Sykes Picot Agreement Quotes

as far as the British were concerned, the Sykes–Picot agreement had been an academic exercise to resolve an argument, not a blueprint for the future government of the region. As a hypothetical division of country that neither of its signatories yet controlled, it was extremely vulnerable to events, all the more so because it was a secret that was bound to cause controversy when finally it was exposed. As the British hoped, and the French feared, events in the Middle East might yet render the pact redundant. It was this weakness that one man now did his utmost to exploit.   3 ENTER T.

A secret treaty known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, for the two men who signed it, Sir Mark Sykes for Britain and Jacques Georges-Picot for France, finally awarded to the French, without the Arabs' knowledge or consent, a "sphere of influence" in much of the area in which Britain had promised to support an independent Arab state.

Just days later new and much louder alarm bells sounded. The new Bolshevik government in Russia had found a copy of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement in the deposed Tsarist government’s archives. They sent it to the Turks who passed it on to Husayn as proof of his British and French allies’ bad faith. When he, understandably incensed, asked the British to explain the document they hastened to assure him that it was a forgery. Husayn, although still not entirely convinced, decided that his own interests were likely to be better served by fighting on on Britain’s side than by withdrawing his troops or changing sides to support the Turks. Days

When the Ottoman Empire began to collapse, the British and French had a different idea. In 1916 the British diplomat Colonel Sir Mark Sykes took a Chinagraph pencil and drew a crude line across a map of the Middle East. It ran from Haifa on the Mediterranean in what is now Israel to Kirkuk (now in Iraq) in the north-east. It became the basis of his secret agreement with his French counterpart François Georges-Picot to divide the region into two spheres of influence should the Triple Entente defeat the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. North of the line was to be under French control, south of it under British hegemony. The term ‘Sykes–Picot’ has become shorthand for the various decisions made in the first third of the twentieth century which betrayed promises given to tribal leaders and which partially explain the unrest and extremism of today. This explanation can be overstated, though: there was violence and extremism before the Europeans arrived. Nevertheless, as we saw in Africa, arbitrarily creating ‘nation states’ out of people unused to living together in one region is not a recipe for justice, equality and stability.

When the Ottoman Empire began to collapse, the British and French had a different idea. In 1916 the British diplomat Colonel Sir Mark Sykes took a Chinagraph pencil and drew a crude line across a map of the Middle East. It ran from Haifa on the Mediterranean in what is now Israel to Kirkuk (now in Iraq) in the north-east. It became the basis of his secret agreement with his French counterpart François Georges-Picot to divide the region into two spheres of influence should the Triple Entente defeat the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.

It was the struggle between Britain and France for the mastery of the Middle East that led the two countries to carve up the Ottoman Empire with the Sykes-Picot agreement, and it was their dissatisfaction over the outcome of this deal that led the British, fatefully, to proclaim their support for Zionist ambitions in the Balfour Declaration. And so the Jews’ right to a country of their own became dangerously associated with a cynical imperial maneuver that was originally designed to outwit the French.