Sykes-Picot

The Sykes-Picot agreement made its one hundred year anniversary in 2016. Sykes-Picot was an agreement between Britain, France, and Russia to bring down the ottoman empire during World War 1. Many historians, islamist groups, and politicians blame the agreement for the failure of modern Arab countries. Many people have thought about developments and policies based on a world without the Sykes-Picot agreement. People believe that without the artificial borders countries like today's Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc. there would be less religious extremism, anti-Western bias, and terrorism in the Middle East today. Many wars of the middle east are blamed on this pact. For example a war between the Turkish government and the Kurdish fighters. But in fact these speculations are incorrect. The Arabs of the Middle East had no solid statehood of their own after the fall of the second Islamic caliphate of the Abbasids in the 13th century. For 750 years, most of what is today's Middle Eastern Arab world was ruled by Ottoman and, to a lesser extent, Iranian empires. The Ottoman empire ruled from about 1299-1922. Although the Sykes-Picot Agreement is blamed for the artificial borders it created it that alone did not create these "artificial borders." The pact was going to be the basis for a new map of the Middle East, when the region's leading power, the Ottoman Empire, had been in decline for 300 years. This demise occurred in parallel with the rise of Europe's Western powers. Ultimately, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was not just about the Arab world. It was primarily about how to pull apart the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the Muslim world west of Iran as well as the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. It was a way of dividing up up the Arab world. In fact, today's modern Republic of Turkey was not created because of Sykes-Picot agreement, but in spite of it. The whole point of this agreement was purely about the strategic interests of victorious powers, like British dominion over oil and sea routes, a French share of influence in the Mediterranean space, and some sops for the Russians to keep them happy. Most of the agreements in this world have not been done to help out a place in struggle but more for self benefit. In Arab lands, the Sykes-Picot Agreement became a symbol of injustice and double-standards. It provided a reason to rebel against the West and to fight against one another.The pact is viewed as the starting point for wars of liberation -- first against Western mandate-holders, and then against their local representatives, Israel and the United States. More recently, these conflicts have taken on other forms Kurds taking on Turks, Turks fighting among themselves, and IS fighting everybody else etc. When thinking about it and putting it into perspective, one agreement for selfish reasons has had a huge impact on the world even 100 years later.