Cyprus-Forum.com

[GreekForumer]

Here is a little bit of history about the short-lived Republic of Hatay (sanjak of Alexandretta). It existed between 1938-9 before it was annexed by Turkey.


"In the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, Turkey had renounced any claim to its former territories. But in 1936, when Syria was slated for independence under the mandate, Kemal Atatürk approached France over the question of Alexandretta. Turkey insisted that a majority of its population were Turks, and that it should revert to the Turkish Republic. France insisted that the Sanjak would maintain its own autonomy within independent Syria.

But this was 1936, and France remembered that Turkey had joined the Central Powers in World War I. In an effort to keep Turkey from drifting towards Germany again, efforts were made to accommodate the Turks. The matter was referred to the League, and Syrian independence delayed. In May of 1937 the League recommended an autonomous Sanjak which would control its own internal affairs, but whose external affairs would be under Syria; it would be demilitarized.

Arab nationalists insisted there were 125,000 Arabs, Christian and Muslim, and Armenians in the Sanjak and only 85,000 Turks; the Turks insisted there was a Turkish majority. A French census found a Turkish population of 46% , a minority but the largest single group in the population. Neither side readily accepted those numbers. But France and Turkey subsequently agreed to a Turkish “preponderance”of influence in the region, which in late 1938 elected a Turkish President and renamed itself the State of Hatay.

Since Syrian independence had been postponed, Hatay was technically still under French mandate. In June of 1939, with European war imminent, France signed an agreement on mutual assistance with Turkey and separately ceded the Hatay to Turkey. Turkey took over, and pressured non-Turks who would not accept Turkish citizenship to leave."

http://www.theestimate.com/public/102398.html


"Turkey insisted that a majority of its population were Turks, and that it should revert to the Turkish Republic"




Turkish population of 46%



"pressured non-Turks who would not accept Turkish citizenship to leave"

Tens of thousands of Armenians, Greeks, Arabs and others "left". Many of these Armenians, by the way, were survivors and descendants of the survivors of the Genocide. Some of them went to Cyprus. I wonder if there are any Armenians that fled Turkish rule 3 times (1915,1939,1974). There were certainly many that fled twice.

It appears that before the "Cyprus Problem", Turkey had the "Hatay Problem". But that problem was solved in 1939. Essentially, the problem was that a majority of the population did not want their country to become annexed to Turkey.

Some interesting excerpts from Time Magazine articles to follow.

[GreekForumer]

Hittites' Return
Monday, Sep. 12, 1938
Most noteworthy non-governmental preoccupations of President-Dictator Mustafa Kamal Ataturk of Turkey are history, archeology, language. Long ago Dictator Kamal Ataturk set archeologists to work digging up old Hittite civilizations of Asia Minor. Favorite Kamal Ataturk theses— largely unconfirmed by reputable anthropologists and philologists—are that the Turk is a lateral descendant of the old Hittite, that modern Turkish springs from one of the as-yet-undeciphered Hittite languages, that all other languages spring from the Turkish.

President Kamal Atatürk's habit of renaming Anatolian villages to suit Hittite history has long kept Turkish railway ticket sellers on the jump. When, two years ago, Dictator Kamal Ataturk first made up his mind that the 80,000 Turks of the Sanjak of Alexandretta of French-mandated Syria would suffer unduly under independent Syrian rule, he began his campaign for an autonomous Sanjak by calling the region "Hatay." While sanjak is an old Turkish word meaning district, Hatay was the still older name of the old Hittite Empire. Early this summer the Sanjak became autonomous under joint French and Turkish protection. Last week the Turkish majority in the Sanjak's Legislature also became Hittite-conscious. They formally changed the name of the Sanjak of Alexandretta to the Republic of Hatay.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760176,00.html


How would Turks "suffer unduly" under Syrian rule ?

