One hundred years after the Treaty of Lausanne

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the beginning of the crystallization of the poles of the conflict between the Allies and the Axis powers, Western countries began early to distribute influence among themselves because they guaranteed the victory of the war. Here, we especially mention the United Kingdom and France, where these two powers began in particular to divide shares and spoils of war between them on a geographical basis without regard to the moral or humanitarian aspect of human, ethnic and ideological groupings, or respecting the privacy of groups and societies. The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 is the first building block for dividing the divider and forming the nation-state in its current form throughout the region.  

The Kurdish people are the most affected in the whole region by this agreement, in which Kurdistan was geographically divided into four or five parts if we add to it the Kurdish geography that extends to the borders of Armenia and Russia in practice, in addition to their fragmentation between several completely different nationalities. After the end of the war in 1918, Western countries, or what were known as victorious Allies over the eastern axis countries, began with the actual division of lands and geography, so the legacy of the sick man (the dilapidated Ottoman Empire) was the profitable part and the direct priority for everyone, as it was considered the richest in terms of geography and its natural and human resources ….. etc. Indeed, the division took place on the previous basis agreed upon in theory among them. 

Sessions, treaties, and conferences began to convene among the victors, including Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 where the neo-Ottomans were not satisfied with the last one, but the obligation of the victor and the bitterness of defeat forced them to accept it. Several agreements later also followed, such as the Moscow Agreement with the Soviet Union, the Ankara Agreement with France, the Alexander and Paul Treaty with the Armenians, Kars, and Mudanya with the United Kingdom. Perhaps the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923 was the final culmination or the final result of all of the above. The Treaty of Lausanne of 143 clauses or articles was a crushing blow to the Kurdish people in particular in obtaining their national freedom and preserving the Kurdish privacy as the rest of the peoples of the region, due to the absence of any representative for them or even mentioning them in any of their articles of this agreement despite their explicit name in the Sèvres Agreement within its articles 62-63-64 and that they must have the right to decide their fate within a certain period of time.  

Why were the Kurds neglected in Lausanne?

It is no secret to researchers and those interested in the history of the region that the Kurds are among the main victims of the Lausanne Agreement, as we mentioned previously, and perhaps the reasons for their negligence are due to several factors, and we can indicate to some of them:

Internal reasons for the Kurds:

• The absence of a Kurdish military force for the Kurds themselves and their claim to their national and patriotic rights.
• The absence of a special unit for the Kurds or the existence of a strong political, civil or diplomatic representation of their own.
• Fragmentation in the unity of the Kurdish decision and the weakness in the Kurdish personality and lack of self-confidence.
• Some Kurdish personalities, including aghas, mayors, and mullahs, dominated the Kurdish decision, which was characterized by a fundamentalist orientation and that preferred their narrow and personal interests over the Kurdish national and supreme national interest.

External causes related to the victorious and defeated power:

There is no doubt that for the major Western countries and the victors in the world war, human rights, freedoms, democracies, or other such bright and shiny slogans will not be among their first or most important priorities, as much as their concern is on the economic side, how to collect their expenses, recover their material losses, and avoid economic crises resulting from the aftermath of the war. Therefore, creating internal crises and creating a state of poverty, need, and destitution may be appropriate for them as part of the solution to maintain the spread of ignorance among societies, and thus include them among classes and groups that will be determined later making them countries and peoples fall under the name of third world countries or developing countries. Therefore, the loss of the Kurdish nation and its distribution among other nationalities and geographies will not be a major or great problem for them.

What have been eliminated: the Kurds, the Kurdish issue, or Kurdistan?

Shortly, we can say (No). Dozens of Kurdish revolutions and uprisings throughout the geography of Kurdistan were the explicit and clear response to the situation of the geographical division of Kurdistan. The Kurds are considered the largest nation on the globe without a political or geographical framework or we can say (without a state) according to the international legal terminology. However, the Kurdish people are considered one of the few indigenous peoples that have preserved their historical heritage of language, customs, traditions and culture (clothes and food), lyrical and artistic folklore. The Kurdish lyrical cultural heritage is considered the largest oral, reliable and transmitted through generations, and many historians and researchers have relied on it as documents, facts and evidence of the origin of the Kurdish people throughout history.  

What is going on today is similar to yesterday

Certainly, we can compare today with yesterday, and it is no secret to anyone that the conspiracies against the Kurdish people did not stop during the previous hundred years. The more the Kurdish revolutions intensified and escalated to obtain their national rights, the ruling power and the successive regimes in return intensified the occupation of Kurdistan with more pressure on it. The biggest evidence is what is happening today in western Kurdistan (North and East Syria), although the Kurds hold the key to the solution to the Syrian crisis, but it is confronted by all means with military and intellectual repression, despite the moderate and balanced proposal, the containment of all components and finding solutions to all outstanding problems by presenting the project of democratic Autonomous Administration under the umbrella of the democratic nation, which is adopted by most of the components in northeastern Syria as the most suitable and ideal solution for the crisis we are going through. However, the intransigence of Damascus and the hostility of the ruling regime in Turkey to this project makes it suspended, despite the fact that the political and military view between the Syrian and Turkish regimes are completely apart for the visions of a future solution in Syria. Likewise, there is the experience of Southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq), in which ninety percent in the last referendum were calling for the independence of the region, but the regional neighboring countries were on the lookout for this referendum, preventing its results and not recognizing them at all, and tightening the economic stranglehold on the region to retreat from it.

What the Kurds have to do at the present time, and how can they bypass Lausanne?

Today, the Kurds and all the components of the region, including ethnicities, religions, and other minorities, are called upon to unite with each other, because the future of the region is being redrawn by external hands without returning to the requirements of coexistent societies. As a simple example, the Astana agreements in its twenty sessions, which began with military sorting projects between the Syrian regime and the armed opposition, to a geographical division, periodic sessions for normalization, the return of relations, striking national projects to solve the Syrian crisis, drawing maps, new names, and vocabulary for distribution. Today, more than ever, the Kurdish people in general and the political elite in particular are required to do the following:  

• Protect the current Kurdish gains, regardless of geography and ideology, and view them as primarily Kurdish gains.
• The political movement must create an appropriate atmosphere and return unconditionally to the project of the Kurdistan National Conference, and put Kurdish national security above all considerations.
• Unify the Kurdish vision and discourse in international forums, which should focus on the rights of the Kurdish people in the first place.
• Pressure on the international community to recognize the Kurdish administration on the ground and to give it international legitimacy.
• Work to invalidate the Lausanne Treaty in international forums, and create an appropriate alternative to it in preserving the rights of peoples to self-determination and respect for human values.

What was in the past must be changed so that it will not be written that the Kurds were without will or management, that the huge sacrifices our mothers make from presenting their children for the sake of a free homeland and a solid Kurdish personality must be with tangible results. The Kurds must get rid of that defeated personality that is not confident in itself. This is the only way the Kurds can write history for themselves and not for others as every time, and only thus is the return of the favor for the pure blood spilled on this precious soil.