[Communicated to the Council C. 396. 1924- VII'. and to the Turkish Government.] Geneva, August 19th, 1924. LEAGUE OF NATIONS FRONTIER BETWEEN TURKEY AND IRAK N o t e b y t h e S e c r e t a r y -G e n e r a l . The following letter, dated August 14th, 1924, together with a memorandum, from the British Government, is communicated for the consideration of the Council. The maps supplied by the British Government have already been communicated to the Members of the Council. Only fifteen copies have been supplied for the use of the Council, and, since they cannot be duplicated without great expense, it will be impossible for the Secretary- General to supply any further copies. LETTER FROM THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT TO THE SECRETARY-GENERAL [Urgent] Foreign Office, August, 14th 1924. Sir, With reference to Foreign Office letter No. E. 5531 /y .'65 of the 6th instant, requesting that the question of the frontier between Turkey and Irak may be included in the agenda foi the next meeting of the Council of the League of Nations, I am directed by Mr. Secretary Ramsay Mac­ Donald to transmit to you herewith, for communication to the members of the Council, fifteen copies of a memorandum summarising the reasons for which, in the view of His Majestys’ Govern­ ment, the line indicated on the attached map 2 (in three sections) represents the most equitable and natural frontier between the two States. The ethnographical map 2 to which the memorandum refers is being prepared and will be communicated to you very shortly. (Signed) D. G . O s b o r n e . 1 Previous docum ent: C. 384. 1924. VII. 2 Both these maps have already been circulated to the Council. S. it. N. 250 (F) + 200 (A) 8/24. Imp. Kuudig. MEMORANDUM ON THE FRONTIER BETWEEN TURKEY AND IRAK This memorandum is submitted by His Britannic Majesty’s Government in order to summarise the reasons for which it is considered that the frontier line which has been traced on the map attached to the memorandum1 represents the most equitable and natural frontier between the two States concerned. These reasons are racial, political, historical, economic and strategic. In putting them forward it is necessary to refer in some detail to the discussions which took place at the Lausanne Conference in January 1923 and to the subsequent negotiations which were undertaken at Con­ stantinople in May and June of the present year in accordance with the provisions of Article 3 (2) of the Lausanne Treaty. The memorandum will therefore deal not only with the area lying immediately to north and south of the proposed frontier but with a much larger area lying to the south of that line — a procedure which is necessitated but the fact that during the Lausanne Conference the Turkish delegation persisted in claiming that the whole of the old Mosul Vilayet should be restored to Turkey. Similarly, during the subsequent conversations at Constantinople, the Turkish representatives refused to enter into any discussion as to the position of a frontier line between the two States, but confined themselves to reasserting their demands for the restora­ tion to Turkey of the Mosul Vilayet. While, therefore, the question now being submitted to the council, as the British Government conceive it, is not whether the Mosul Vilayet should belong to Turkey or Irak but rather what should be the actual northern boundary of the Irak State, it is necessary that the present memorandum should not only justify the frontier line now proposed but should recapitulate the reasons for which the British Government have found it necessary to reject the demand for the rendition of the whole Mosul Vilayet, in which demand it is under­ stood that the Turkish Government still persist. 1. Racial. The two subjoined tables show the population of the Mosul Vilayet by religions and races respectively, according to two estimates made in 1919 and 1921. Both tables were compiled by British officers who had, in spite of Turkish assertions to the contrary, visited and spent some time in all comers of the vilayet. The second table, which, since it is by races, is the more important for present purposes, was the result of closer and more prolonged investigation than the first. It confirmed, however, the comparative accuracy of the first, the difference of 82,000 odd in the totals being fully accounted for by: 1. The return of large numbers of the population after the war. 2. The return of still larger numbers of families to villages, owing to the state of starvation resulting from war conditions, had been abandoned before the British occupation. 3. The settlement of large numbers of Assyrian refugees. The Turkish delegation at Lausanne relied upon a different set of figures. No date for their compilation was given, and their reliability may be gauged from the fact that they divide the population of the Sulaimani Sanj ak as follows : Kurds .......................................................................... 62,830 T u r k s .............................................................................. 