Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
July 14-20, 2005
The stolen sanjaq
The Iskenderun dispute was assiduously covered by Al-Ahram in the
critical juncture between 1936-1937 when the question was put before
the League of Nations. The league’s resolutions, writes Professor
Yunan Labib Rizk, marked a turning point in the life of the province
that had once been part of Syria
The purpose of this Chronicle is not to dig up old quarrels with our
Arab neighbours which, in all events were more the product of
colonial interests than they were of Egypt’s bilateral relations with
those countries. Rather our task, as we comb through old editions of
Al-Ahram, is to offer a unique and unconventional portrait of those
issues, one that conveys an immediacy rarely found in academic
studies on the subject.
Before proceeding to the topic at hand, it is important to register
several observations on what was referred to 70 years ago as the
“question of the sanjaq of Iskenderun”. Under Ottoman rule, a
“sanjaq” was an administrative subdivision of “vilayet”, of which
Greater Syria had been one.
The question itself was related to arrangements European powers
concluded among themselves in the wake of WWI. With the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the League of Nations, France
and Britain moved to legitimise their possessions in the Middle East.
The instrument they created for this purpose was the so-called
mandate, conferred upon them by the newly created international
organisation over which they exercised disproportionate control, and
which enabled them to redraw the map of the region in a manner that
better enabled them to impose their hegemony. Accordingly, Lebanon
was severed from Greater Syria; Jordan was carved out as a newly
created state and the former Ottoman district of Jerusalem and
province of Acre were transformed into Palestine.
Of greater relevance to the Iskenderun question was rival claims over
certain ethnically mixed parts of the Levant. In Iraq, for example,
there arose disputes with both Turkey and Iran. The former laid claim
to Mosul and the surrounding area on the grounds of its predominantly
Turkish population. Britain disputed that claim, determined as it was
to retain that area for Iraq over which it had mandate authority. The
reverse occurred in the tug-of-war between Iraq and Iran over
Arabistan. In this case, Iraq lost this erstwhile Ottoman province to
Tehran, which renamed it Khozastan. Another heavily ethnically mixed
region was the northern Syrian sanjaq of Iskenderun, formerly called
Iskenderun, which France in this case handed over to Ankara.
Needless to say, the prime determinant in these situations was the
interests of the mandate powers. London was not about to cede the oil
rich area of Mosul to Turkey under any circumstances, whereas it had
nothing to lose by striking a deal with Tehran over Arabistan.
Different dynamics affected the fate of Iskenderun. For one, in order
to strengthen its position in the eastern Mediterranean, France was
eager to improve its relations with countries in the region, Turkey,
obviously, being a key state. Simultaneously, unlike the case with
the British- Turkish dispute over Mosul, there was no economic factor
such as oil to compel France to hold on to Iskenderun, unlike the
case with Mosul. Secondly, although the Turkish minority in Mosul was
relatively small and only one of several other minority communities,
in Iskenderun the Turks were virtually equal in number to the Arabs
and far outnumbered the Armenians, the only other minority of
significant size. At the same time, for historical reasons the Turks
were by far the most influential minority community: they formed the
majority of major landlords whereas the Arabs made up the masses of
the peasant class. It followed that the Turks were generally more
educated and hence had greater access to key political, economic and
social positions.
The rival claims on the sanjaq had their roots in French policy in
Syria and in the Treaty of Ankara. As a mandate power, France was now
in a position to reorder the administration of its Levant
possessions. Its first step was to declare Syria and Lebanon separate
countries. Syria itself was divided into four administrative
departments: Aleppo, Damascus, Alawin and Jabal Druze, and
Iskenderun, to which it accorded a special status. The other half of
the equation was the Ankara Treaty, also known as the
Franklin-Bouillon accord, concluded between Ankara and Paris on 21
October 1921, which officially ended the state of war between the two
countries. Article 7 of this treaty granted special privileges to the
Turkish inhabitants of Iskenderun, stating, “A special administrative
system shall be created for the region of Iskenderun. The Turkish
inhabitants of this region shall be accorded every facility for
developing their culture and the Turkish language shall have official
status.”
