Sykes–Picot Agreement
secret agreement signed in 1916 between France and the United Kingdom providing for the division of the Middle East at the end of the First World War / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sykes–Picot Agreement /ˈsaɪks piˈkoʊ/, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret agreement concluded between the United Kingdom and France in 1916.[1] The main aim of the British and French was to agree on who should get which sphere of influence in Ottoman territories in Southwest Asia.[2] In this way, they wanted to limit competition between each other after the First World War and secure strategically important territories for themselves.[3] The line separating their respective zones of influence was called the Sykes-Picot line.[4] The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy consented to the agreement, receiving a territorial advantage in return. The agreement was named after the two diplomats who negotiated it: the British diplomat Mark Sykes and the French diplomat François Georges-Picot.[5] They negotiated for five weeks, from the 23rd of November 1915 to the 3rd of January 1916, before agreeing on a memorandum.[6] The agreement itself was concluded on the 9th and 16th of May 1916, when the British and French governments accepted and signed (ratified) the memorandum.[7]
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When the Russian revolutionaries made the agreement public in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution,[8] which caused embarassment among the British and French and growing distrust among the Arabs.[4] More than hundred years later, this agreement is still mentioned in the current conflicts and disputes in the respective regions of the Middle East.[9][10]