The Relationships between the Soviet Union and the Turkey (1920-1930) and its impact on the Kurdish issue

Abstract

Relations between Russia and Turkey have gone through five centuries at different stages, sometimes in difficult wars and conflicts, sometimes in harmony and good relations. However, conditions changed in the eighteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire was weakened and disintegrated. Russia played an important role in cutting down parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as in reducing the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, which was considered a great nation for centuries.

At the end of the First World War, after the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, Russian troops withdrew from the war fronts. The Bolshevik government exposed the secret clauses of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, with the Quadruple Alliance, led by Germany and the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire, like its German ally, took advantage of the withdrawal of Russian troops from the war fronts. In contrast to the agreement, attacks were launched on the Caucasus regions controlled by Russian Russia. However, following the emergence of the Turkish National Movement, led by Mustafa Kemal and the signing of the Sevre Treaty and there were changes in the war fronts, as in the political arena. Russia, which became Soviet Russia at that time, found a new friend and ally, which had common interests with Soviet Russia, against the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other. Both countries have benefited from this friendship and alliance.

But at a time when the Kurds, especially in the Ottoman Kurdistan, had a chance to move towards achieving their goals and national rights, and at least making some progress in accordance with the provisions of the Sovereign Convention on the Rights of the Kurds. As the first country to recognize and establish diplomatic relations with Turkey with the help of the Kemalist Movement in various ways, Russia, as well as economic, industrial and mining assistance, became a great supporter of Turkey in international and diplomatic forums.

All this, along with many other factors, helped the Republic of Turkey stand on its own feet. When the revolutions and movements against the injustice and tyranny of the Turks occurred in Northern Kurdistan in the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet Russia sided with all possible means, military and political, as well as the Turkish Republic. Which brutally suppressed these uprisings and every move of a Kurdish nationalist nature.