French mandate policy was instrumental in paving the way for the
severing off of the province. Firstly, the high commissioner decreed
that all laws that were observed in Aleppo would also apply to
Iskenderun and that the province would have representatives in the
Aleppo national assembly. At the same time, the sanjaq would have its
own governor who would administer the province autonomously alongside
the high commissioner and it would have its own budget. Later, after
it was decided to incorporate Aleppo into a unified Syrian
government, the French mandate authorities decided to uphold
Iskenderun’s special status, thereby preserving its financial and
administrative autonomy and retaining Turkish as an official language
alongside Arabic.
Iskenderun’s autonomy thus reconfirmed, the stage was now set for
separation. Following the parliamentary elections held in early 1936,
the sanjaq’s representatives petitioned the French high commissioner
to render their province totally independent from Syria and
subordinate it to the French directly. That French officials in Syria
clearly favoured the Turkish over the Arab partisans in the province
was taken as a sign that their wish would be granted and that this
would prelude the eventual handover of the province to Turkey.
The Iskenderun question became more acute following the conclusion of
the Franco-Syrian Treaty in 1936. The treaty officially ended the
French mandate over Syria, although France retained certain
privileges with regard to the conduct of Syrian foreign policy. In
addition, the treaty stipulated that the department of Alawin and
Jabal Druze would retain administrative and financial autonomy and
that the Syrian government must respect the rights of all minority
communities. Such provisions encouraged the Turks in Iskenderun to
create the “Hatay Independence Society” which the Arabs countered by
creating the National Action League to promote the assimilation of
the province into Syria. In addition, as tension increased between
the two communities over the future of the province, a wave of ethnic
strife erupted, resulting in numerous casualties.
After a brief flurry of communications between Paris and Ankara, the
former insisted that as the mandate power over Syria it did not have
the right to independently dispose of any portion of Syrian territory
entrusted to it by the League of Nations. Ankara, naturally, took
issue. On 28 November, addressing a packed National Assembly, some of
whose members were so rowdy, according to Al-Ahram, that they shouted
out remarks intentionally offensive to France, the Turkish foreign
minister proclaimed that the Turkish people were prepared “to dye the
ink needed to settle the question with red!”
In order to help its readers understand the issue, the London Times
provided a brief background study of the territory under dispute. The
Turks began to settle in Iskenderun following the end of the
Crusades, it wrote. “Following the Great War, some of them began to
refer to themselves as Turkmen, meaning descendants from the Turkish
migrants to the area. Undoubtedly, all those people regarded
themselves as Turks, not Arabs, even though many of them speak Arabic
as a second language.” According to the famous British newspaper,
while the Turkish community was larger than the other minorities, it
was doubtful that it constituted the absolute majority of the
population.
Al-Ahram too was keen to supply its readers with an analysis of the
problem. It focussed in particular on the position of the French who
it regarded as overly protective of their friendship with Turkey,
whereas it was in their vital interests not to alienate the Syrians.
Moreover, “the covenant of the League of Nations and the provisions
of the mandate compel France to safeguard Syria which has been placed
in its trust. This places France in a very delicate position.” On the
other hand, the newspaper did not believe that turning the matter
over to the League of Nations assembly would produce a solution as
rapidly as the Turks would like. “The assembly would have to appoint
an impartial committee to consider the arguments of the rival
parties. Then it would have to hold a public referendum if the
situation called for one. All this would take an inordinate amount of
time, which would be contrary to the wishes expressed by Turkish
leaders.”
The newspaper was correct in its assessment of the potential
explosive nature of the Iskenderun question, which was precisely what
French officials in Damascus feared. On 6 December 1936, students
took to the streets in Damascus with the chant, “Long live
Iskenderun! Iskenderun belongs to Arab Syria!” The organisers of the
demonstration also dispatched a telegram to the secretary of the
League of Nations declaring, “Iskenderun is Arab and cannot be
separated from Syria.”
