In his doctoral dissertation, Gibson discusses the role that oil played in Britain`s strategic thinking at the time, mentioning Vilayet Mosul as the largest potential oil field and France`s agreement in 1918 to accept its inclusion in the Iraqi mandate (the Clemenceau Lloyd George Agreement) in exchange for ”a share of oil and British support elsewhere.” [53] The result of the French mandate in Syria, which officially began in 1923, was the emergence of not one, but two deeply troubled states, Syria and Lebanon today. Despite the Sykes-Picot agreement, it was Britain that administered Syria for the first time after conquering it from the Ottomans in 1918. The British installed Faisal as the leader of Syria, recognizing the contribution of the Arab revolt to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the promises made to Faisal`s father, Hussein. Syria has been in turmoil since the beginning. Faisal wanted a truly independent Syrian state that included Palestine and Transjordan, as did the Syrian nationalists, who were well represented in the parliament elected in 1919. But negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference resulted in an agreement that France would control Syria, as Sykes-Picot envisioned. In 1920, France took over the administration of the territory, at the same time as Faisal and the nationalists declared the independence of a kingdom of Syria. After the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, the Allies – Britain, France and Russia – had many discussions about the future of the Ottoman Empire, now fighting alongside Germany and the Central Powers, and its vast territories in the Middle East, Arabia and Southern Central Europe. In March 1915, Britain signed a secret agreement with Russia, whose plans on the territory of the Empire had led the Turks to merge with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914. Under his terms, Russia would annex the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and retain control of the Dardanelles (the extremely important strait that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean) and the Gallipoli Peninsula, the target of a major Allied military invasion that began in April 1915.
In return, Russia would accept British claims to other parts of the former Ottoman Empire and central Persia, including the oil-rich region of Mesopotamia. One of ISIS`s stated goals is to dismantle the agreement. The head of the organization, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, called for the disintegrating nations of the region to be replaced by a transnational regional power, the so-called ”caliphate.” The agreement provided a general understanding of the British and French spheres of influence in the Middle East. The goal was to divide the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire (without the Arabian Peninsula) among themselves. Today, more than 30 million Kurds and millions of Assyrians, Yazidis and other stateless ethnicities cross the temporary borders originally created 100 years ago by Mark Sykes and François Picot. More than a year after the agreement with Russia, British and French representatives Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges Picot have drafted another secret agreement on the future spoils of the First World War. Picot represented a small group determined to ensure French control of Syria; Sykes, for his part, has raised British demands to compensate for influence in the region. The deal largely failed to facilitate the future growth of Arab nationalism, which the British government and military were using to their advantage against the Turks at the same time. These and other questions are not empty speculations. Iraq and Syria, states never strong for all the authoritarians of their leaders, have become a fiction. They could survive as fiction, just as the Lebanese state managed to survive as fiction after the end of the civil war; or they could separate.
As after the First World War, foreigners will make proposals and agreements, but they will not determine the final result. Prescribing solutions is largely an unnecessary exercise. Understanding what might be the result of different solutions would be useful for all parties. The agreement is seen by many as a turning point in Western and Arab relations. He denied Britain`s promises to the Arabs[9] regarding a national Arab homeland in the Greater Syria region in exchange for British support against the Ottoman Empire. The agreement, along with others, was published by the Bolsheviks[10] in Moscow on November 23, 1917 and repeated in the British Guardian on November 26, 1917, so that ”the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed, and the Turks delighted.” [11] [12] [13] The legacy of the agreement has aroused much resentment in the region, especially among arabs, but also among kurds, who have been denied an independent state. [14] [15] [16] [17] The end result was that the Kurds, as well as their Assyrian neighbors, were divided between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. As a result of the Sazonov-Palaiologos agreement included, Russia was to receive Western Armenia in addition to Constantinople and the Turkish Strait, which had already been promised in the Constantinople Agreement of 1915. [8] Italy accepted the agreement in 1917 through the Treaty of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and received Southern Anatolia. [8] The Palestinian region, with a smaller area than later Mandatory Palestine, was to fall under ”international administration.” After the Constantinople Agreement, the French turned to the British to develop their mutual wishes, and the British formed the De Bunsen Committee on 8 April 1915 to explore British options. [45] Zionism was not taken into account in the Committee`s report[46] presented in June 1915, which concluded that in the event of partition or zones of influence, there should be a British sphere of influence including Palestine, while accepting that there are relevant French and Russian and Islamic interests in Jerusalem and the Holy Places.
[47] [48] The agreement was based on the premise that the Triple Entente would successfully defeat the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and was part of a series of secret agreements that considered its division. The main negotiations that led to the agreement took place between November 23, 1915 and January 3, 1916, when British and French diplomats Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot initialed an agreed memorandum. [3] The Convention was ratified by their respective governments on 9 and 16 May 1916. [4] In the broader context of other agreements, declarations and promises made to actors in the region over the years, we see how the agreement is causing so many of today`s problems. In another sign of British dissatisfaction with Sykes-Picot, Sykes wrote a ”Memorandum on the Asia Minor Agreement” in August, which amounted to advocating its renegotiation, otherwise the French should be made clear that they are ”doing good – that is, if they cannot reconcile the military effort with their policies, they should change their policies.” After much discussion, Sykes was tasked with reaching an agreement with Picot or an amendment to Sykes-Picot (”Draft Arrangement”) on the ”future status of the Hejaz and Arabia,” and this was achieved at the end of September. [64] At the end of the year, however, the agreement still had to be ratified by the French government. [65] On the 21st. Faisal left for the East in April. Before leaving, Clemenceau sent a draft letter on April 17 in which the French government declared that it recognized ”Syria`s right to independence in the form of a federation of autonomous governments in accordance with the traditions and desires of the population,” and claimed that Faisal had recognized ”that France is the qualified power to provide Syria with the help of various advisers, which are necessary to create order and achieve the progress demanded by the people.” the Syrian population” and the 20th. April assured Fayçal Clemenceau that he was ”deeply impressed by the altruistic kindness of your remarks towards me while I was in Paris, and must thank you for being the first to propose the deployment of the Inter-Allied Commission, which will soon leave for the East to determine the wishes of the local peoples regarding the future organization of their country. I am sure the Syrian people will know how to show you their gratitude.
[95] The agreement was drafted and negotiated by the countries` diplomats in the coming months and signed by the Allies between August 18 and September 26, 1917. [38] Russia was not represented in this agreement because the Tsarist regime was in the midst of a revolution. The lack of Russian approval of the Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne Agreement was then exploited by the British at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to invalidate it, a position that greatly enraged the Italian government. [41] At the beginning of the war, France and Britain were convinced that the Arab parts of the Ottoman Empire were not ready for self-government and would not be ready for a long time – the statesmen of both countries were in complete agreement on this point. The question they wanted to clarify was not whether these areas would be under foreign surveillance, because it was a foregone conclusion, but which areas would be monitored by France and which by Britain. The Sykes-Picot agreement provided the answer. Britain would take full control of an area of ”Mesopotamia” that begins north of Baghdad and stretches through Basra to the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. France would take full control of an area stretching along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa in southern Turkey and inland to part of Anatolia. Britain and France could do whatever they wanted: place these territories under direct administration by colonial officials or under indirect control by local leaders of their choice.
In addition, France and Britain have also given themselves their respective zones of influence, in which they would establish independent Arab states or a confederation of states under their supervision. .