Hittite ancestry, hence the name Hatay (this is close to the French pronunciation). Resident Arabs organised under the banner or Arabism, and in 1930, ZakiAlarsuzi, a teacher and lawyer from Arsuz on the coast of Alexandretta published a newspaper called 'Arabism' in Antioch that was shut down by Turkish and French authorities.
The 1936 elections returned two MPs favoring the independence of Syria from France, and this prompted communal riots as well as passionate articles in the Turkish and Syrian press. This then became the subject of a complaint to the League of Nations by the Turkish government concerning alleged mistreatment of the Turkish populations. Atatürk demanded that Hatay become part of Turkey claiming that the majority of its inhabitants were Turks. The sanjak was given autonomy in November 1937 in an arrangement brokered by the League. Under its new statute, the sanjak became 'distinct but not separated' from the French mandate of Syria on the diplomatic level, linked to both France and Turkey for defence matters.
In 1938, the Turkish military went into the Syrian province and expelled most of its Arab and Armenian inhabitants. Before this, Alawi Arabs and Armenians composed an overwhelming majority of the province's population, with Arabs representing about two thirds of the population.
The allocation of seats in the sanjak assembly was based on the 1938 census held by the French authorities under international supervision: out of 40 seats, 22 were given to the Turks and 18 for the Arabs and their Armenian allies (nine for Alawi Arabs, five for Armenians, two for Sunni Arabs, and two for Christian Arabs). The assembly was appointed in the summer of 1938 and the French-Turkish treaty settling the status of the Sanjak was signed on 4 July 1938.
Republic of Hatay
On 2 September 1938, as the Second World War loomed over Europe, the assembly proclaimed the Republic of Hatay. The Republic lasted for one year
