Introduction: The Erasure of Kurdistan

On August 10, 1920, delegates from the Allied powers and the defeated Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire ottoman-empire The Islamic empire centred on Istanbul that ruled Anatolia, the Arab Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe from the fourteenth century to its dissolution after the First World War. Its collapse created the modern states of the Middle East, Turkey, and the Balkans in ways that continue to shape regional politics. At its peak in the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire encompassed an enormous territory from Hungary to Yemen, from Algeria to the borders of Persia. It was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state governed through the millet system, which granted non-Muslim communities (Christians, Jews) significant autonomy in their internal affairs in exchange for taxes and political loyalty. The nineteenth century brought simultaneous challenges: nationalist movements among the Balkan populations — Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians — used the language of national self-determination to carve independent states from Ottoman territory, with Russian and Western support; the empire lost more than a third of its European territory in the 1877–78 war with Russia. Attempts at modernisation and reform — the Tanzimat reforms, the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 — failed to arrest the decline and produced new tensions between Turkish nationalist modernisers and the empire’s Arab, Armenian, and Kurdish populations. The First World War was catastrophic: the empire entered on the German side, suffered the Armenian Genocide (1915–23), lost the Arab provinces to British-led forces, and was dissolved by the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) — replaced by the Turkish Republic under Ataturk, whose territorial integrity was established by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). The Ottoman Empire’s collapse created the modern Middle East in ways that are still unfolding. The borders drawn by the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the subsequent mandates reflected French and British strategic priorities rather than the population distributions, administrative traditions, or political aspirations of the peoples concerned. The result was a set of states whose internal social compositions were incompatible with the nation-state model imposed on them: Iraq with its Sunni-Shia-Kurdish divisions, Lebanon with its confessional arithmetic, Syria with its minority-dominated military, Israel-Palestine with its overlapping claims. These incompatibilities were not caused by the Ottoman Empire — which governed diverse populations through systems of autonomous administration — but by the particular form of its destruction and replacement. The ongoing instability of the region reflects, in significant part, the unresolved consequences of those decisions made in London and Paris between 1916 and 1920. convened in the showroom of the porcelain factory in Sèvres, France, to sign a peace treaty intended to formally end World War I in the Middle East. The Treaty of Sèvres was a document of punitive partition. It stripped the Ottoman Empire of its Arab provinces and divided the Anatolian heartland into zones of influence for Britain, France, Italy, and Greece.

Embedded within the 433 articles of the treaty were three specific clauses—Articles 62, 63, and 64—that addressed the status of the Kurdish people. These articles outlined a mechanism for local autonomy and, crucially, a potential pathway to independence. For the first time in modern diplomatic history, the term “Kurdistan” appeared in an international treaty, offering legal recognition to Kurdish national aspirations.

Yet, just three years later, on July 24, 1923, a new peace treaty was signed in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Treaty of Lausanne superseded Sèvres. It recognized the borders of the new Republic of Turkey, but the references to Kurdistan and Kurdish autonomy had vanished. The Kurdish population was left partitioned between the new borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

This article examines the diplomatic shift from Sèvres to Lausanne, often cited as the origin of the “Kurdish Question.” It analyzes the provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres, the impact of the Turkish War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the geopolitical maneuvering that prioritized the stability of the new Turkish state and British control over Iraqi oil fields above Kurdish self-determinationSelf-Determination Full Description:Self-Determination became the rallying cry for anti-colonial movements worldwide. While enshrined in the UN Charter, its application was initially fiercely contested. Colonial powers argued it did not apply to their imperial possessions, while independence movements used the UN’s own language to demand the end of empire. Critical Perspective:There is a fundamental tension in the UN’s history regarding this term. While the organization theoretically supported freedom, its most powerful members were often actively fighting brutal wars to suppress self-determination movements in their colonies. The realization of this right was not granted by the UN, but seized by colonized peoples through struggle..

The Kurdish Awakening and the Promise of Sèvres

To understand the significance of the shift between 1920 and 1923, one must appreciate the context of Kurdish political development. For centuries, Kurds lived primarily as tribal confederations within the Ottoman and Persian empires. While distinct linguistically and culturally, their political identity was often subsumed under the broader category of Muslim subjects.

