SYKESPICOT AGREEMENT

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 was originally a secret pact amongGreat Britain,France, andRussiadetailing their plans to partition theOttoman Empire—and thus most of Kurdistan—at the end of World War I. Sir Mark Sykes for Britain, Francois Picot for France, and Sergei Sazanov for Russia drew the agreement up, but Russia dropped out following the Bolshevik revolution. The newSovietgovernment then revealed the agreement to the world.

Originally, the Sykes-Picot Agreement gave most of the Kurdish areas in what becameTurkeyandSyriato the French and in Iraq and parts of Turkey to Russia. After Russia dropped out of the agreement, Britain took over the Russian portion ofMosuland attached it to its mandate,Iraq. The Sykes-Picot Agreement became a byword for British-French imperialist control of the Middle East and, with it, manipulation and control of the Kurds. With the quick rise of theKemalistsin Turkey, however, the new Republic of Turkey acquired much of what were originally to be French and Russian areas. These areas then became Turkish Kurdistan.