In 1923, Turkey and the great powers ("most powerful nations") agreed the Treaty of Lausanne. This treaty meant that no independent Kurdistan or Kurdish state would come into existence. Instead, the Kurdish areas of the old Ottoman Empire were separated by the border between Turkey to the north, and British Iraq and French Syria to the south. The new border between Turkey and Syria was agreed to be the railway line running through the area: the part of the Berlin–Baghdad railway line that went between the cities of Aleppo and Mosul. The north side of the railway became Turkey, and the south side became French Syria. This meant that Arab areas were left in Turkey and Kurdish areas in Syria. Thomas Schmidinger, a German cultural anthropologist wrote that modern Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan, came into existence as "a waste product of the colonial division of the Middle East" south of the Berlin–Baghdad railway line. From then until the present day, Kurdish people do not see themselves as "Syrian" or "Turkish". For Kurds in Turkey, Syria is "below the line" () on the map, but for Kurds in Syria, Turkey is "above the line" ().