However, the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the emergence of a Kurdish national consciousness, spurred by the rise of Turkish nationalism and the upheavals of World War I. Kurdish intellectuals in Istanbul formed organizations such as the Society for the Rise of Kurdistan, arguing for rights similar to those being claimed by Armenians and Arabs.

Following the Ottoman defeat in 1918, Kurdish representatives petitioned the Paris Peace Conference, invoking President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which promised “autonomous development” for non-Turkish nationalities. The Allied powers, particularly Britain, saw potential strategic utility in a Kurdish entity in eastern Anatolia—as a buffer against a resurgent Turkey or Bolshevik Russia, and as a means to punish the Ottoman state.

Consequently, the Treaty of Sèvres institutionalized these aspirations, though conditionally:

• Article 62 mandated a commission to draft a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates.
• Article 64 stated that if, within one year, the Kurdish population in these areas demonstrated that a majority desired independence from Turkey, and if the League of NationsLeague of Nations Full Description:The first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its spectacular failure to prevent the aggression of the Axis powers provided the negative blueprint for the United Nations, influencing the decision to prioritize enforcement power over pure idealism. The League of Nations was the precursor to the UN, established after the First World War. Founded on the principle of collective security, it relied on moral persuasion and unanimous voting. It ultimately collapsed because it lacked an armed force and, crucially, the United States never joined, rendering it toothless in the face of expansionist empires. Critical Perspective:The shadow of the League looms over the UN. The founders of the UN viewed the League as “too democratic” and ineffective because it treated all nations as relatively equal. Consequently, the UN was designed specifically to correct this “error” by empowering the Great Powers (via the Security Council) to police the world, effectively sacrificing sovereign equality for the sake of stability.
  Read more considered them capable of such independence, Turkey would agree to renounce all rights to these territories.

While these provisions were limited to parts of present-day Turkey and did not create a unified “Greater Kurdistan,” Sèvres remains a touchstone for Kurdish nationalism because it offered international legal recognition of their right to self-determination.

The Turkish War of Independence: The Rejection of Sèvres

The Treaty of Sèvres was never implemented. Its harsh terms, which left the Turkish state with only a small territory in central Anatolia, sparked immediate resistance.

Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Atatürk), an Ottoman general, rejected the treaty signed by the Sultan’s government. He organized the Turkish National Movement in Ankara and launched a War of Independence (1919–1923) to expel the occupying Greek, French, Italian, and British forces.

Crucially, Mustafa Kemal recognized the strategic importance of the Kurds in this struggle. He appealed to Islamic solidarity rather than Turkish ethnic nationalism. In telegrams to Kurdish tribal leaders, he framed the war as a defense of the CaliphateCaliphate The Islamic State’s declaration of a territorial state governed by its interpretation of Islamic law, proclaimed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in June 2014. At its peak it controlled an area the size of the United Kingdom spanning Iraq and Syria. The declaration of the caliphate on 29 June 2014 was a deliberately theatrical act: Baghdadi appeared in the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul wearing black robes and delivered a Friday sermon claiming the title of Caliph Ibrahim — leader of all the world’s Muslims. The claim was rejected by virtually every mainstream Muslim authority globally, but it was effective as propaganda, drawing recruits from over a hundred countries who wished to participate in what was presented as a divinely ordained state. The caliphate operated as a genuine proto-state for several years: it collected taxes, ran schools, administered courts, maintained utilities, and produced a currency. It also conducted systematic genocide against the Yazidi minority, enslaved thousands of women, executed homosexuals, destroyed pre-Islamic archaeological sites, and carried out terrorist attacks from Paris to Istanbul to San Bernardino. The military defeat of the caliphate’s territorial state was largely complete by 2019, when the last enclave at Baghouz fell to the Syrian Democratic Forces. But the organisation retained networks, finances, and ideological appeal that survived the loss of territory. The caliphate’s significance lies not in its longevity — it lasted less than five years as a territorial entity — but in what it revealed about the political conditions that made it possible. It was not caused by Islam, as its recruits came disproportionately from populations with superficial religious knowledge and deep political grievances. It was enabled by the collapse of state authority in Iraq (produced by the 2003 invasion and the Maliki government’s sectarian policies) and Syria (produced by the Assad regime’s deliberate fragmentation of the opposition). The question the caliphate poses is not theological but political: what conditions produce the willingness of young men to travel thousands of miles to join an apocalyptic death cult? The answers — marginalisation, humiliation, the failure of secular Arab nationalism, the absence of legitimate political channels — remain unaddressed. and the Muslim homeland against Christian invaders. He famously declared that the new Grand National Assembly represented “Turks and Kurds” equally as genuine elements of the nation.