Syrian political leaders had little choice but to take up the call of
the street. According to an Al-Ahram news item, the “National Bloc”
moved to form a Syrian delegation that would be ready to travel to
Geneva, if necessary, in order to defend the Syrian position. The
most prominent member of the delegation was Faris Al-Khouri who had
recently produced a lengthy article, published in the Syrian press,
on the Syrian position, “substantiated by legal arguments and
incontrovertible proof that Iskenderun is a purely Syrian territory”.
It was not long before the Syrian delegation would have to act. On
the very day that a Turkish delegation, headed by the minister of
foreign affairs, left for Geneva the Syrian delegation boarded a
private airplane that took them from Tripoli to Marseilles, from
where they proceeded to Geneva over land. “The delegation carried
with it all the documentation necessary to support the Syrian point
of view, which had been laid out in two scrupulously prepared
memoranda.”
On the morning of 16 December 1936, the League of Nations assembly
convened expressly to consider the Iskenderun question. The meeting
opened with a speech by the French delegate who said that in spite of
the close friendship between his country and Turkey, France was
obliged to defend the interests of a people entrusted to its care by
the League of Nations, to lead that people towards independence and
to safeguard the territorial integrity of their country. He went on
to express his surprise at the fact that at no point during the
previous 15 years had Ankara or the inhabitants of Iskenderun raised
objection to that district’s existence within the boundaries of
Syria. He concluded his speech with a warning against the
consequences of acceding to the Turkish demand. To do so would
trigger unrest that could easily spread to other parts of the Arab
world “in view of the solidarity among the Arab peoples”.
Before the end of that day the French and Turkish delegations had
reached what Al-Ahram described as a temporary agreement. Three
observers would be sent to the sanjaq to assess the situation;
however, the French delegate insisted, this would not alter the
substance of the issue. He took the occasion to reiterate his caution
against responding to the Turkish demand, which the Arab world would
undoubtedly interpret as a bid to dismember Syria, which had only
just been granted independence.
Turkish opinion, as aired by the Turkish press, was mistrustful of
the “temporary agreement”. The general opinion was that Iskenderun
should be granted independence, as Lebanon had been, and linked
directly to France through a form of alliance. Nevertheless, Ankara
did nothing to prevent the agreement from being put into effect, and
three individuals, from Sweden, Holland and Switzerland, were
appointed as observers.
Soon afterwards a Turkish delegation arrived in Paris to press for
one of two solutions: either for France to declare Iskenderun an
independent republic within the larger Republic of Syria or to grant
the sanjaq full independence under a Franco-Turkish treaty. France
was inclined to neither alternative, which led to the rupture of
diplomatic relations between the two countries.
With the arrival of the international observer team to Iskenderun,
tension rose both within the sanjaq and abroad. On 5 January, while
the observers were in a meeting with various local officials, about
200 Turkish youths held a rally calling for the sanjaq’s
independence. More than 1,500 Syrian Arabs staged a counter
demonstration that marched to the premises where the observers were
meeting, where student leaders delivered impassioned speeches in
defence of Syria’s right to the sanjaq. To aggravate the situation
further, two days later Turkish President Kemal Ataturk arrived in
Konya just across the border from Iskenderun in Turkey. In spite of
the bitter cold — the temperature recorded that day was 7 degrees
below zero — “most of the people of Konya flocked to the train
station to greet the dictator”, as Al-Ahram reported. In the opinion
of the newspaper, this demonstration constituted further testimony to
Turkey’s determination to press its claim to the Syrian sanjaq.
