More than a year after the agreement with Russia, British and French representatives Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges Picot have drafted another secret agreement on the future spoils of the First World War. Picot represented a small group determined to ensure French control of Syria; Sykes, for his part, has raised British demands to compensate for influence in the region. The deal largely failed to facilitate the future growth of Arab nationalism, which the British government and military were using to their advantage against the Turks at the same time. According to the agreement, France would have to exercise direct control over Cilicia, syria`s coastal strip, Lebanon and most of the Galilee to the line that extends north of Acre to the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee (“Blue Zone”). To the east, in the Syrian hinterland, an Arab state was to emerge under French protection (“Zone A”). Britain should exercise control over southern Mesopotamia (“red zone”) as well as the area around Acre-Haifa Bay in the Mediterranean and have the right to build a railway to Baghdad from there. The area east of the Jordan River and the Negev Desert, south of the line from Gaza to the Dead Sea, has been assigned to an Arab state under British protection (“Area B”). The “blue zone” of southern France in the area that covers the Sandjak of Jerusalem and extends southward to the line that roughly runs from Gaza to the Dead Sea should be under international administration (“Brown Zone”). The Anglo-French statement was read in the minutes, Pichon commented that it showed the altruistic position of both governments towards the Arabs and Lloyd George that it was “more important than all the old agreements”.
[91] Pichon also referred to a proposed February 15 agreement based on the private agreement reached between Clemenceau and Lloyd George in December. [91] (According to Lieshout, just before Faisal made his presentation at the conference on the 6th, Clemenceau gave Lloyd George a proposal that seemed to cover the same subject; Lieshout had access to related British documents from the 6th, although the date is not documented in the minutes. [92]) The agreement was drafted and negotiated by the countries` diplomats in the coming months and signed by the Allies between August 18 and September 26, 1917. [38] Russia was not represented in this agreement because the Tsarist regime was in the midst of a revolution. The lack of Russian approval of the Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne Agreement was then exploited by the British at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to invalidate it, a position that greatly enraged the Italian government. [41] George Curzon stated that the great powers were still committed to the Organic Settlement Agreement, which concerned governance and non-interference in the affairs of the Maronite, Orthodox Christian, Druze, and Muslim communities in relation to the Beirut Vilayet of June 1861 and September 1864, adding that the rights granted to France in present-day modern Syria and in parts of Turkey under Sykes-Picot are inconsistent with this agreement. [78] On April 21, Faisal left for the East. Before leaving, Clemenceau sent the 17th. In April, the French government said it recognized “Syria`s right to independence in the form of a federation of autonomous governments in accordance with the traditions and desires of the people,” and claimed that Faisal had recognized “that France is the power qualified to provide Syria with the assistance of various advisers necessary to create order and make the progress demanded by the population.” the Syrian people” and on April 20, Fayçal Clemenceau assured that he was “deeply impressed by the altruistic kindness of your remarks towards me while I was in Paris, and must thank you for having been the first to propose the deployment of the Interallied Commission, which will soon leave for the East to determine the wishes of the local peoples regarding the future organization of their country.
I am sure the Syrian people will know how to show you their gratitude. [95] In his introduction to a symposium on Sykes-Picot in 2016, law professor Anghie notes that much of the agreement includes “trade and trade agreements, access to ports, and railway construction.” [50] In the Constantinople Agreement of March 18, 1915, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sasonov wrote to the French and British ambassadors after the start of naval operations in the run-up to the Gallipoli campaign, claiming Constantinople and the Dardanelles. During a series of five-week diplomatic talks, Britain and France agreed, citing their own demands for a greater sphere of influence in Iran in the case of Britain and an annexation of Syria (including Palestine) and Cilicia to France. British and French claims were unanimous, with all parties also agreeing that the exact management of the Holy Places should be left to a later settlement. [18] Without the Russian revolutions of 1917, Constantinople and the strait could have been handed over to Russia after the Allied victory. .