[GreekForumer]

Kamâl Atatürk Kicks
Monday, Jan. 18, 1937
In the ancient Syrian city of Antioch last week a batch of League of Nations observers huddled on their hotel balcony while the street directly before them echoed with pistol shots, wild Turkish and Syrian yells, the thud of brickbats, groans. When police finally cleared the cobbled street, one slippered rioter was dead, eight others gravely injured.

All this was because the Turkish Dictator, hard-drinking but soberly-masterful Mustafa Kamâl Atatürk ("Father of the Turks"), is now kicking strenuously against the announced intention of France to grant a form of independence to Syria which is a French mandate. Turkey was furious after the World War when the Turkish city of Antioch and its sanjak

(district) of Alexandretta were mandated by the League to France as part of Syria.

Dictator Kamâl Atatürk last week rushed with Turkish troops to the Syrian frontier and presumably his bravoes staged the riot in Antioch. Immediately afterward the tense atmosphere suddenly, mysteriously cleared. The Dictator returned to Istanbul and his Foreign Office announced that it was dickering amicably with French Premier Léon Blum.

Turkey asks that, when so-called independence is given to Syria (which will actually remain under French influence) separate so-called independence be also given to Alexandretta. With this status "independent Alexandretta" would actually be under Dictator Kamâl Atatürk's thumb, and he wants a leased right-of-way for Turkish produce to the city of Alexandretta. vital Syrian port.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,770484,00.html

[GreekForumer]

96th Council
Monday, Feb. 01, 1937
The French and the Turks, past masters of diplomacy, fenced delicately over what was now admitted in Geneva to be virtually a demand by Dictator Kama! Atatürk ("Father of the Turks") that France hand over to him from her Syrian mandate the sanjak (district) of Alexandretta, scene of recent bloody riots . Sagely observed a veteran League sec- retary, "Like everyone else, except the English and the French, the Turks have now become dynamic and got the 'gimmes.' Today they want Alexandretta, tomorrow it will be the oil fields of Mosul.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,788636,00.html


"Today they want Alexandretta, tomorrow it will be the oil fields of Mosul."

[GreekForumer]

Triumph & Triumph
Monday, Feb. 15, 1937
"The League Council had agreed that: 1) ,the Alexandretta district shall have its own administration under supervision of a League High Commissioner of French nationality, 2) it shall owe allegiance to Syria three years hence when France gives up her Syrian mandate, 3) Turkey and France shall 'guarantee its international integrity'. Foreign Minister Dr. Aras knew that this 'strictly legal and just settlement' would give Dictator Kamal Atatürk virtual dominion of Alexandretta, that Turks would have free access for their goods through Alexandretta's economically vital port."


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,882686,00.html

[GreekForumer]

Boiling Pot
Monday, Jun. 13, 1938
The Sanjak (province) of Alexandretta*is in the transition stage. It became technically autonomous last year when it was eased from the control of French mandated Syria. This week, the Sanjak's 220,000 inhabitants will go to the polls, in an election conducted by the League of Nations, to vote themselves a legislature. The predominant nationality of the legislature will profoundly influence the Sanjak's destiny. That this destiny was important to its neighbors as well as . the Sanjak, was plain last week. Turkish soldiers were reported concentrating on the northern border and French Foreign Legionnaires enforced martial law in Alexandretta and Antioch. Riots had broken out between tarbooshed, orthodox Moslem Arabs and European-hatted, free-thinking Turks.

Nestling in a mountainous region along the Turkish border on the eastern Mediterranean, the 1,500-square-mile district, is a true Levantine melting pot. The Sanjak contains substantial numbers of Turks, Alaouites, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, Greeks and Circassians. Only two and a half hours by car from railway junction Aleppo, 200 miles from Damascus (see map), the Sanjak has one irresistible attraction for Great and Small Powers alike: the landlocked Gulf of Alexandretta, even in its undeveloped state one of the safest, best ports of the Levantine coast.

