|
The Mosul Question was a territorial dispute in the early 20th century between Turkey and the United Kingdom (later Iraq) over the possession of the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul. The Mosul Vilayet was part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War I, when it was occupied by Britain. After the Turkish War of Independence, the new Turkish Republic considered Mosul one of the crucial issues determined in the National Pact. Despite constant resistance, Britain managed to bring the issue into the international arena, scaling it down to a frontier problem between Turkey and Iraq. The League of Nations Council appointed an investigative commission that recommended that Iraq should retain Mosul, and Turkey reluctantly assented to the decision by signing the Frontier Treaty with the Iraqi government in 1926. Iraq agreed to give a 10 percent royalty on Mosul's oil deposits to Turkey for 25 years. ==History== Near the end of World War I, the debilitated Ottoman Empire signed an armistice with the British called the Armistice of Mudros and it was signed on October 30, 1918. This armistice called for a ceasing of all fighting between the British and the Ottomans. Three days later, on November 2, Sir William Marshall, a British Lieutenant General, invaded the Mosul Vilayet until November 15, 1918 when he is finally successful in defeating the Ottoman forces and causing them to surrender.〔Mesopotamia in British War Aims "The Historical Journal" by V.H. Rothwell〕 In August 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed to end the war, however the Ottomans still contested the British right to Mosul and how it was taken illegally, post-Mudros. Even when the Lausanne Treaty was signed between Turkey and Britain in 1923, Turkey still maintained that Britain was controlling the Mosul Vilayet illegally.〔The Geography of the Mosul Boundary "The Geographic Journal" by H.I. Lloyd 1926〕 British officials in London and Baghdad continued to believe that Mosul was imperative to the survival of Iraq because of its resources and the security of its mountainous border.〔"The Creation of Iraq: 1914-1921" by Reeva Spector Simon and Eleanor H. Tejirian, New York: Columbia University Press 2004〕 Turkish leaders were also afraid that Kurdish nationalism would thrive under British Mandate and start trouble with the Kurdish population in Turkey.〔 In order to reach a resolution on the conflicting claims over Mosul, the League of Nations was called on to send a fact-finding commission in order to determine the rightful owner. The commission investigated the region and then reported that Turkey had no claim to Mosul and it belonged to the British and no one else had any rightful claim to the area.〔 Because of the amount of influence wielded by Britain in the League of Nations, the decision of the fact-finding commission was not surprising. Another aspect of Britain's influence on the League of Nations was that the Secretary of the War Cabinet, Maurice Hankey, decided that Britain needed to have control over the whole area because of their oil concerns for the Royal Navy before the commission was completed.〔 Because Britain also wanted to soothe Turkish anger over the League of Nations decision, they gave them a portion of the oil profits. By having control over the oil and the IPC, the British stayed in control of the resources of Mosul even though they had given political control back to Faysal. Another area of contention between Britain and Turkey was the actual boundary line. There was a Brussels Line which had been decided by the League of Nations as the true border of Iraq, and a British line which was the division line the Britain had used as reference in the past. When this was brought up to British leaders, both Percy Cox, the British High Commissioner of Iraq, and Arnold Wilson, the British civil commissioner in Baghdad, urged Lloyd George, who was the Prime Minister, to use the Brussels line because they did not think there was that large of a difference between the two line boundaries.〔The Geography of the Mosul Boundary: Discussion "The Geographical Journal" 1926〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mosul Question」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|