Border Settlement Dynamics and Border Status Quo: A Comparative Analysis of Turkey’s Borders

ABSTRACT

There is a plethora of research on border disputes, border dispute resolution, unsettled borders, and artificially drawn borders. Yet, no study has so far been conducted on the comparative analysis of borders settled with mandatory powers and between nation-states. This article fills this research lacuna and makes a novel contribution to border scholarship by exploring the linkages between border settlement dynamics and the border status quo. In analysing and comparing Turkey’s borders drawn between the 1920s and the 1930s, it is shown that Turkey’s Iraqi and Syrian borders settled with mandatory powers (Britain and France respectively) have resulted in the emergence of alternative border imaginations by one of the neighbouring states, albeit without reaching the level of an official demand to change the status quo. Since its independence, Syria has produced an alternative border imagination with respect to its Turkish border by showing Turkey’s Hatay province within its borders in its official maps and documents. Since the cession of Mosul to Iraq, Turkey’s alternative border imagination has taken the form of state actors’ contemplations about resettling the border. In sharp contrast, the Turkish-Iranian border, settled after long consultations between two independent nation-states, effectively resolved boundary-related problems, resulting in the mutual endorsement of the border status-quo. This article concludes that border settlement processes create path-dependent effects that are carried over to subsequent generations of state actors.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Mandated territories had a distinct legal status as they were neither colonies nor independent states (Getachew 2019). Differing from colonial settlements, in the League of Nations mandate system, they were considered to be in transitionary stages towards full independence under the supervision of mandatory powers.

2. The border status quo refers to the maintenance of the borderline along the parameters outlined in the last border delimitation agreement.

3. This study defines states’ alternative border imaginations as state actors’ challenges to the border status quo through discursive and performative claims about borders without turning into an actual dispute.

4. Mental maps are meanings, emotions and passions associated to territories irrespective of geographical maps (Migdal 2004).

5. The Treaty of Sevres was signed between the allied powers and the Ottoman Empire in 1920. Yet, this treaty was never ratified.

6. According to the Turkish statistics presented to the British delegation, Turkish people were the second largest group in Mosul followed by the Kurds. The British statistics, on the other hand, showed the Turks as the third largest group followed by the Kurds and the Arabs (The League of Nations).

7. Mosul’s oil resources and strategic location were crucial factors that determined Britain’s policies over Mosul (Pedersen 2007). However, Beck (1981) and Okur (2020) claim that even if Mosul had had no oil, Britain would still have insisted on keeping Mosul within Iraq’s border to ensure Iraq’s territorial integrity and would have made no concessions as an imperial policymaker.

8. Even though the Kurds were the largest ethnic group, the complex ethnic composition of the country led the commissioners to rule out the possibility of drawing of the Turkish-Iraqi border based on ethnicity (Rogers 2007).

9. France divided Syria into numerous states with Alexandretta attached to the State of Aleppo. After the unification of the states of Aleppo and Damascus in 1924, Alexandretta became part of the State of Syria (Firat and Kurkcuoglu 2011).

10. While on the one hand the 19^th century witnessed the diffusion of the norm of sovereignty to non-European periphery, on the other hand, Western countries violated “the Westphalian sovereignty of non-Western states” through territorial imperialism (claiming jurisdiction over non-Western societies) and extraterritorial imperialism (extraterritorial juristiction) (Kayaoglu 2010, 18).

11. The Kurds, who had a semi-autonomous status during the Ottoman period, struggled with adapting to the centralised system of modern Turkey (Kaymaz 2007). In this respect, the roots of the Ararat Uprising lied in the Kurds’ dissatisfaction with Turkey’s new state structure. That Turkey had not yet consolidated its power in its periphery during that period provided a permissive environment for the uprising (Kocer 2004).

12. France established and consolidated its position in the French-mandated territory of Syria by favouring Christian minorities, focusing on religious, sectarian and urban/rural differences. The Muslim majority saw the French rule, which was built upon imperial logic of the divide and rule, as illegitimate. Against the backdrop of its weakened economy after World War I and unstable coalition governments, France’s rule of Syria was wrecked with inconsistent and ineffective policies. During this period, urban leaders in Syria opposed the French rule by mobilising people around nationalistic ideas with a specific aim to achieve Syrian independence. Seeing Arab nationalism as a threat to its rule in Syria, France directly confronted Arab nationalists by isolating and disarming them (Khoury 1987).