Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916): Dividing the Ottoman Middle East

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret understanding reached in 1916 between Britain and France, with the agreement of Russia, on how to divide the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire once the First World War was won. Negotiated by the British adviser Sir Mark Sykes and the French diplomat François Georges-Picot, it split Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine into zones of control and influence. Though much revised later, it became a lasting symbol of foreign powers drawing lines across the Middle East.

Background

The Ottoman Empire joined the war on the side of Germany in November 1914. Its defeat was expected to open up vast territories, and the Allies began bargaining over them early. In March 1915 Britain and France agreed in principle that Russia could have Constantinople and the Turkish Straits, a long-standing Russian goal.

France had deep commercial, cultural and religious ties with Syria and Lebanon, where it saw itself as protector of Catholic Christians. Britain wanted to secure the route to India, the oil-bearing region around the Persian Gulf, and a buffer for the Suez Canal. Both powers needed to avoid quarrelling with each other in the middle of a war.

At the same time Britain was negotiating with Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who would launch the Arab Revolt in June 1916. In the Hussein-McMahon correspondence of 1915-1916 Britain pledged to support Arab independence within boundaries that excluded certain coastal areas and took account of French interests, in language that later caused bitter dispute.

Negotiation

In late 1915 the British government asked Sir Mark Sykes, a Conservative MP who had travelled widely in the Ottoman lands, to reach an understanding with the French. His counterpart, François Georges-Picot, had served as French consul in Beirut and represented a strong colonial lobby in Paris.

The two men worked out a draft between November 1915 and January 1916 and initialled it on 3 January 1916. In the spring they travelled to Petrograd to secure the approval of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, in exchange for Russian gains in eastern Anatolia, including Erzurum, Trabzon, Van and Bitlis. The agreement was concluded through an exchange of letters between the French ambassador in London, Paul Cambon, and the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, between 9 and 16 May 1916.

What the agreement said

The agreement used coloured zones on a map, signed by both negotiators on 8 May 1916.

• Blue zone: direct French control over coastal Syria and Lebanon and parts of southern Anatolia, including Cilicia.
• Red zone: direct British control over southern Mesopotamia, including Baghdad and Basra, plus the ports of Haifa and Acre.
• Area A: an Arab state or confederation under French influence, covering inland Syria with Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, and Mosul.
• Area B: an Arab state or confederation under British influence, stretching from the Sinai border across Transjordan to Kirkuk.
• Brown zone: an international administration for much of Palestine, including Jerusalem, reflecting the interests of several Christian powers.

The agreement therefore did allow for Arab states, but under the guidance of European advisers, with each power holding economic priority in its area. Italy was later given claims in south-western Anatolia under the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne of 1917, which Russia never ratified.

Key people

• Sir Mark Sykes (1879-1919), Yorkshire baronet, traveller and Conservative MP, who became one of the British government’s main advisers on the Middle East; he died in Paris during the peace conference, a victim of the influenza pandemic.
• François Georges-Picot (1870-1951), French diplomat from a family active in colonial politics, later French High Commissioner in Palestine and Syria in 1917-1919.
• Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933), British Foreign Secretary from 1905 to 1916, who signed the British side of the exchange of letters.
• Paul Cambon (1843-1924), long-serving French ambassador in London.
• Sergei Sazonov (1860-1927), Russian Foreign Minister, who secured Russia’s share in eastern Anatolia.

None of the negotiators consulted the Arab leaders who were at that moment preparing to fight alongside Britain, and Hussein was not told of the agreement.

Exposure

The agreement was meant to stay secret. After the October Revolution, the Bolshevik government published secret treaties from the Tsarist archives to discredit the “imperialist” war. The text appeared in the Russian newspapers Izvestia and Pravda in late November 1917, and the Manchester Guardian reprinted it on 26 November.

The Ottoman commander in Syria, Djemal Pasha, used the revelation to try to persuade Hussein and his son Faisal to abandon the British. They did not, but the episode fed a lasting suspicion of Western promises. The Balfour Declaration of November 1917, supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine, added to the confusion over what Britain had pledged to whom.

Revision after the war

The map of 1916 never came into force as drawn. Military events changed the balance: British and imperial troops, not French ones, had conquered Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia, and Russia had left the war after the revolution, abandoning its claims.

In December 1918 the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau agreed with David Lloyd George that Mosul, with its expected oil, and Palestine would go to Britain. In return France was promised a share of Mosul’s oil and British support for its position in Syria. At the San Remo conference in April 1920 the Allies allocated League of Nations mandates: Syria and Lebanon to France, Iraq and Palestine, including Transjordan, to Britain.

France then removed Faisal’s short-lived Arab kingdom in Damascus by force in July 1920. Turkish victories in Anatolia overturned the plans for Cilicia and the east, and the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 settled the borders of modern Turkey.

Myths and facts

It is often said that Sykes and Picot drew the borders of today’s Middle East. In fact most modern frontiers, such as those between Iraq and Syria, Syria and Lebanon, and Jordan and Saudi Arabia, were fixed by later agreements, commissions and treaties in the 1920s and after. The agreement’s straight lines are also sometimes exaggerated; its zones followed some geographic and administrative realities.

What the agreement did establish was the principle that Britain and France would divide the Arab provinces between them, regardless of the wishes of the people living there. That principle shaped the mandate system.

Legacy

The name Sykes-Picot became shorthand in the Arab world for colonial betrayal and artificial division. Arab nationalists across the 20th century cited it as evidence that the region’s borders and governments had been imposed from outside.

The term has remained politically charged into the 21st century. In 2014 the militant group known as the Islamic State released propaganda claiming to have ended Sykes-Picot when it bulldozed a section of the Iraq-Syria border berm. Historians generally treat such claims as symbolic, but they show how deeply the agreement still features in debates about the region.

Timeline

• 1915, March: Britain and France agree to Russian claims on Constantinople and the Straits.
• 1915, November: Sykes and Georges-Picot begin negotiations.
• 1916, 3 January: The draft agreement is initialled.
• 1916, 9-16 May: The agreement is concluded by an exchange of letters between Grey and Cambon.
• 1917, November: The Bolsheviks publish the secret agreement.
• 1918, December: Clemenceau and Lloyd George agree changes over Mosul and Palestine.
• 1920, April: The San Remo conference assigns League of Nations mandates.

Why it matters

The Sykes-Picot Agreement revealed how the great powers planned to share the spoils of the Ottoman Empire while promising independence to its Arab subjects. Even though its map was redrawn, it set the pattern of British and French rule in the Middle East and remains a powerful symbol in the politics of the region.