Page 576 - Mastermind: The Truth of the British Deep State Revealed

and after declaring that they would invade

Mosul, asked Turkish forces to retreat
to 5 km north of the city of Mosul.

Ali İhsan Pasha reported this
demand of the British to the grand

vizier and, as a result of a series of
telegram exchanges, the grand

vizier ordered Ali İhsan Pasha to
evacuate the city on November 15.

Complying, the Pasha left Mosul to
Ali İhsan Pasha
the British on November 10 and re-
treated to Nusaybin, where he estab-
lished his headquarters. 351 As a result,

British occupied Mosul after WWI, in viola-
tion of armistice and international war rules.

This occupation, though, didn't help the British initially, because they

couldn't achieve domination in the region. The tribes and people in the re-
gion didn't want the British. People of Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah refused to

pay tax to them, and frequent street fights became a familiar sight. The ma-
jority of the indigenous people sided with the Turks. People of Mosul sup-

ported the Turkish independence movement that got even stronger with the
opening of the new Parliament in Ankara. Even the Arabs in the region con-

sidered cooperating with Mustafa Kemal Pasha against the British. Based on
British documents, Mim Kemal Öke explains that the Arabs and Kurds in Mo-

sul preferred to trust Anatolia, rather than Faisal supported by the British. 352
There were multiple reasons behind this choice and İsmet Pasha explained

these as follows:

1- The residents of Mosul vilayet insistently demanded to be annexed
by Turkey; because they knew that only that way they could be part of

an independent country, and not a colonized people. Furthermore,

those people have considered themselves Turks since 1055 and Ot-
tomans since 1514.

Mastermind: The Truth of the British Deep State Revealed