WI: Independent Kurdistan after 1918

It'd have to stay a British or French puppet in order to survive.

A League of Nations mandate with (supposedly) guidance towards eventual independence, like those actually set up in OTL, you mean? I think this would be both possible and desirable.
 
The main problem becomes why? As far as I can see it doesn't profit the French or British whose Mandate land it would have to be mostly carved out of, for example if it includes northern Iraq then what benefit is there for the British over having it as a part of the Kingdom of Iraq. If anything it's a net loss since in the late 1910s the northern fields around Mosul were the main ones in Iraq, it's why the British nicked the Mosul vilayet a few days after the Armistice of Mudros. British firms will get the oil contracts either way but as part of Iraq it can be used to fund the rest of the country without the British having to spend any of their own money, a bit like how the Northern Nigerian Protectorate and the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria were combined to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria since the north was running at a loss necessitating the British spend their own money to make up the difference whilst the south was running a surplus thanks to their oil revenues.
 

katchen

Banned
Clenenceau would have to put his foot down at Versailles and say to Lloyd George "No, you shall not have Mosul"!
An independent Kurdestan makes sense as a French mandate to cement French control of the Mosul oilfields with a pipeline to the Alawite Mandate at Latakia. The French would need to take more territory from Turkey, though. Places like Diyabakir and Mersin and Gaziantep that would establish contiguity with Hatay and Latakia. And maybe the Alevi belt too. And France was tired out at the end of World War I. Still, having it's own oil deposits would have been a real temptation.
It would have left the French in the Middle East supporting the Shia-non-Sunni populations against the Sunni. Which would complicate matters for them in Algeria. But it would get them their own oil. :D
 
Except that it was the British who had moved into the Mosul vilayet and occupied it. If the French start getting shirty and refuse the deal then why would the British turn it over to them? They're just as likely to say 'Sod you then', turn the place back over to the Turks and insist that the Armistice of Mudros is followed to the letter. AFAIK the French had little in the way of serious military presence in the region at the time so there wouldn't be much they could do.
 
If there was a separate Kurdish anti Ottoman revolt. I would also add a separate Shia and Assyrian anti Ottoman revolt. The British reward the rebel commanders with their own British colonies.
 

katchen

Banned
Well the French COULD have moved further north from Syria than they did and created a Kurdish mandate in Western Kurdestan centered around Diyabakir, maybe extending all the way to Van in 1920. Interestingly, there are three major oilfields around Diyabakir too, as it turns out, one of which was first drilled in 1939, so it was fairly obvious.
Of course the French would have been under pressure by Arab nationalists to consolidate French Kurdestan into a Greater Syria under Sunni Arab rule as in OTL. But with a Kurdish population in such a Greater Syria at 40%, when non- Sunni Arabs would be taken into account, Sunni Arabs would make up only an equivalent 40% of the population with the balance of the population held by non-Sunni Arabs such as Alawites, Christians and Druse. Altogether a very different place, much more resembling Iraq than the Syria we know OTL. That's assuming that the French did not simply give the Kurds an independent state with acces to the Mediterannean via Hatay and Alexandretta.
 
Except that it was the British who had moved into the Mosul vilayet and occupied it. If the French start getting shirty and refuse the deal then why would the British turn it over to them? They're just as likely to say 'Sod you then', turn the place back over to the Turks and insist that the Armistice of Mudros is followed to the letter. AFAIK the French had little in the way of serious military presence in the region at the time so there wouldn't be much they could do.

Perhaps a deal where the French get Lebanon, an Alwaite state including Aleppo, and Kurdistan, but Damascus gets to go to the British allied Hashemites?
 
What happens if the Kurds get their own country after WWI ends?

Though I'm sure you're looking for a Kurdistan that arises directly after World War I, what about a surviving Republic of Mahabad? Rather than dealing with trying the dueling interests of the United Kingdom and France, it seems like all the Republic of Mahabad needed was stronger Soviet support to survive.

Of course, in order to keep an independent Kurdish Republic, the Soviet goals in the region would have to be altered from the annexation of the Mahabad to Azerbaijan to something more compatible with Kurdish independence.
 
Perhaps a deal where the French get Lebanon, an Alawite state including Aleppo, and Kurdistan, but Damascus gets to go to the British allied Hashemites?
It's possible, but if it comes down to oilfields versus the Hashemite's feelings then I can't really see the British losing much sleep over Faisal's disappointment. Besides he got the runner-up prize of Iraq so it's not he was completely screwed on the deal.
 

katchen

Banned
Well, the British initially WERE in Damascus after they took Palestine in 1917. The French were given Damascus, Hauran, the Golan and Jebel Druze as compensation for losing Mosul.
I think that the British could live with an independent Kurdish Republic of Mahadabad if a) they had no choice in the matter because the Red Army standing on the east bank of the Tigris River and b) Mahadabad stayed independent ala People's Republic of Mongolia, even if it did become a Communist government, rather than become a Soviet Socialist Republic. Churchill would NOT be happy about losing the Kirkuk oilfields, but as we all know now, Iraq has plenty of other oilfields. People just have to go looking for them.
Such a Kurdish-Azerbijani state would encompass Tabriz and Sanandaj and perhaps Van. And by the way, butterfly Ali Khamenei out of Iran. He would grow up in the People's Republic of Mahadabad. :D
 
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