This strategy was largely effective. Many Kurdish tribes, suspicious of British intentions and fearful of Armenian territorial claims in the east, supported the Kemalist forces. They provided vital manpower to the armies that eventually defeated the French in the south and the Greeks in the west.

The Road to Lausanne: A Shift in the Balance of Power

By late 1922, the military situation had transformed the diplomatic landscape. The Turkish National Movement had secured victory on the battlefield, forcing the Allies to abandon Sèvres and negotiate a new peace treaty.

The conference convened in Lausanne in November 1922. The British delegation was led by Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon; the Turkish delegation by Ismet Inönü. The dynamics were fundamentally different from 1920. The Allies were no longer dictating terms to a defeated empire but negotiating with a victorious sovereign state.

The Mosul Question: Oil and Geopolitics

A central point of contention at Lausanne was the status of the Mosul Vilayet (in modern-day northern Iraq). Britain had occupied Mosul following the 1918 armistice and was determined to incorporate it into the British Mandate of Iraq. This was driven by two factors: the belief that Mosul held significant oil reserves and the strategic need for the defensible mountainous frontier.

Turkey claimed Mosul as part of its National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), arguing that the population was predominantly Kurdish and, based on the rhetoric of Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood, should remain part of Turkey.

Lord Curzon countered this claim by arguing that the Kurds of Mosul preferred British rule. While the records do not show an explicit “deal” where Britain traded Kurdish independence in Turkey for control of Mosul, the outcome reflects a realignment of priorities. Britain realized it could not enforce Kurdish autonomy within Turkey without war. Consequently, British diplomats ceased pressing for the implementation of the Sèvres provisions regarding Kurdistan, focusing instead on securing the border that would place Mosul within Iraq. The Mosul dispute was eventually referred to the League of Nations, which awarded the province to Iraq in 1926.

The Treaty of Lausanne (1923): The Great Erasure

The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on July 24, 1923. It established the modern borders of Turkey and, by omission, sealed the fate of the Kurdish nationalist project.

The Omission of Kurdistan
The text of Lausanne contains no mention of Kurds or Kurdistan. Unlike Sèvres, it offered no mechanism for autonomy or independence.

Minority Rights
Articles 37–45 of the treaty outlined protections for minorities, but these were explicitly restricted to “non-Muslim minorities” (Greeks, Armenians, and Jews). By limiting minority status to religious groups, the treaty legally classified the Kurds (who are overwhelmingly Muslim) as part of the majority population. This meant they had no recourse to international law to protect their language or culture.

The Partition
The treaty codified the division of the Kurdish population among four sovereign entities:

1. Turkey: Containing the largest Kurdish population.
2. Iraq (British Mandate): Incorporating the Kurds of Mosul and the north.
3. Syria (French MandateFrench Mandate The League of Nations mandate over Syria and Lebanon administered by France from 1920 to 1946. The Mandate created the modern borders of Syria and Lebanon, pursued a policy of divide and rule along religious and ethnic lines, and produced the political and institutional structures that shaped Syrian and Lebanese politics for the rest of the century. France had claimed a sphere of influence in Greater Syria — covering modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel-Palestine — since the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. When Faisal I attempted to establish an independent Arab kingdom with Damascus as its capital, French forces defeated him at the Battle of Maysalun in July 1920 and established the Mandate. The French administration divided the territory into five separate entities — State of Damascus, State of Aleppo, Alawite State, Jabal Druze, and Greater Lebanon — pursuing the classic colonial strategy of empowering minorities against the Sunni Arab majority that dominated the nationalist movement. The most consequential decision was the recruitment policy for the troupes spéciales: France disproportionately recruited Alawites, Druze, and Circassians into its auxiliary forces, creating a military tradition and institutional pathway that would allow Alawite officers to dominate Syria’s Ba’athist military after independence. The Great Syrian Revolt of 1925–27 demonstrated the capacity for mass anti-colonial mobilisation; the French response — bombarding Damascus and dividing the nationalist movement through negotiation with compliant sectors — foreshadowed the tactics that successive Syrian governments would use against their own populations. Lebanon was permanently separated from Syria, enlarged to include Muslim-majority coastal regions and the Bekaa Valley that Syrian nationalists regarded as historically theirs — creating the Lebanese demographic balance that would generate civil war in 1975. The French Mandate’s legacy is visible in virtually every Lebanese and Syrian political crisis of the subsequent century. The Lebanese sectarian system — its power-sharing arrangements, its politically organised communities, its structural inability to build a nonsectarian state — was not simply the product of ancient religious divisions but of administrative choices made by French officials trying to manage a diverse population in the interests of imperial order. The Alawite domination of Syrian security services that produced both Hafez al-Assad’s dictatorship and the particular ferocity of the civil war was not inevitable; it was the downstream consequence of French recruitment policies designed to prevent a unified Sunni nationalist challenge to colonial rule. Colonialism does not end when the troops leave; it ends, if it ends, when its institutional consequences have been unwound — a process that, in Syria and Lebanon, remains unfinished.): Containing Kurdish populations in the north and northeast.
4. Iran: Which held the eastern Kurdish territories (though not a signatory to Lausanne, the treaty stabilized the regional borders).

The Aftermath: Assimilation and Rebellion

The consequences of Lausanne were felt almost immediately. With the borders secured and the republic established, the Turkish state moved away from the pluralistic rhetoric of the independence war.

Mustafa Kemal launched a program of secularization and centralization. In 1924, the Caliphate was abolished, removing the religious institution that had historically linked Turks and Kurds. The state adopted a policy of Turkification, which denied the existence of a distinct Kurdish ethnicity (later referring to Kurds as “Mountain Turks”) and banned the Kurdish language in public life and education.

The Sheikh Said Rebellion (1925)

In February 1925, Sheikh Said, a Kurdish religious leader, launched a major rebellion in southeastern Turkey. The uprising was driven by a mix of Kurdish nationalism and religious grievance against the secularizing state.

The British response to the rebellion illustrates the shift in priorities. At the time, the League of Nations was still deliberating the Mosul question. Britain, concerned that instability in Turkey might spill over into Iraq and threaten British interests, did not support the rebellion. The Turkish government crushed the uprising with significant force. Sheikh Said was executed, and thousands were deported. This marked the beginning of decades of conflict between the Turkish state and its Kurdish periphery.

Conclusion: The Legacy of 1923

The transition from the Treaty of Sèvres to the Treaty of Lausanne represents a pivotal moment in the history of the Middle East. It marked the triumph of the nation-state model over the multi-ethnic empire, but it also cemented the marginalization of the Kurds.

The decision at Lausanne to prioritize the stability of the new Turkish Republic and the security of British interests in Iraq over Kurdish aspirations left millions of people partitioned across borders that divided families, tribes, and economic zones. This partition created structural instabilities in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran that persist to this day.

While Lausanne is often viewed in diplomatic history as a successful resolution to the “Eastern QuestionEastern Question Full Description:The 19th- and early 20th-century diplomatic problem posed by the decline of the Ottoman Empire. European powers (Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary) each sought to maximize their influence over Ottoman territories without triggering a general European war. The Eastern Question drove the Crimean War (1853–56), the Balkan Wars (1912–13), and ultimately World War I. Critical Perspective:The Eastern Question is the intellectual framework that made Sykes-Picot possible. For a century, European statesmen treated Ottoman lands as an inheritance to be divided among heirs, not as territories with living populations possessing rights. The “question” assumed that Ottomans were passive objects, not historical actors. This mindset—that Middle Eastern peoples existed to be managed, not consulted—did not end with the Mandates. It persists in every Western intervention from the Baghdad Pact to the Iraq War.
Read more” because it prevented a renewed war between the Great Powers and Turkey, for the Kurds, it represents the moment their homeland was erased from the map of international law, leaving a legacy of statelessness and conflict that defines the region a century later.