 1920, with its perpetual traumatic effect on the Turkish psyche, also had a tremendously important influence on Turkey’s denial of Kurdish identity and its repressive demeanor vis-à-vis the Kurds, even those beyond Turkey’s frontiers.
The Treaty of Sèvres was among the treaties that the losing parties of World War I were made to sign, yet it was also the only one that was not ratified and thus not implemented and ultimately nullified. It is replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923), which is regarded as the international legal basis for the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. The Treaty of Lausanne made no mention of Kurdistan or the Kurds. With it, the opportunity to unify the Kurds in a nation of their own was lost altogether, turning Turkey into a negation of the idea of the independent Kurdistan. Indeed, Kurdistan after World War I was more fragmented than before, and this became the root cause for the rise of separatist movements among the Kurds scattered in various countries of the Middle East.
Veritably, the Kurdish question in Turkey and in the region has deep roots structured in the post-World War I order of the Middle East, an order that survived almost a century. There are thus structural reasons that have led to its remaining unresolved, as well as the ideological shortcomings and restrictions of the Turkish government and lack of acumen among politicians.
Moreover, the Turkish psyche, scalped in the aftermath of the Ottoman collapse, proved to be decisive in the Turkish response to the perceived Kurdish challenge. Although the Sèvres Treaty became null and void, being replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, in the eyes of the Turkish nationalists, it signified the Western objective of dismembering the territories of Turkey and marked the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I, a sequel to the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), which was similarly never implemented in letter, but symbolized the unwarranted and unjust partitioning of the Middle East among Western colonial powers. Its terms spelled out the renunciation of all the non-Turkish territory, and its cession to the adversaries of the Ottoman state during the Great War. The treaty was signed when the Turkish national struggle was already underway, further stirring hostility and nationalist sentiments among Turks. Although the success of the Turkish national struggle prevented its implementation, its articles, those particularly relating to Kurdistan, were never removed from the Turkish subconscious. Even in the late 1990s and during the first two decades of the 2000s, confronted with Kurdish aspirations that sounded legitimate to many thanks to changing times, Turkish authorities invoked the memory of Sèvres.
The rankling memory of the treaty primarily relates to Articles 62 and 64. Article 62 stipulated:
A Commission sitting at Constantinople and composed of three members appointed by the British, French and Italian governments respectively shall draft within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates, south of the southern boundary of Armenia as it may be hereafter determined, and north of the frontier of Turkey with Syria and Mesopotamia, as defined in Article 27, II. (2) and (3). . . . The scheme shall contain full safeguards for the protection of the Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious minorities within these areas.11
The wording of Article 64, referring to Article 62, provided the historical background from the perspective of international legality for a Kurdish independent state and thereby the ammunition for Kurdish nationalists in their bid for independence. It said:
If within one year from the coming into the force of the present Treaty the Kurdish peoples within the areas defined in Article 62 shall address themselves to the Council of League of Nations in such a manner as to show that a majority of the population of these areas desire independence from Turkey, and if the Council then considers that these peoples are capable of such independence and recommends that it should be granted to them, Turkey hereby agrees to execute such a recommendation, and to renounce all rights and title over these areas.
The detailed provisions for such renunciation will form the subject of a separate agreement between the Principal Allied Powers and Turkey.
If and when such renunciation takes place, no objection will be raised by the Principal Allied Powers to the voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which had been hitherto been included in the Mosul Vilayet.12
Sèvres Syndrome
Those articles of the ill-fated Treaty of Sèvres left a profound imprint, really a scar, in the Turkish political culture for generations to come. Trepidation, mainly on the part of Turkish ruling elites, about a possible dismemberment and breaking up of Turkey, territorially and socially, has become a permanent nightmare and instilled the concept of Sèvres Syndrome in the Turkish political lexicon. The reactions of Turkish authorities, particularly during the 1990s, which witnessed the upsurge in the last Kurdish insurgency and violence coinciding with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the Cold War, revived the memories of Sèvres. It is widely interpreted that Sèvres Syndrome drove the resentment of the Turkish political class against Kurdish aspirations.
The Trilogy of Evil: Sèvres, Kurds, West
The permanent effect of the Treaty of Sèvres did not confine itself only to worries of Turkey’s dismemberment. Its wording and spirit turned the Western world into a suspicious entity in the eyes of Turkish authorities, in seeking the ultimate partitioning of Turkey by carving out an independent Kurdish state from its territory. Turkey’s ruling elites believed that the Kurds would never be able to achieve any of their aims without the abetting of the Western powers and their endorsement of Kurdish independence. Turkey’s anchoring in the Transatlantic Alliance, thus entering under the security umbrella of NATO in the early 1950s, may have alleviated its fears regarding its territorial integrity but its suspicions on the West’s intentions concerning the Kurds never entirely died out. On the contrary, they revived from time to time to the extent that they created serious cleavages with Turkey’s primary military and security partner, the United States, as witnessed in the Syrian debacle after the year 2014, having repercussions for the entirety of the international system and the collective security of the Western world.
The Treaty of Sèvres, with its reference to Turkey’s renunciation of sovereign rights on the part of its territory where, if the Kurds enjoy local autonomy, they ultimately may desire independence and “voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which had hitherto been included in the Mosul Vilayet,” also established an unmistakable association between the Kurdish citizens of Turkey and those of Iraq. Thus, the Turkish political class has always been inimical to any Kurdish national activity whether it is within the boundaries of Turkey or not. In this regard, Sèvres played a tremendously important role in pitting Turkey as an adversary to all Kurds, irrespective of where they live. Sèvres bears a great deal of responsibility for Turkey’s denial of the Kurdish identity within Turkey and its perception of the Kurds as a security problem outside its borders.
The content and spirit of the Sèvres Treaty molded Turkish political culture in such a way that any Kurdish demand in reference to ethnic or national rights was interpreted as a machination of foreign (mainly Western) powers seeking to dismember Turkey whose national struggle, in other words the national liberation war, made its achievement impossible. The connection between foreign Western powers and the Kurdish element in the post-Ottoman Turkish entity born in Asia Minor is established as a matter of fact. The Kurds began to be seen as a potentially divisive
