Sykes–Picot Agreement

On 26 April 1916 in Petrograd the Russian foreign minister Sergei Sazonov and the French ambassador Maurice Paléologue exchanged secret letters. In them Russia accepted a plan to partition the Asian lands of the Ottoman Empire that had been agreed a few months earlier by the British politician Mark Sykes and the French diplomat François Georges-Picot. In return France recognised Russian claims to eastern Anatolia. This was the first formal step in the chain of secret notes that went down in history as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. The document known by that name today, the Anglo-French partition of the Middle East, was not confirmed by London and Paris until May.

The British chronology of the war records under this date that the French and Russian governments concluded the “Sykes-Picot” agreement on the future partition of Asia Minor. Within the British government itself the whole set of arrangements was indeed called the “Asia Minor Agreement”.

The road to the agreement

From the outset the war led the allies to divide the bear’s skin before the bear was killed. In March 1915 Russia demanded Constantinople and the Straits, and Britain and France agreed, reserving compensation for themselves in other parts of the empire. France at once laid claim to Syria and Cilicia. In the autumn of 1915 the matter became urgent, because the British authorities in Cairo were promising the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, Arab independence, and the French feared that these promises would infringe their interests in Syria.

Talks in London began at the end of November 1915. On the French side they were conducted by Picot, a former consul-general in Beirut; on the British side, first by a committee of Foreign Office officials and, from the end of December, by Sykes, a Conservative MP and Middle East expert who advised the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener. On 3 January 1916 the two men initialled a joint memorandum. In February the British government adopted the plan but stipulated that nothing could be concluded without Russia’s consent, because the French zone reached far to the east, towards lands for which Russia had plans of its own.

In March Sykes and Picot travelled to Petrograd, where they took part in the talks with Sazonov as advisers to the ambassadors. According to Paléologue’s memoirs, on 13 March Tsar Nicholas II told him that he personally had no thought of conquests in Armenia beyond Erzurum and Trebizond, which he needed for strategic reasons. Three days later, however, Sazonov announced that the Russian government accepted the plan but wanted part of Kurdistan in addition, offering France lands further west in exchange. The bargaining went on for another six weeks.

What Russia was to receive

According to a later memorandum of the Russian foreign ministry, Russia was to receive the provinces of Erzurum, Trebizond, Van and Bitlis, as well as southern Kurdistan along the line Muş – Siirt – Jazirat ibn Umar (Cizre) – Amadiya up to the Persian frontier. On the Black Sea coast its gains were to extend to a point west of Trebizond, to be fixed later. On the day the notes were exchanged most of these lands were already in Russian hands. Erzurum had fallen in February, Bitlis at the beginning of March and Trebizond only a week earlier. These were historic Armenian lands whose inhabitants had suffered deportation and genocide a year before. The agreement provided no autonomy whatsoever for the Armenians.

France in return enlarged its share. Besides the Syrian coast and the province of Adana, it was to receive an area bounded to the south by the line Aintab (Gaziantep) – Mardin up to the future Russian frontier, and to the north by the line Ala Dağ – Kayseri – Ak Dağ – Yıldız Dağ – Zara – Eğin – Harput (Elazığ). Both sides undertook to respect pre-war concessions and privileges in the conquered lands and to assume part of the Ottoman debt in proportion to their gains.

The Sykes–Picot plan

Russian consent opened the way to the approval of the Anglo-French plan. It divided the Ottoman lands outside the Arabian Peninsula into zones marked on the map with colours and letters:

• the blue zone, under direct French rule: the coast of Syria and Lebanon, Cilicia and part of south-eastern Anatolia;
• the red zone, under direct British rule: lower Mesopotamia with Baghdad and Basra;
• zones A and B, where an independent Arab state or a confederation of states under the suzerainty of an Arab ruler was to be created. In zone A, covering inland Syria with Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, as well as Mosul, France had priority in investment and the sole right to supply advisers. In zone B, from the Negev and Transjordan to Kirkuk, Britain had the same rights. The border between them cut across the vilayet of Mosul along the Little Zab river;
• the brown zone, that is Palestine with Jerusalem, which was to receive an international administration agreed with Russia, the other allies and representatives of the Sharif of Mecca.

Britain reserved for itself the ports of Haifa and Acre and the right to build a railway from Haifa to Baghdad. Alexandretta was to be a free port for British trade, and Haifa for French trade. The British and French exchanged the final texts in letters of 9 and 16 May, and on 23 May London proposed a similar exchange of notes to Russia. Italy, which had taken no part in the talks, joined the partition only in 1917.

Secrecy and conflicting promises

The agreement was strictly secret. According to the Dutch historian Robert Lieshout, at the end of April the High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, was informed of it, and he and the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, agreed that the Arabs would not be told its contents. Meanwhile Sharif Hussein was preparing a revolt against the Turks, relying on the promises in his correspondence with McMahon. On paper the plan did not cancel them outright, since Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo lay within the zone of the future Arab state. But that state was to be divided into zones of foreign influence, Baghdad and Basra passed under direct British rule, and Palestine under international administration. In June 1916 the Sharif launched the Arab Revolt without knowing the details of the agreement.

Disclosure

The secret held for a year and a half. After the October Revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks began publishing secret treaties from the archives of the tsarist foreign ministry. The texts of the agreements on the partition of Turkey appeared in Izvestia and Pravda in the second half of November 1917, and on 26 November they were reprinted by the British Manchester Guardian. Russia then renounced its gains. The Ottoman commander in Syria, Djemal Pasha, used these revelations in propaganda aimed at the Arabs, persuading them that the British and French meant to divide their lands between themselves.

After the war the partition of the Middle East departed from the 1916 plan: Britain obtained Mosul and Palestine, and France gave up some of its gains. At the San Remo conference in 1920 France received the mandate for Syria and Lebanon, and Britain for Iraq and Palestine. Even so, the name “Sykes-Picot” became a symbol in the Arab world of betrayal and of arbitrary borders imposed by the great powers.