In the wake of WWI, when the former Ottoman Empire was being carved up, could Kurdistan have been established as a protectorate separate from Iraq and Turkey?
In the wake of WWI, when the former Ottoman Empire was being carved up, could Kurdistan have been established as a protectorate separate from Iraq and Turkey?
Actually, it was, under the original Treaty signed at Sevres. However, there were problems with implementing this. Large Kurd and Kurd-Turk inhabitated areas were arbitarily assigned to mega-Armenia, and whereas Britain occupied southern Kurdistan with Mosul, northern Kurdistan was under Turkish control. If I'm not misinformed, during the Turkish War of Independence, the Kurds mostly sided with Turkey. They had both been loyal to the Ottoman Empire, they were both Muslim, and they were both unenthusiastic about living in Armenia or western puppet-states.
At the end of the war, the Turks expected to get Mosul and southern Kurdistan back. The border with Iraq wasn't officially defined until much later, and I believe abandoning the claim was controversial.
So basically, that was already the plan, but it failed because at this point the Kurds were siding with Turkey against the implementation of Sevres.
So, if the Ottomans get particularly badly beaten in WWI and Ataturk's independence wars fail, it's plausible?
Oh, good. I just needed to know for a TL I'm doing, and in bizzaro-WWI, the Ottomans lose so badly that Russia gets Constantinople and the Bosporous as an exclave, while the rest of Thrace is divided between Greece and Hungary. Greece also gets the Dardanelles. Also, I butterflied Ataturk.
Of course in your scenario, all other things are not equal. Point is moot.