The Middle East is strategically important for the Western powers. The issue there was, and still it is, all about oil and the strategic influence to find new markets. Western powers continue to clash over who will obtain the oil and the accompanying strategic position and interest. The current wars in Syria and Iraq are undergird by a historical struggle over access to oil and gas, not in entirety about liberating people from authoritarian leaders such as Assad or about bringing democracy to the region.The history of the modern Middle East begins with the discovery of oil, and now the same Allied powers are trying to draw a new map of the region. After World War I and the ensuing fall of the Ottoman Empire, many Middle Eastern states were Western made: Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Prior to the Ottoman collapse these regions were divided into vilayets and had a fair amount of autonomy. It is difficult for Westerners, whose main exposure to information about the Middle East is through their own media, to have a clear understanding of what is transpiring in that region.
In 1918 after a four-year bloody world war, Great Britain signed the Armistice of Mudros with the Ottoman Turks, ending the war in the Middle Eastern theater and granting the right to redesign the area to the Allies. The area of Izmir was assigned to the Greeks, but Kemal Ataturk led a war of independence in Turkey and was victorious in 1919 in his fight against the Greeks to establish a new independent regime. Concurrently, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Allies in 1920, imposed the Treaty of Sèvres on the defeated Ottoman Empire and divided Ottoman Turkey into pieces, such as Anatolia into Greek, Italian, French, and Armenian areas, and the East into an autonomous Kurdistan. The Kurds were promised their own independence, leaving the Turks sovereign only in northwest Anatolia. By October 1922, however, the Treaty of Sèvres was rendered unacceptable. Instead Turkey declared itself one nation under one flag with one language, so that everyone living in Turkey was considered a Turk, a policy that labeled the Kurds as Mountain Turks.
Instead of the Treaty of Sèvres, the Allies and the secularist Turks signed the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923, specifying most of the borders still carving out Turkey today. Mosul remained open for a friendly arrangement to be concluded between Turkey and Great Britain. The new nationalist Turkish regime was unable to reach a mutual agreement over Mosul, but ensured of the legality of the British presence in Mosul by the pact of Mudros, the British claimed the entire area of Iraq and turned down Turkey‘s proposal for Ankara to retain Mosul. Instead, the Allies referred Mosul to the League of Nations, which endorsed Mosul’s becoming part of Iraq. In actuality Mosul and Kirkuk are Kurdish cities. The Arabs and Turks seized them from the Kurds who had lived in that mountainous region for centuries. Turkey eventually signed a treaty in 1926, leaving Mosul to Iraq. During the Iran and Iraq War in the late 80s, Saddam Hussein lost control of Northern Iraq and made an agreement with Turkey to fight against the Kurdish rebels allowing the Turks to engage attacks in the Iraqi territory. After the first Gulf War in 1991 and subsequently the collapse of Saddam’s power, Turkey wanted to take Mosul, but some Turkish generals would not risk going to war.
From the inception of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Turks have believed that the borders are wrong. The Mosul province was within the Ottoman Empire’s territory. In the Turk’s view, had that place been part of Turkey, none of the problems Turkey is confronted with at the present time would have existed. Turkey and its President believe the West still wants to Implement the Treaty of Sèvres by finally encouraging an independent Kurdistan. In the recent battle to retake Mosul from ISIS, Iraq’s government warned Turkey against becoming involved in operations in Mosul by breaching the national border. However, Turkey claims it resisted joining the Mosul operation without the permission of Iraq to fight against ISIS, but that is not true, Turkey, like other powers, did not join forces because of ISIS, but because of their old claim to the Ottoman province of Mosul in Northern Iraq, which they would like to integrate into Turkey. Because during the Ottoman Empire the Kurds were semi- autonomous, and because Mosul and Kirkuk were Kurdish cities, the Turkish claim to Mosul is problematic. Further complicating the competing claims, the Iranian regime made its sentiment known through the Iraqi Shiite government for Turkey to respect the sovereignty of Iraq and its border and urged Turkey not to become involved in the Mosul operation.
There are currently two main powers in the Middle East, regional and local powers. These two principal powers are currently leading a relentless military campaign using ISIS as an excuse to present their influence in the region. ISIS is a project in the region to draw a new map and new borders in that territory. ISIS soon will be gone, but they will have another group with another name but with the same purpose—a geopolitical presence. The Western powers are trying to eliminate pan-Islamic political projects to prevent the re-unifying of the Sunni world into a Caliphate, because the majority of the Muslims in the world are Sunni Muslims and not Shiite Muslims; therefore, external powers believe that such a unified Sunni state would pose a serious threat to Western powers as it did in the six hundred years of the Ottoman Empire. They do not want Sunni Muslims to have the sole dominant power in the region. If Sunni Muslims dominate the region, then external powers have to leave the region. The states in the Middle East cannot afford to wage regional wars without support from the Western powers, as is happening against ISIS today. Arming to fight both Iran and Sunni Jihadists drains the economies of the Sunni states and pushes them further into debt. The Shiite regime in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon is a sectarian one under the influence of the Wilayat al–Faqih doctrine that governs Iran
After World War II the United States’ foreign policy was driven primarily by oil interests, the protection of Israel, and containing the Soviet Union. America and Westerns powers kept the region from sectarian wars; thus, the United States supported leaders who would maintain its interests, such as campaigns that include restoring the Shah of Iran to the throne after the democratically elected Mosaddegh regime nationalized oil fields in his tenure as Prime Minister from 1951 to 1953, and supporting the Baathist overthrow of the Qasim government in Iraq, which was replaced with the Saddam Hussein. The US policy generally supports leaders when they keep the Middle East stable and thus Western interests stable, and then abandon them when they fail to adopt Western humanitarian ideals of human rights and freedom for even minorities. Many of those authoritarian leaders from Saddam Hussein, Mubarak in Egypt to Gaddafi in Libya, and Assad in Syria have fallen. Once dominated by cruel regimes that maintain stable nation states, these governments then become failed and borderless states controlled by factions and tribes. In a reversal, however, under President Obama’s retreat from the region in his attempt to show solidarity with the Muslim world, he ironically discouraged US allies in the Middle East abandoning it to Russia and Iran to take charge.