As long as a great European power like France ruled over Syria, President-Dictator Kamal Atatikk ("Father of the Turks") bothered little over his Sanjak children . Two years ago, however, France agreed to relinquish her mandate in 1939, decided to split Syria into two parts (Syria and Lebanon), left the Sanjak to be governed from Damascus by Syrian "Arabs. For the Father of the Turks, the spectacle of a petty Arab nation, formerly a subject people, ruling over their oldtime Turkish masters was too much. He protested to France and the League. Twice he moved his troops to the border to "protect" his Sanjak children, once he held a military powwow on a border-bound train. Only his cautious prime minister, deaf, stubborn Ismet Inonii, persuaded him from ordering his soldiers to fire .

The Turks constitute some 40% of the population, hold 75% of the region's wealth, are by far the largest minority. France agreed to the present arrangement, which is supposed to give the Sanjak Assembly home rule, except that Syria will control foreign affairs and communications, France, Syria and Turkey will defend the Sanjak from invasion, and Turkey will have a free port in the city of Alexandretta. What Turkey was betting on was that once a Turk-dominated Assembly was seated, the Sanjak would become effectually Turkish.

But Kamal Atatürk reckoned without the strength of Armenians, Kurds, Arabs and Circassians, all past victims of heavy Turkish oppression, who banded together for once in a firm anti-Turkish bloc.

To build up a strong Turkish majority , Dictator Kamal Atatürk dispatched from 4,000 to 5,000 persons into the Sanjak, all carrying authentic passports indicating they were born in the district. Most striking blow against the Father of the Turks, however, was the discovery that 12.000 real Turks had registered as Arabs. The wily Arabs sent chiefs into the Alaouite districts to stir up anti-Turkish feeling, get out the vote. Most serious development was the free flow of arms into Alexandretta, creating a charged atmosphere, leading to clashes in which 100 were killed, many wounded. Meanwhile, Arab numbers grew until from neutral Near Eastern sources last week came assurances that in a free, honest count the Turks would have little chance of winning.

*Sanjak originally was Turkish for the Standard carried by a district's governor.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,848997-2,00.html


According to the official parliamentary elections on July 22, 1938 there were 56,613 voters in Hatay. These were as follows:

* 63.32% Turkish Sunni Muslims: 35,847
* 20.00% Alevis: 11,319
* 9.72% Armenians: 5,504
* 3.71% Orthodox Christians: 2,098
* 3.26% Arab Sunni Muslims: 1,845


The 40 seats of the parliament were distributed as follows:

* 22 Turkish Sunni Muslims
* 9 Turkish Alevis
* 5 Armenians
* 2 Arab Sunni Muslims
* 2 Orthodox Christians

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Hatay

[GreekForumer]

Key Slipped?
Monday, Jul. 11, 1938
Turkish troops were scheduled this week to march peacefully over the southern border of Turkey into the 10,000-square-mile Sanjak (province) of Alexandretta, an autonomous district of French-mandated, soon-to-be-independent Syria. Sent back to Geneva on the demand of Turkey, at the request of France, was the League of Nations Commission which had been invited to supervise the election of a legislature which, if held, would have amounted to a plebiscite for Turkish or Syrian rule.

In Ankara, Turkey's capital, bespectacled, chubby, methodical Premier Jelal Bayar shouted to the one-party Grand National Assembly that Hatay—the name for the Sanjak affected by the Turks after the Hittite regime that ruled there over 3,000 years ago—"must be Turkish-ruled." In Syria's capital, Damascus, Arab leaders called for a policy of noncooperation with France. Throughout much of the Arab world — from Asia Minor to Aden, from Tigris to Nile — there was dismay over this latest of a long list of betrayals by the Big Powers. For Turkey, former master of the Arabs, was clearly about to gain, with the tacit consent of the French, a valuable economic key to Arab nations.

