'Mosul Question, Lausanne 1922-1923 and after - Papers, despatches, speeches - Hotel de la Mer at Lausanne - Correspondence about oil' [‎198r] (393/501)

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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government.]
TURKEY. [January 26.]
CONFIDENTIAL. Section 2.
[E 1000/1/44] No. 1.
Speech by the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston on January 23, 1923, respecting Mosul .—
(Received in Foreign Office January 26.)
LORD CURZON spoke as follows :—
“ I welcome the opportunity of making a public statement on this question. There
has been so much perversion, exaggeration and misrepresentation about the case of
Mosul that it is desirable that the facts should be known. I am grateful therefore to
Ismet Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. for having summed up the Turkish case in the statement to which we
have just listened. I propose to take his case point by point and to give my reply,
and I shall be only too delighted if the Turkish case and the British case could be
printed side by side and referred to the opinion of the world.
“ First I should like to explain the exact position in Mosul : how it is that we
came there, what has been done since we came there, and what is being done there now.
The whole of Mesopotamia was occupied in the course of the great war by the British
troops. That was a war which ended in the defeat of the Turkish armies, and the
explusion of the Turkish Government from the country. A little later on, however,
the name of Irak was given because of its greater local familiarity to the country
which we had hitherto called Mesopotamia.
“ When we were forced to go into the war by the action of the Turkish
Government, and when we first advanced into Irak, we gave solemn pledges to the
people of that country that if we were successful in the war they should be freed from
Turkish rule in the future. We entered into similar pledges to King Hussein at the
same time—to support the independence of the Arabs in this area. When the war
was over and we had been victorious we did our best to fulfil these pledges. Ismet
Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. said just now that the people of that country and of the Mosul Vilayet had never
had a fair opportunity of expressing their views. That is not the case. We asked them
whether they would prefer to be united together in future—that is Mosul, Bagdad
and Basra, or whether they would prefer to separate. All three of these areas
answered that they were parts of a complete and indivisible whole, and they declined
to be separated. We asked them whether they wanted an Arab King and if so whom
they would choose. Their replies were at that time divided, and therefore at the
moment nothing could be done on that point. Meanwhile at Paris when the Peace
Conference was sitting in 1919 the method of disposing of the conquered territories,
whether of the Turkish or of the German Empires, by means of what is termed a
mandate was set up; and as everybody knows it was established largely by the
influence of President Wilson, to whom Ismet Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. himself referred in favour of his
argument just now. It remained for the Allied Powers who had conquered these
territories in the war and who held them in trust to assign the mandates, and it was at
San Remo in April 1920 that they decided to give the mandate for Syria to France
and the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia to Great Britain. All these
mandates stand on exactly the same basis. You cannot attack one without attacking
the other. These mandates were confirmed by the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920
and the frontiers of Syria and Irak were both laid down, the northern frontier of Irak
being defined as the northern boundary of the Mosul Vilayet, with certain variations.
It then lay with the League of Nations to determine what degree of authority and
control the mandatory Powers should exercise in each of these areas. For this purpose
draft mandates were submitted by the various mandatory Powers to the League of
Nations in 1920-21. In the course of 1921 the question of a single Arab ruler was
solved by the election of the Emir Feisal to be King of the Arab State of Irak. That
was a vote in which the Mosul Vilayet joined, and by which he was unanimously
elected. In October 1921 the League of Nations, not yet having defined the final
mandate, invited the British to continue to conduct their administration in the spirit of
the draft mandate which had been submitted to them pending the final determination
of the latter. Subsequently, in our anxiety to diminish British responsibilities and to
confirm the independence of the Arab State, the British Government concluded a treaty
[220 cc —2] B

'Mosul Question, Lausanne 1922-1923 and after - Papers, despatches, speeches - Hotel de la Mer at Lausanne - Correspondence about oil' [‎198r] (393/501)

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'Mosul Question, Lausanne 1922-1923 and after - Papers, despatches, speeches - Hotel de la Mer at Lausanne - Correspondence about oil' [‎198r] (393/501)

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