Turks and Kurds 100 years after Sykes-Picot

Edward Mortimer (CMG, Vice President of the Global Salzburg Seminars and Fellow of All Souls College Oxford)

Until the First World War the whole of western Kurdistan was part of the Ottoman empire. The present state frontiers in the region, which place the southern Kurds in Iraq and Syria, result essentially from the secret agreement reached by France and Britain in 1916. Recent events have called these frontiers into question, as first Iraq and then Syria have fragmented along sectarian and ethnic lines, and now the self-styled "Islamic State" (ISIS) is in control of large swathes of both countries. Meanwhile Turkey has formed a close relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, and has become more willing to recognise a separate Kurdish identity (though not an autonomous political entity) within its borders. But in the last few months the "peace process" between the government and the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish guerrilla group, the PKK, has been thrown into question by the government's reluctance to help the PKK's Syrian affiliate in its struggle against ISIS. This lecture will examine the changing dynamics of the region and the ways in which relations between Turks are evolving, both inside and outside Turkey's present frontiers.