32,960 A ra b s ............................................................................... 7,210 Not even the most ardent Arab patriot would, as a matter of fact, claim that, with the exception of a few individual traders, there are any Arabs at all in the Sulaimani Sanjak, and to state that there are more than half as many Turks as Kurds in the sanjak is incorrect. There is a small Turkish (or rather Turkoman) settlement in Sulaimani town itself, and a few scattered families in the villages. The round figure of 1,000 given in the two British statements is probably a liberal estimate. So unreliable, in fact, was the Turkish estimate that it was not even repeated by the Turkish representatives during the recent conversations in Constantinople. It may be taken that the British estimate of the distribution of population by races in 1921 was substantially accurate, and that this distribution has not altered materially since, except for the addition of some 15,000 Assyrian Christians who have, since the 1921 statement was compiled, been settled 1 Distributed to Council members and registered at the Secretariat. in villages on the southern side of the proposed frontier. The population of the area between the proposed frontier line and the southern, western and eastern borders of the old Mosul Vilayet may therefore be taken to be approximately at the present moment : A ra b s ........................................................ 185,700 Kurds ..................................................................... 454,700 “Turks” ..................................................................... 65,800 C h ristian s................................................................. 77,000 J e w s ......................................................................... 16,800 800,000 Among the Kurds are included 30,000 Yezidis, who, though believed to be closely akin to the Kurds by race," are non-Moslem, and have no Turkish sympathies whatever. As regards the distribution by locality of their numbers, it will be seen from the ethnographical map attached1 to this memorandum that the Arab population forms a solid block comprising the whole portion of the old Mosul Vilayet lying on the right bank of the Tigris, Mosul town itself, and a further strip on the left bank of the Tigris below Mosul extending nearly to the Arbil-Altun Keupru- Kirkuk road. The only non-Arab elements in this area are the. Yezidis in the Jebel Sinjar, and the “Turks” (approximately 10,000) in Tel Afar. In other words, that portion of the Mosul Vilayet which is contiguous to the Bagdad Vilayet, and which comprises approximately one- third of the whole area with which this memorandum deals, is inhabited by 185,000 odd Arabs, about 30,000 Yezidis, and 10,000 so-called Turks. Assuming, for the moment, that the last- named definitely desire inclusion in Turkey, there can be no doubt about the contrary desire of the remaining 215,000. To dispose of an area of this size solely in accordance with the (assumed) wishes of less than 5 per cent of its population would be scarcely in accord with accepted principles, and from this aspect only of racial distribution, the Turkish claim to the whole of the Mosul Vilayet is demonstrably unsound. Turning from the question of local distribution to the actual numbers of the various races in the whole area under discussion : As to the “Turks”, they are not Osmanli Turks; they call themselves Turkomans, and the Turanian language they speak resembles Azerbaijani rather than the Turkish of Constantinople or Anatolia. They are undoubtedly descendants of Turkomans who came to Irak long before Osman founded the Ottoman Empire, probably from those Turkomans whom the Abb aside Caliphs hired to defend their territory. The theory that the Turkomans are descendants of what was formerly a foreign mercenary garrison is supported by their distribution. Tel Afar, an almost exclusively Turkoman town, stands guard 45 miles west of Mosul on the border of the Syrian desert. Except for this town and the neighbouring Turkoman villages, and for a few scattered Turkoman villages in the Mosul Plain, the whole of the Turkoman population is distributed along the eastern road from Mosul to Bagdad, notably in and around the towns of Arbil, Altun Keupru, Kirkuk, Taza Khurmatu, Tauk, Tuz Khurmatu, Kifri and Kara Tepe. The estimates of numbers are: Tel Afar and surrounding villag es........................................... 10,000 Villages in the Mosul P la in ....................................................... 4,895 14.895 Kirkuk and surrounding villages ............................................................. 15,000 Kifri, Taza Khurmatu, Tauk, Tuz Khurmatu and Kara Tepe. 10,000 35.000 Erbil and Altun Keupru ......................................................................... 15,000 Grand Total of “Turks” (the few in the Sulaimani area being omitted) 64,895 The proportion of "Turks” to Arabs can be shown most effectively by the statement that the “Turks” in the whole of the Mosul Vilayet are less numerous than the Arabs in the town of Mosul alone.