Turkish path
Sir: Professor J. B. Kelly's account (Tees not leave it to the Arabs', 16 March) of Britain's part, as mandatory power, in drawing up the frontiers of Iraq, reminds me that some years ago, while I was climbing with a Turkish companion in Kurdish Hakkari, we came to a solitary boundary stone in a deserted gorge on the Turco-Iraq frontier. My companion looked with hatred on the stone and spat on it. `This is the boundary line that has cut Turkey from the oilfields of Mosul,' he said bitterly. 'But for this mark, Turkey would be rich, and we should not need to beg the Americans for aid.'
Later, I read this comment on the British view by C. J. Edmonds, a British Political Officer in Iraq, who helped the 1925 Boundary Commission to decide the posi- tion of the new Turco-Iraq frontier in Turkey's disfavour: 'We were convinced that Basra and Baghdad without Mosul could, for economic and strategic reasons, never be built up into a viable State.' He added frankly that 'there was another consideration which influenced us compa- ratively junior British District Officers, who were in the happy position of seeing, I still think rightly, no distinction between the ultimate interests of Iraq and the immediate interests and prestige of our country: it went against the grain to con- template the surrender of a right acquired in a manner which our elementary studies told us was still good in international law, the right of conquest'. With its self-interest nicely blended with moral principle, the British government's view had prevailed in its wrangles with the Turkish delegation. One wonders if 'the right of conquest', if still applicable, will now lead to revised control of the Mosul/Kirkuk oilfields on Turkey's border — bearing in mind Tur- key's proven reliability as a NATO ally. Denis Hills
12 Kilmorey Gardens, St Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex
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