User:Lou Löwe/sandbox

Leiden University, History of the Modern Middle East, 2021-22

I am a student enrolled in the course above, whose assessment entails editing a Simple Wikipedia entry. I will be using the space below to draft this entry.

Sykes-Picot Agreement Project

The Sykes–Picot Agreement /ˈsaɪks piˈkoʊ/, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret 1916 agreement between the United Kingdom and France. The main goal for the British and French was to agree upon who received which sphere of influence in Ottoman territories in Southwest Asia. Thereby they wanted to limit competition after the First World War among European powers and secure strategic territories. The agreement was accepted and approved by the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, who in turn would also benefit territory-wise. The agreement was named after the two diplomats which discussed and formulated the secret deal: The British diplomat Mark Sykes and the French diplomat François Georges-Picot first began negotiations on the 23^rd of November 1915 and on the 3^rd of January 1916, where over a period of five weeks they agreed on a memorandum. The agreement itself was concluded and enforced on the 9^th and the 16^th of May 1916, when the British and French governments accepted and signed (ratified) the memorandum.

When the agreement was made public it highly embarrassed the French and British and it outraged the concerned countries. This agreement had an immense impact and plays a crucial role in today’s conflicts and disputes in the respective regions of the Middle East.

Historical context

As the agreement was discussed and formed while the war was still ongoing, it came into assuming that these three allied states (forming a Triple Entente – United Kingdom, France and Russia) would successfully defeat the Axis (Germany, Austria-Hungary – allied to the Ottoman Empire) during World War 1.

Before concluding the Sykes-Picot agreement the British had created an alliance with Sharif Hussein, the emir of Mecca at the time. In what is known as the  Hussein-McMahon correspondence, the British promised Arab independence over large parts of the Ottoman territory, if the Arabs revolted against the Ottomans. The British disrespected their commitment to Sharif Hussein by dividing the Arab land among themselves and the French.

Regional division

The Sykes-Picot Agreement map, showing the division of the region. Area A) under French control, area B) under British control

Geographically, the agreement focused primarily on the provinces outside of the Arabian Peninsula. These provinces were divided by a line called the Sykes-Picot line, determining which parts fall under British- and which parts under French influence. The United Kingdom controlled today’s Southern Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Southern Iran, as well as parts of Haifa, Acre to ensure that the British sill had access to the Mediterranean Sea. France in turn got South-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. In exchange for Russia’s approval of the treaty, the Russian Foreign minister Serkey Saznov and the French ambassador Maurice Paléologue (concluding the Saznov-Paléologue Agreement) mutually agreed that Russia would get Western Armenia in addition to the already earlier attributed Constantinople and the Turksih Straits. (which had been concluded in the 1915 Constantinople agreement). Italy also knew about the agreement and was convinced by being promised Southern Anatolia in a agreement called Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. Furthermore, the United Kingdom and France agreed that the Holy places and the Palestine region would fall under international administration or be determined in a later settlement.