“Statisquo”, British Use of Statistics in the Iraqi Kurdish Question (1919–1932)
Fuat Dundar
Crown
Fuat Dundar was a Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center in 2010-11. He is a researcher at the Zentrum Moderner Orient-Berlin and Erfurt University for the 2012-13 academic year. Dundar is the author of Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (Transaction Publishers, 2010). He is also the author of three books in Turkish: Modern Turkey’s Cipher—Ethnicity Engineering of the Committee Union and Progress (1913-1918), The Settlement Policy of Muslims (1913-1918), and Minorities in Turkish Censuses. Previously, Dundar was a visiting professor of history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Table of Contents
Introduction / 1
British Plebiscites in Iraq (1919–21) / 10
Determining the Fate of Mosul Using Statistics (1922–24) / 18
The Frontier Commission (1925): Determining the Mosul Population’s Wishes / 26
Statistics in the Delineation of Kurdish Districts (1932) / 34
Concluding Remarks / 46
Endnotes / 49
About the Author / 62
INTRODUCTION
In post-2003 Iraq, the Kurds have continuously appealed for territorial rights in the regions where they claim to be the majority and have demanded a quota in the Iraqi State apparatus.1 They have also passionately demanded a new census, which would include questions intended to assess inhabitants’ ethnicity and define their mother tongue and nationality. The Kurds believe that determining the exact size of the Kurdish population would have repercussions for issues such as defining the exact borders of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), ascertaining the proper portion to be allotted to them from the national budget, and maybe even establishing the proper quota of Kurds in a future Baghdad government, to ensure that they would not once again be underrepresented in a future Parliament.2
To substantiate their political claims, the Kurds have attempted to carry out a plebiscite and census, two of the three steps designated by the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL, Article 58, in March 2004) and the Iraqi Permanent Constitution (Article 140). Based on the results of the requested new plebiscite and census, the Kurds want to determine the final status of the disputed regions, including Khanikin, Sinjar, and Kirkuk, and annex them to the KRG. Although various organizations and neighborhood governments-and, especially, the Arabs and Turkomans living in these disputed territories—oppose the Kurdish call for a plebiscite and ethnic census, the Kurds still insist on one, causing this to become a casus belli in Iraq today.3
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Fuat Dundar
“Statisquo”, British Use of Statistics in the Iraqi
Kurdish Question (1919–1932)
Crown
Crown Papers
“Statisquo”, British Use of Statistics in the Iraqi
Kurdish Question (1919–1932)
Fuat Dundar
Brandeis University
Crown Center for Middle East Studies
Crown Paper 7 July 2012
Editor
Naghmeh Sohrabi
Consulting Editor
Robert L. Cohen
Production Manager
Benjamin Rostoker
Editorial Board
Abbas Milani
Stanford University
Marcus Noland
Peterson Institute for International Economics
William B. Quandt
University of Virginia
Philip Robins
Oxford University
Yezid Sayigh
King’s College London
Dror Ze’evi
Ben Gurion University
About the Crown Paper Series
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Copyright © 2012 Crown Center for Middle East Studies,
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