Draft:Northern Syrian Regions

The Northern Syrian Territories^[1] (Upper Syrian Territories), also known as the Northern Syrian Sanjaks, Cilicia, and Upper Mesopotamia, were regions of northern Ottoman Syria annexed to Turkey under the 1921 Treaty of Ankara between France and the Turkish National Movement, in exchange for Turkey's recognition of the French Mandate for Syria. The Allies adopted this bilateral agreement in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, establishing a new border between Turkey on one side and Britain and France on the other. This new treaty amended the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which followed World War I and had defined Turkey's borders with its neighbors. The earlier treaty significantly reduced Turkey's territory compared to the Ottoman Empire, particularly to the west, where large areas were ceded to Bulgaria and Greece. As a result of French defeats in battles within Anatolia against Turkish nationalists, the Allies were compelled to make concessions to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in order to end the aftermath of World War I and reach a peace agreement with Türkiye. Since Syria was under French mandate, this made it easier for the French to make concessions regarding the territories under their control, especially to punish the Syrians for resisting the French invasion in the Battle of Maysalun and its aftermath.

Location and Geography

These areas lie north of the railway line between Istanbul and Baghdad,^[2] which served as a modified border between Turkey and Syria (in the Treaty of Lausanne) up to the point where the current Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish border meets. This placed the following areas (from west to east) within Turkish territory: Mersin, Tarsus, Cilicia, Adana, Maraş, Gaziantep, Kilis, Birecik, Urfa, Harran, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Nusaybin, Ibn Omar Island. Furthermore, the new border line, established above the railway, ran through the cities of Nusaybin, Jarabulus, and Ras al-Ayn, effectively dividing them between Syria and Turkey. Khadduri estimated the area of these regions (the difference between the borders of the Treaty of Sèvres and the Treaty of Lausanne) to be over 18,000 square kilometers of Syrian territory ceded to Turkey.

The peaks of the Taurus Mountains, or the winding line connecting Diyarbakir (in the northeast), Maraş (in the north-central region), and Mersin (in the west), are considered the border between Arab lands and Turkey.The Franco-British correspondence leading up to the Sykes-Picot Agreement included a clear reference to the borders of Syria. The following text contains instructions from the French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister (Brian) to his ambassador in London (Paul Cambon) and the French negotiator (Georges Picot). A French Foreign Ministry telegram dated October 9, 1915, refers to these borders as follows:

Having made this reservation, the simplest solution seems to be to maintain Syria's current administrative borders. Thus, its territory would include the provinces or districts of Jerusalem, Beirut, Lebanon, Damascus, and Aleppo, and in the northwest, the entire portion of the Adana province located south of the Taurus Mountains.

In a meeting of the first Arab parliament in history, the participants in the General Syrian Congress in June 1919 supported Prince Faisal bin Hussein’s demands at the Paris Peace Conference for a unified Arab state south of the Alexandretta-Diyarbakir line.

The historical affiliation of these regions with the Levant

In the twelfth century AD, Al-Sharif Al-Idrisi visited these regions during his journey, and wrote in his book Nuzhat Al-Mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq Al-Afaq, in the opening of the fifth part of the fourth region, in describing this region, the following:^[3]

...and from the Levantine lands are Antarsus, Latakia, Antioch, Mopsuestia, Adana, Ain Zarba, Tarsus, Qarqus, Hamartash, Antalya al-Muharraqa, Antalya al-Muhaddatha, al-Batira, al-Mira, Jun al-Muqri, and the fortress of Astroubli. And from the Levantine lands are the desert regions of Famiya, the fortress of Salamiyah, Qinnasrin, al-Qastal, Aleppo, al-Rusafa, al-Raqqa, al-Rafiqa, Bajrawan, al-Jisr, Manbij, Marash, Saruj, Harran, al-Ruha, al-Hadath, Samosata, Malatya, the fortress of Mansur, Zabatra, Jarsun, al-Lin, al-Badhandur, Quwa, and Tulab. We must clarify the news of all these lands...

History of the region

These regions form the northern part of the Fertile Crescent, encompassing vast plains and fertile lands such as the Harran Plain, and abundant water resources from the Euphrates, Tigris, and Khabur rivers. Geographically, these lands are part of Greater Syria, located south of the Taurus Mountains, the natural border between Syria and Turkey.^[4]

Political and Cartographical Status

Internationally, the territories are recognized as sovereign parts of the Republic of Turkey. However, within Syria, official state maps, school textbooks, and government publications historically continued to include these northern territories—especially the Sanjak of Alexandretta—within the sovereign borders of the Syrian Arab Republic, depicting them as occupied or usurped lands.^[5]

References

↑ جريدة الوطن، 2014. دعوة لإلغاء جميع القوانين والاتفاقيات التي عقدها المستعمر الفرنسي باسم بلادنا...اتفاقية أنقرة 1921 م اتفاقية باطلة من كل النواحي القانونية والوطنية وهي خارج الشرعية والمنطق. تاريخ الولوج 16 آب 2014. Archived 2014-08-19 at the Wayback Machine
↑ حجار، جوزيف. 1999. سورية بلاد الشام: تجزئة وطن. دار طلاس. ص 20.
↑ الشريف الإدريسي. نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق. المجلد الثاني. الجزء السادس من الإقليم الرابع. دار عالم الكتب. ص 643
↑ اخميس، حنان. 2005. سوريا الكبرى. دنيا الرأي Archived 2020-11-23 at the Wayback Machine. تاريخ الولوج 31 كانون الثاني 2010.Template:تأكيد موثوقية Template:استشهاد بويب
↑ Pipes, Daniel (1992). Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195060225.