Coll 6/81 'Syria: Status of Alexandretta and Antioch.' [‎170r] (340/576)

1 art IV. Developments during the Extraordinary Session of the League Council
at Geneva in December 1936.
19. When Lord (Jranborne called on the Turkish Foreign Minister at
Geneva on the 14th December to act on these instructions, M. Aras informed him
^iat the lurkish Government were now in agreement that any decision on the
Substance of the question should be left over until the meeting of the Council in
January 1937, and that the Council should concentrate at its present session upon
the necessary temporary measures to ensure and supervise the maintenance of law
and order in the territory. M. Aras, who was in a rather aggressive mood, went
on to outline the views of the Turkish Government on the substance of the dispute,
as well as their proposals for conservatory measures, prominent among which were
an international enquiry into recent events, and the despatch of a small inter
national force to the sanjak. He hinted in rather a sinister manner that if the
French did not accept these proposals, and if further incidents occurred in the
sanjak, Turkey would he in a position to concentrate three army corps on the
frontier so as to protect the Turkish elements in the sanjak.
20. Lord Cranborne drew M. Aras’s attention to the obvious difficulties in
the way of sending any international force to the sanjak. He then went on to
inform him of the view which His Majesty’s Government took of the dispute, and
to warn him that they would be obliged to oppose the separation of the sanjak
from Syria. Lord Cranborne thought it better to inform M. Aras of this quite
frankly, as His Majesty’s Government were most anxious not to be obliged to
oppose Turkey publicly at the Council. He explained that although His
Majesty’s Government were not directly concerned in the dispute they had a
direct interest in seeing that nothing occurred to trouble the peace of the Near
East. M. Aras took Lord Cranborne’s remarks in good part and professed entirely
to recognise the position of His Majesty’s Government; he expressed the hope
that they would give both sides the benefit of their benevolent advice.
21. The consideration of the question was begun in the League Council on
the afternoon of the 14th December. (Note: Although the speeches of the Turkish
and French delegates covered to some extent the same ground as the summary of
the previous diplomatic correspondence in paragraphs 11-12 above, they are
comprehensively summarised below for convenience and for purposes of record.)
The Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs was the first speaker, and although
professing the intention to deal fully with the substance of the question at a
later date, he embarked immediately upon an exposition of the Turkish case. His
argument was based on the contention that the sanjak had never been included
within the scope of the mandate for Syria, that it had been handed over by Turkey
directly to France in 1921 on specific conditions, and that it was now entitled to
its freedom since France was proposing to withdraw as mandatory. He made
play with the point that if the mandate over “ Syria ” allocated by the Supreme
Council to France in 1920 had been intended to cover territories inhabited by the
Turks as well as Lebanese and Arabs, it would inevitably have applied also to
large areas of Turkish territory in Cilicia then also under French occupation.
The fact that this was not so was shown according to M. Aras by the fact that the
French were able in October 1921 to negotiate a bilateral treaty with Turkey, by
which they surrendered all territory in their occupation inhabited by Turks,
except the sanjak, which they retained on conditions. M. Aras went on to main
tain that the mandatory document of 1922 confirmed the Turkish thesis by its
failure to mention the sanjak and its special regime, and also that the conditional
nature of the cession of the sanjak had been confirmed by the proceedings at the
Lausanne Conference in 1923, where the Turkish delegation had insisted on the
present wording of the second paragraph of article 16 of the Treaty of Lausanne
(see paragraph 5 above) qualifying the renunciation of Turkish rights and title.
M. Aras denied that the Turkish initiative would create a State which could not
stand by itself : as regards the charge that it would dismember Syria, he asserted
that the League had already allowed this to happen through the division of the
original territory of “ Syria ” into the States of Syria and the Lebanon.
22. Turning to the current situation in the sanjak, M. Aras asserted that
the Turkish population—whose fate would always be of interest to Turkey—had
been the victims of a bloody repression simply for expressing their opinions. The
territory was being held down by force, and, in order to create a favourable
atmosphere for the examination of the substance of the dispute, the Turkish