Last modified: 2020-08-07 by ian macdonald
Keywords: kurdistan | soran | ararat | crescent (white) | mountain | disc (red) | disc (yellow) | southern kurdistan |
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image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 20 March 2017
The first Kurdish state was the Emirate of Soran, proclaimed in
1816 and ended in 1835.
Jaume Ollé, 01 October 1997
With the division of the Ottoman
Empire at the end of First World War, the Kurds expected
independence (like the Arabs and Armenians), and the 1920 Treaty of
Sèvres provided for this. Turkey never ratified the treaty,
and it was replaced by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which made no
mention of Kurdish independence.
Turkey did give up all non-Turkish areas lost in the war, and the
Vilayet of Mosul was temporarily awarded to the multi-racial (Arab
and Kurdish) state of Iraq. This decision
was supposed to be revisited in 25 years, but no international body
has done so. In 1922, Mahmoud Barzandji, governor of Mosul,
proclaimed himself King of Southern Kurdistan (i.e. northern Iraq).
This flag seems to have been quite forgotten by subsequent Kurdish
nationalist movements (or deliberately ignored due to its Turkish
connection). In 1923-24 the British mandatory power in Iraq regained
control of Kurdistan.
T. F. Mills, 27 September 1997
The flag of the Kingdom was green with centered red circle and
within the circle a white crescent pointed to fly. The royal standard
was the same flag with royal crown.
Jaume Ollé, 01 October 1997
The flag is shown in two sources
T. F. Mills, 25 November 1997
The 1922 photograph was from a book: "Kurdistan in the Shadow of History" by
Susan Meiselas (Random House, 1997), p. 83. It
is a very well researched and
sourced picture book. On the opposite page is a sketch of the flag, taken from "Cim
Di" (What I Saw) by Ahmed Kwaja (1970.) Kwaja specifies the colours of the flag.
The photo is now available on the internet:
https://kurdistan.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Drakhshan-Hafid-Archives-Sheikh-Mahmoud-s-family-1900s-1950s/G00006M4hLt1VJE4/I0000Op7kRY4OMmU
The captions in the book and internet are almost identical. The book
credit is "unknown [photographer]/Courtesy Rafiq Studio."
My own comment:
the uniforms of the troops in the photo are Ottoman Turkish. They were either
raided from a military store in Suleimaniyeh, or all these men had been just
previously serving in the Turkish Army. The light tunics with fezzes are
officers. The dark tunics are enlisted men with Kurdish headdress. The Ottoman
army of WWI also employed all-Kurdish irregular units, but only the officers
were uniformed.
T.F. Mills, 26 June 2020
The Republic of Ararat existed between 1927 and 1931 in the
Northeast of Turkey.
Jaume Ollé, 4 October 1997