In response to Ataturk’s visit to Konya, some 3,000 Arab students in
Iskenderun staged a peaceful demonstration. Sporting Syrian banners
and chanting the Syrian national anthem, the demonstrators marched
several times around the government building. Al-Ahram took the
occasion to inform its readers that the Turkish inhabitants made up
two-fifths of the sanjaq’s population and that they could be roughly
divided into three factions: secularist Kemalists who demanded the
sanjaq’s independence, traditionalists who were keen to protect Islam
and Islamic values and, in between, a large group of petty merchants
who remained silent for fear of incurring the wrath of the Kemalists.
The three groups could be identified by their preferred headgear. The
Kemalists sported the Western fedora, the Muslims the tarboush and
the merchants the beret.
In the face of the spiralling Iskenderun crisis, it was decided to
bring the question before the League of Nations. In addition, France
and Turkey resumed diplomatic contacts in the hope of reaching an
acceptable solution. This development, in turn, gave rise to
speculation that the French, in their eagerness to placate the Turks,
would not only offer guarantees to protect the rights of Turks living
in Iskenderun but would also grant Ankara certain privileges within
the province.
In Geneva, shortly before the League of Nations assembly was due to
convene, the Franco-Turkish negotiations had reached an impasse,
requiring British intervention. As Anthony Eden arrived in the Swiss
capital, the London Times revealed that although the French were
willing to offer a high degree of autonomy to the Syrian sanjaq, the
Turks were not satisfied. They remained adamant upon their demand
that the sanjaq should be accorded full independence within a federal
framework between Syria, Iskenderun and Lebanon, in accordance with
which each of these entities would have equal voting rights, even on
foreign policy matters.
As advocates of Arab national rights fretted over the potential fate
of the Syrian province, Al-Ahram featured an article that made it
appear as if their worst fears were destined to come true. On 24
January the newspaper’s banner headline read: “The Iskenderun crisis
shrouded in mystery. Al-Ahram ‘s Geneva correspondent unveils the
secrets. The time has come to reveal the confidential documents.”
The Al-Ahram correspondent confesses to having been in possession of
these secret documents for some time. However, “as Al-Ahram gave the
interests of peace priority over all other considerations, I agreed
not to release them as long as others did likewise. Yet, today, I
have learned that the newspapers in Ankara have published these
secret documents, which now obliges me to do the same.”
The first document was a correspondence from the Turkish ambassador
in Paris to the French government proposing that Syria, Lebanon and
Iskenderun become three federated states. Each of these states would
have full sovereignty except on matters of joint concern, notably
foreign policy affairs. In addition, the budgetary allocations for
the conduct of these joint matters would be distributed to the three
states on the basis of the relative sizes of their populations.
The second document was the French response to the Turkish proposal.
Although it was rather ambiguously worded, the communication
essentially expressed France’s willingness to satisfy Ankara’s
demands with regard to the administrative organisation of the
province, Turkish cultural expression, the disarmament of the
province and Turkish access to the port of Iskenderun. In the opinion
of the French official who wrote the letter, “the only questions that
remain to be solved are the appointment of the governor, a matter in
which I believe that the League of Nation’s Mandate Committee should
have a say, and the question of the sanjaq’s representation in the
Syrian parliament. The League of Nations assembly will not be
incapable of reaching a solution to these two matters.”
The ground had been laid for an agreement which soon followed. In the
opinion of Al-Ahram, the most important feature of the agreement was
that it was backed by the League of Nations, which hoped to appoint a
high commissioner to implement it. The agreement itself provided that
Iskenderun would be demilitarised and that a joint Franco-Turkish
military commission would be created to defend the province from
foreign aggression. Iskenderun would be granted wide-ranging
autonomous powers, rendering it just short of full independence,
although this was contingent upon the institution of ample guarantees
for the protection of the Arab and Armenian communities and other
minorities. Finally, the central Syrian government would have
ultimate say on foreign policy affairs and a limited number of
financial matters.
