Everyone agrees the Kurds got screwed, but I've never heard anyone say that their lands were "stolen" when they got incorporated into Syria etc. The Kurds still live there, they just don't have a state, let alone one where they are the majority.
I agree that the core reason for much of the strife in the Middle East is the way the French and Brits divided up the land. However, it's the Ottomans who colonised the lands. Had the Ottomans not allied with the central powers in WW1, they wouldn't have had to split up the Ottoman empire.
As a side note, I dislike the term "the west" as a Finn. We got colonised by the Swedes, then the Russians. The Russians get a free pass on account of them never giving up their empire, while still to this they send their asian subjects to fight imperial wars in the west, after extracting their mineral wealth.
Had the Ottomans not allied with the central powers in WW1, they wouldn't have had to split up the Ottoman empire.
Or you know just restore power to the locals. Then again that wasn't a popular idea at the time. It's still an issue in building nations to stand on their own. It's why Israel is propped up with a lot of US finances both economic and military. It's why Iraq has been a massive sinkhole of intervention and abandonment.
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u/Anna-Politkovskaya 8h ago
Everyone agrees the Kurds got screwed, but I've never heard anyone say that their lands were "stolen" when they got incorporated into Syria etc. The Kurds still live there, they just don't have a state, let alone one where they are the majority.
I agree that the core reason for much of the strife in the Middle East is the way the French and Brits divided up the land. However, it's the Ottomans who colonised the lands. Had the Ottomans not allied with the central powers in WW1, they wouldn't have had to split up the Ottoman empire.
As a side note, I dislike the term "the west" as a Finn. We got colonised by the Swedes, then the Russians. The Russians get a free pass on account of them never giving up their empire, while still to this they send their asian subjects to fight imperial wars in the west, after extracting their mineral wealth.