📜 This is the Treaty of Sèvres (1920). After WWI, the international community officially recognized the right of the Kurdish people to an independent state. For over a century, this document has stood as a witness to a promise made and a promise brutally broken.
⚖️ Article 62:
It mandated a commission to draft a plan for local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas east of the Euphrates. The world acknowledged that Kurdistan was a distinct entity with its own borders and people.
🗳️ Article 64: The Right to Independence.
It explicitly stated that if the Kurdish people demonstrated a desire for independence and were capable of it, Turkey must renounce all rights and title over these areas. The League of Nations was meant to be the guarantor of Kurdish freedom.
Only 3 years later, in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the world’s powers chose oil and geopolitical interests over justice. They ignored Sèvres, divided Kurdistan into four parts, and left the Kurds to face decades of genocide, oppression, and erasure.
Today, the Kurdish struggle for a state is not a "new" demand it is a struggle to reclaim a right that was legally granted 106 years ago. The world owes Kurdistan the justice it was promised in 1920. ☀️