Sykes-Picot Agreement

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret 1916 treaty between the United Kingdom and France, concluded with the assent of Russia and Italy, that defined how the two powers would divide much of the Ottoman Empire's Arab provinces into mutually agreed spheres of influence and control once the empire, then fighting alongside Germany in the First World War, was defeated. Negotiated primarily by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and the French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot, the agreement sketched zones of direct rule and indirect influence across territory corresponding to parts of present-day Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, largely disregarding the borders that would later be drawn and the wishes of the region's population, including earlier British promises made to Arab leaders during the wartime revolt against Ottoman rule. The agreement's existence became public after it was leaked by the new Bolshevik government of Russia in late 1917, causing lasting resentment in the Arab world, and it is still widely cited as a foundational source of many of the region's twentieth and twenty-first century territorial and political disputes.