WI: French Mosul

The Original Sykes-Picot Agreement assigned Mosul to France. Britain ended up getting Mosul though.


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What if France had gotten Mosul as part of their Syrian Mandate?

The French may perhaps create statelets within their mandate for the Assyrians, Turkmen, Yazidi, and Kurmanji Kurds. Maybe not all of those groups, but certainly some of them.

France is now on the other side of the Mosul Question TTL. I wonder if they would settle it differently, or if they would settle the boundary with Turkey any differently than OTL.

The French handed over Alexandretta to Turkey in 1938 OTL for the purposes of coaxing them away from the Axis. I wonder if they'd do something similar here with Mosul, which I think was higher on the list for the Turks.

Most of the oil was around Kirkuk IIRC, so Iraq should still be quite oil-rich. They won't have to share their oil with Turkey here though (as was part of the resolution of the Mosul Question OTL).
Iraq is less Kurdish and less Sunni Arab here. The country might be a bit more stable.
 
As the map shows, the original SPA would require Russia to make it to Versailles, which would change a lot. Imo if you want to cut up Anatolia, you need Russian troops for the enforcement/fear factor.

If the topic is just what happens to the French zone, I suppose they would create a Syrian and Kurdish Protectorate and Mosul would be given to Kurdistan with decolonization of the region.
 
As the map shows, the original SPA would require Russia to make it to Versailles, which would change a lot. Imo if you want to cut up Anatolia, you need Russian troops for the enforcement/fear factor.

If the topic is just what happens to the French zone, I suppose they would create a Syrian and Kurdish Protectorate and Mosul would be given to Kurdistan with decolonization of the region.

I'm not asking about all those swathes of Turkey being part of French Syria.

I'm specifically asking about Mosul being part of French Syria.
 
I'm not asking about all those swathes of Turkey being part of French Syria.

I'm specifically asking about Mosul being part of French Syria.
You can’t take Russia out of this. The reason the British were willing to give Mosul away is because they didn’t want to have a border with Russia. It was on France to play the role of the buffer of the region. Turkey isn't getting Alexandretta and France will not consider giving Mosul away to a Turkey that doesn't even control the Straits or eastern Anatolia. Turkey is a non-factor. Not even on the same wavelength compared to OTL. This was the kind of world that the original SPA envisioned. We can't just pretend that the parts of the package we didn't like about it wouldn't happen.

The French could probably run Mousl well. The economy would be based off resource extraction (oil) and railroads would be built connecting with the rest of Syria for that purpose. The area would stay ethnically heterogeneous with no genocide though the Kurds would be the majority. Things stay that way until independence unless some big European War breaks out first.
 
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do not recall the division of the oil, the pipeline(s) split at some junction, part thru Syria-Lebanon and part thru British Mandate Palestine.

do not know if that was the French "share" of oil thru their territory or their "purchases."
 
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