A detachment of 2,500 Turkish troops was to enter the Sanjak by agreement with France. There they were to "help" an equal number of French troops to "maintain order" when the often postponed elections are finally held. The date is not set yet. According to Arab sympathizers, the reason the League of Nations Commission's elections were not held was that France had secretly promised Turkey that at least 22 of the Sanjak's 40 assembly seats would go to Turks. Since Turks number no more than 40% of the population, since many Sanjak Turks dislike Dictator Kamal Atatürk's regime, France found it impossible to deliver the votes to Turkey against a united anti-Turkish majority of mixed nationalities while an honest international commission was watching. With the commission gone, say anti-Turks, the elections can now be managed so as not to offend Kamal Atatürk's troops.

In Paris last week, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet and Turkish Ambassador Suad Davaz signed an accord on the long-smoldering Sanjak question. For France the accord represented a diplomatic rout, compensated only by the fact that by appeasing Turkey, France has weaned President-Dictator Kamal Atatürk further away from Germany. For Turkey it was a victory for strong-man policies. For Syria, occupation of the Sanjak by Turkish troops means a loss of her one good harbor at Alexandretta. The Sanjak cannot legally become Turkish without League of Nations sanction, but with Turkish troops there it will be an easy matter to slip the strategic territory into Dictator Kamal Atatürk's outstretched arms.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,849082,00.html

[shahmaran]

and your point? or are we supposed to cleverly piece it all together and read your mind?

[GreekForumer]

Semitic Friends
Monday, Jul. 03, 1939
Hatay is a melting pot of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Alaouites, Greeks, Circassians and Turks. Of these, the Turks are most numerous, constituting 40% of the population. Taking a leaf from Führer Hitler's book and even improving on his methods, the Turks first asked for (and got) minority rights for their nationals in Hatay, next autonomy for the region, next "independence," with Turkish and French troops jointly "keeping order." At one time the late President Kamal Atatürk backed up his demands by massing troops along the Syrian border. At another time a League of Nations plebiscite was to be held in the district, but when most of the non-Turks banded together and it became obvious that the Turks could not win, the obliging French invited the League Commission to leave.

When early this spring France and Britain began to form their Stop Hitler bloc, they wanted an alliance with Turkey. Quickly the Turks signed up with Britain, but to join France they asked a price: out & out annexation of Hatay.

Last week the French paid the price, and as Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Saracoglu and French Ambassador Rene Massigli signed Hatay away at Ankara, at Paris French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet and Turkish Ambassador Suad Davaz initiated a treaty of mutual assistance. Out of the Hatay deal France was able to wangle only a few concessions: minorities who want to leave the territory within 18 months will be able to do so with all their goods and cattle; the northern slopes of Jebel Akra, a mountainous part of Hatay largely populated by Armenians, will go to adjacent Syria. To go to Turkey, however, is the mountain of Musa Dagh, scene of the 1935 best-seller Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Last week the tough Armenians who underwent the siege of 1915 there served notice on the French Chamber of Deputies that they would again resist a Turkish occupation. But the real losers of last week's French-Turkish diplomacy were the Arabs. As for the Republic of Syria, it will be a landlocked country, dispossessed of a sea outlet. From the sloping hills of Southern Anatolia to the sharp, barren rocks of Aden there were bound to be universal and indignant protests that the Arabs had again been betrayed, that an Arab State had again suffered as the pawn of British-French power politics. The soft, sweet words that Aggrandizer Hitler undoubtedly whispered to Khalid al Hud at Berchtesgaden, the inflammable anti-British and anti-French propaganda that goes over the ether nightly from Italian and German radio stations, will probably fall on more receptive Arab ears hereafter.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761578-3,00.html

[GreekForumer]

and your point? or are we supposed to cleverly piece it all together and read your mind?

The point is........

You can have your 20% Cyprus Partition if you return 60% of Hatay province back to the 60% non-Turks (whom it was stolen from by fraud, back in 1939). It's only fair. Don't you think ?