Relaying information he obtained from the British press, the Al-Ahram
correspondent in London reports that the two sides reached this
agreement only after heated debate and that it was largely due to the
efforts of Mr Eden that the Turks finally relinquished their demand
for a federal system between Syria, Lebanon and Iskenderun. The
correspondent goes on to relate, “The French were eager to satisfy
the Turkish desire to reach an agreement to protect the sanjaq. It
was around this point that the various demands revolved until an
agreement came within reach. In the opinion of the Times
correspondent, among the factors that were most instrumental in
making this agreement possible were France’s position at the head of
a large Islamic power in North Africa and Ankara’s fears of a unified
Arab stance against Turkey.”
The interlude between 24 January 1937 when Turkey and France reached
this agreement in principle, and 29 May 1937 when the Iskenderun
question was ultimately resolved by the League of Nations, was far
from a period of calm for any of the parties concerned. Upon hearing
the news of the agreement, students in Damascus went on strike and
joined the mass demonstration organised by the Committee for the
Defence of Iskenderun, headed by Fakhri Al-Baroudi. Al-Ahram relates
that following prayers in the Umayyad Mosque, some 20,000 protesters
assembled and proceeded to march through the streets of the Syrian
capital carrying Arab nationalist banners and chanting slogans in
defence of the Arab character of Iskenderun. “The protesters were led
by several thousand students marching in perfect order, while people
gathered in the streets and on their balconies to shout encouragement
to this patriotic display.”
Taking up the popular appeal, Syrian Prime Minister Jamil Mardam sped
to Geneva to attend the League of Nations meeting on the
administrative arrangements for Iskenderun. Meanwhile, the Syrian
government also decided if the situation demanded it, it would summon
the parliament to an extraordinary session to review the
Franco-Syrian Treaty.
In the meantime, technical experts from the French and Turkish
negotiating teams in Geneva haggled over a few remaining differences.
Among these were the women of Iskenderun’s right to suffrage, to
which the French were opposed, as they were to the Turkish proposal
to conduct a new census before the forthcoming elections — the
results of the census the French had recently conducted in the sanjaq
were still valid, they claimed. Another bone of contention was the
conduct of the sanjaq’s foreign relations. Although Turkey objected
strenuously at first, it was finally agreed that all the sanjaq’s
foreign relations would continue to pass through Damascus. In
addition, Iskenderun citizens would have to obtain their passports
from the Syrian government and foreign consuls wishing to open
offices in the sanjaq would have to obtain approval from Damascus.
On 29 May 1927 the League of Nations officially approved all the
points of the Franco-Turkish agreement, adding only that it would
send a five-member delegation to Iskenderun in order to make
arrangements for the elections of the sanjaq’s representatives to the
Syrian parliaments and to ensure the effective monitoring of these
elections.
The Arab response to the League of Nations decision was violent. In
Iskenderun, Arab and Armenian demonstrators took to the streets
shouting, “Syria, you are my country!” Pro- Syrian and pro-Arab
banners fluttered at the head of the processions in which female Arab
students also figured prominently. In addition, clashes erupted
between the two sides, leading to 29 casualties, of whom five were
Turks, 12 Arabs, one Armenian, eight Roman Orthodox and three Alawis.
Meanwhile, in Damascus, the Syrian parliament convened in emergency
session. With all the representatives from Iskenderun present, it
unanimously declared its commitment to the Syrian constitution, which
stated that Syria is an indivisible political entity, and to the
Franco-Syrian Treaty in accordance with which France was obliged to
defend the territorial integrity of Syria, of which Iskenderun was an
integral part.
The Syrian actions could not avert the inevitable. As Ankara
encouraged the Turkish inhabitants of Iskenderun to express their
desire to be annexed to their “motherland”, Franco- Turkish
negotiations continued, with the result that on 4 July 1938 it was
agreed to allow Turkish forces into Iskenderun. With this came the
declaration of the independent Republic of Hatay, which, in turn,
proved preliminary to the final step. On 23 June 1923 the two sides
struck an agreement in accordance with which Iskenderun was annexed
to Turkey, after which it became known in Arab nationalist circles as
the stolen sanjaq.