Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎565v] (1133/1237)

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Tehran and take charge of the situation. Meantime the petty officials left in
Rezaieh sent telegram after telegram pleading their danger and helplessness,
blaming the Russians for helping the Kurds and demanding instructions.
5. The Russians, it is said, could have stopped the trouble at an hour’s
notice by merely telling the Kurds to go home. Why, therefore, it is demanded—,
did they not expend the small amount of energy necessary to put an end to ti
turmoil? The answer comes&&too easily that the Russians are planning to km
the authority of the Persian Government here in the north. The Russians
certainly seem to have done very little to support the gendarmes and comfort the
peaceful population. The Soviet Consul-General and the Chief of Staff certainly
flew to Rezaieh on the 30th and met a body of Kurdish leaders the same evening.
They appealed to them to disperse and supported the chief of police in his
explanation that there was no intention to disarm the Kurds generally, but merely
to prevent them carrying arms into the town; but the net result was that the
Kurds presented demands (see Appendix) some of which seem to be hardly the
sort of thing a Kurd wmuld think of readily. I had many talks with my Soviet
colleague after his return, but I found it difficult to get more out of him than
variations of the themes that there had been great exaggeration, that the local
authority was incredibly inefficient and also lacking in goodwill to end, by making
reasonable concessions, a commotion which they themselves had started. I tried
to persuade him that the inefficiency of the average Persian official is a permanent
factor in this country, that exaggeration and panic are normal, but that a state
of affairs existed which was sufficiently alarming to require some controlling
action. I told him that obviously there must be suffering in the villages in view
of the pillaging of such property as the villagers had been unable to carry with
them, and that possibly crops would be lost to an extent which might threaten a
shortage of food. I repeated some of the things our Turkish colleague had feared,
suggesting that, even if he, too, were exaggerating a good deal, German propa-
o-aiida was bound to make use of these events and all the attendant rumours for
purposes of propaganda in Turkey, and particularly propaganda addressed to
military circles there. During one conversation he placed the number of Kurds
under arms at 10,000, and was obviously worried by the mere idea of a punitive
expedition by the Russians against such numbers. I think he was genuinely
concerned lest the Soviet authorities should drift into hostilities with the Kurds.
The military authorities probably do not care to rely on the theory that they
have but to say the word to see the Kurdish forces melt away; they would
probably not care to risk a fiasco, and to be sure of enforcing an order to disperse
they probably would like to have certain forces at their disposal. It seems
unlikely that a request for permission to divert such forces for possible hostile
operations against the Kurds would be welcomed at headquarters, or that any
local official here would sponsor it if he could avoid doing so. I have therefore
wondered these days whether Kuibyshev knew what was happening, whether the
local officials were' trying to minimise the commotion and hoping that it would
solve itself with no more than the loss of lives here and there and the pillage of
some villages. . , . , ,
6. My Turkish colleague was no doubt right m stressing the propaganda
value for the enemy in the events of the past ten days. His interest in what is
happening on the Iffirkish frontier is natural and I expect there is some ground
for his view that there are elements among the Kurds who thirst for revenge on
Turkey and who are only awaiting a favourable moment in order to make trouble
on the Turkish side of the frontier. I think, too, that he was justified in noting
any signs of Russian consideration and tenderness for the Kurds as against the
Persians and in scrutinising closely those of the Kurdish demands which contained
indications that some Kurds are thinking, of a Kurdish national life and the
perpetuation of a separate Kurdish organisation within the State, in direct
opposition to the policy of both Turkey and Persia towards such minorities. But
his talk opes far beyond such considerations and he sees in the Rezaieh disorders
the beofinnino- of religions massacres and the possibility that Turkey may have
to intervene again. He has made much of a demand made by a delegation of
Rezaietes that "the frontier be thrown open so that the peaceful people of Western
Azerbaijan may flee to the protection of their brother Turks. He took this piece
of oriental exaggeration more or less seriously, but the Turkish Vice-Consul at
Rezaieh was wiser; he asked the persons who made a corresponding request to
him to put it in writing, and that was the end of the matter. The fact is that