Turkey’s relations with Mosul province and the Kurds, from the late Ottoman period to the rise of ISIS.
International Conference on (Turkey and the Surrounding World: Historical and Present Perspectives), Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China, 2018.
Martin van Bruinessen.
Chinese translation published in《土耳其研究》（The Journal of Turkish Studies）vol. 2, 2020, 162-182.

The former Ottoman province of Mosul, which comprises what is now the Kurdish Autonomous Region in Iraq as well as a broad zone of ethnically and religiously mixed population whose status is still contested, has for more than a century been an important factor in debates on the ‘national’ identity of Turkey and in Turkey’s international relations. In the wake of the First World War, when the victorious allies France and Britain carved the new states of Syria, Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq out of the Arab-inhabited provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the status of Mosul remained undefined until it was finally made part of Iraq in 1926. Mosul had been one of the most diverse provinces of the Empire, with large Kurdish, Arab and Turkish (Turcoman) populations and numerous religious and ethnic minorities. Turkey’s interests in Mosul have been manifold. The province has a substantial Turkmen population, mostly living in a string of towns from Tel Afar by Kirkuk to Tuz Khurmatu, and nationalist circles in Turkey have kept the protection of these ‘outer Turks’ on the political agenda. Turkey has insufficient energy resources, and the oil of Kirkuk constitutes the nearest and possibly most stable source of supply. Since the 1970s a pipeline has transported Kirkuk oil through Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Thirdly, the Kurdish movement in Iraq, which succeeded in gaining autonomy and ultimately a semi-independent status, was eyed with concern by Turkish strategists for the impact this might have on the Kurdish population of Turkey. More recently, Ankara perceived that an alliance with the Iraqi Kurdish leaders might be the best way to contain the influence of the far more radical PKK. The PKK, which emerged in Turkey in the 1970s and started a guerrilla war in 1984, has had base camps in northern Iraq since even before that date and has established itself ever more firmly there. Since the 1980s, the Turkish army has repeatedly carried out incursions into northern Iraq in attempts to capture or kill Kurdish guerrillas. In the wake of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Turkey increased its military presence in northern Iraq. It has several permanent bases, whose presence is grudgingly tolerated by the Kurdish Regional Government. The rise of ISIS and its rapid conquest in 2014 of most of the contested zone between Arab Iraq and the Kurdish Autonomous Region made the Kurds – both the Iraqi Kurds and the Syrian Kurds closely affiliated with the PKK – int.. [1]