Iran’s regime poses a threat to the Sunni regimes, which in turn come to depend more on Western powers for protection. As of now, Iran controls Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, all of which remain under its influence and its Shite-government has many agents in other countries such as Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and even in Gulf countries, for example, Saudi Arabia, as well as in Central Asia. Iran‘s regime is motivated by sectarianism with its main goal of spreading the Shiite sect control over any potential rivals that develop in the Sunni world. Economic and geopolitical interests in the Middle East, on the other hand, motivate Western powers.
Historically, Sunni Muslims were the biggest threat to Western encroachment in the region, from the era of the Crusades, when Islam began extending into Christendom, to the Western colonialism when Great Britain and France shored up their interests. Shiite powers, on the other hand, allied with the foreign powers to help them contain a rising Sunni power. The current Mosul operation from ISIS, Iraq‘s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, announced the start of the operation to recapture the city of Mosul on October 16th and declared the players who should join the operation. The Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga have been the leading forces of the U.S supported anti-ISIS coalition ground operation, an alliance generally against Turkish forces joining the Mosul operation because of Turkey’s continued policy against the Kurds and its current President’s aggression to regain the Ottoman sphere. The Turkish government insisted that they would be on the field and at the table when it comes to Mosul and to the other oil rich city Kirkuk. Even after Mosul is cleared from ISIS, the problem of who will take control of the Mosul city will rear its ugly head. The issue is not entirely about fighting against ISIS; its about who will get Mosul in the end. The question is what will the status of Mosul be because the West would like to see an autonomous Mosul.
The Westerns powers created a new system in the Middle East according to Treaty of Lausanne a century ago. Under that design minorities such as the Kurdish people were non-existent. The Kurds were divided into the four states of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, but today the Treaty of Lausanne holds no significance for the occupied Kurds on our time. We are witnessing a new ordering in the Middle East. Neither the world nor the Middle East is the same as they were a century ago. All the conflict in the region arises on the basis of generating a new system. This situation has given new historical opportunities for the Kurds to get their homeland back from the Turks and Persian Arabs and to have their own homeland. The Kurds are the only majority minority in the world with more than 35 to 40 million population without a state. The Kurdish people also are not the same as they were a century ago. If the Kurds fail to get their independence now, they will never have this golden opportunity again.
The new map of the Middle East will not be configured without an independent Kurdistan. The Arabs, Persians, and Turks are launching their last assault against the Kurds, but they will not succeed as long as the Kurds are unified against the enemy, In other words, the success and failure of the Kurds are in the hands of the Kurdish people. In the past Kurds fought on many fronts including in politics, in economics, in social and culture affairs, and in military arenas. Because of sectarian disagreement among the Arabs, Turks, and Persians, these parties struggled against one another, but they united against the Kurds. The problem for the Kurds, however, is their lack of unity. They have been torn part, and again they have been deceived by the Persians, Arabs, and Turks. The Kurds need to have unified policies. A problem exists in the region now because a lack of a democratic culture and traditions, of dialogue, of trust toward each other, and of a history of justice.
Turkey has a new Ottoman dream. Turks believe that Mosul was under the Ottoman rule for 400 years and that the Treaty of Lausanne took it away from them. With that residual claim to the two oil-rich cities and with their proximity to Turkey’s border, Ankara’s eye is on Mosul and Kirkuk; that is why President Erodagn said Turkish forces will be on the ground and at the table. Harboring the notion that the 1923 treaty carved out a Turkey without the oil fields of Mosul and Kirkuk, Turks claim the British deprived them of their petrol rights. Further, Turkey wants to contain Shiite influence and Kurdish influence, and, in terms of a barrier to unification of and independence for the Kurds, the Turks do not want to have a transit between the Kurds in Iraq and those in Syria with the aim of keeping them separate. Actually nothing has been resolved, and Mosul and Kirkuk are Kurdish cities. In the current Mosul operation to free it from ISIS, the coalition will not resolve any problem, but, on the contrary, the situation could flare up into a crisis, especially with Iraqi as a failed state and with the same powers now wanting to create new borders and to annex a new state which they promised in the Treaty of Sevres but failed to include in the Lausanne agreement.
Dr. Aland Mizell is President of the MCI and a regular contributor to Mindanao Times. You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
