Self-Determination and Realpolitik, Reflections on Kurds and Palestinians

23 Aug 2005
KRG
By Shlomo Avineri

[...] for a national movement to be successful, it needs geopolitical allies. National movements that lack them—for reasons of history, geography, or consanguinity—usually fail. Those allies are usually imperial powers, and so every war for national liberation is intertwined with realpolitik, a reality that usually makes the spokespeople of national movements uneasy, and makes the proponents of the right to national self-determination squirm. Yet it is undeniable.
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[...]. Without British and Russian diplomatic support for Greek independence from the Ottomans (in the geopolitical context of “The Eastern Question”), Greek highlanders and Albanian-speaking seafarers from the island of Hydra would have been crushed. The same applies to the emergence of independent Serbia in later decades; [...].
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This brings us to the big losers. Primary among them—next to the Armenians—were, until recently, the Kurds. [...].
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The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I appeared to give Kurds a window of opportunity. Though many Kurds participated in the Turkish massacre of the Armenians during the war, the Allies, especially the British, thought the establishment of a Kurdish state would be useful to their imperial plans.
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[...] the Treaty of Sèvres, signed between the defeated Ottomans and the Allies in 1920, envisaged a Kurdish state. [...].
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[...] the Sèvres Treaty also reads, “Turkey hereby recognizes Armenia as a free and independent state.”
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None of this was to be. Sèvres represented the nadir of Turkish power. Like all post–World War I treaties, it was a victors’ treaty imposed on the losers—Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey. A new war eventually annulled Sèvres. Before there was time to implement it, Italy and Greece tried to grab more territory from a crumbling Turkey. Initially they succeeded. Smyrna was occupied by Greek forces, which then began a march into the Anatolian highlands. But the humiliated Turkish military rallied and mounted counterattacks, which eventually brought Mustapha Kemal (later known as Atatürk) to power. He won a series of battles against the Greeks and Italians, abolished the caliphate, and proclaimed Turkey a national republic. The result was modern Turkey. The Treaty of Sèvres no longer represented the realities of power. A new treaty had to be negotiated between the Allies (including chastened Greece and Italy) and a robust, self-assured new Turkish state.
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Just as Sèvres represented Turkey’s weakness, the Treaty of Lausanne, which superseded it in July 1923, reflected Turkish victories and the relative weakness of the Allies. Lord Curzon, the British secretary of state, remarked, “Hitherto we have dictated our peace treaties. Now we are negotiating one with the enemy who has an army in being while we have none, an unheard of position.” Gone was independent Armenia (its rump was incorporated into the Soviet Union, to emerge as an independent nation only in 1991). Similarly, gone was the mechanism that promised to establish independent Kurdistan. Turkey retains part of the Kurdish areas through today, and Mosul became part of Iraq. Neither Armenia nor Kurdistan exists in the Treaty of Lausanne.
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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.