Britain and France Secretly Divide the Ottoman Middle East

On 16 May 1916, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey sent a diplomatic letter confirming a secret accord with France to partition the lands of the Ottoman Empire in the event of an Allied victory. The arrangement had taken shape through months of negotiations between British diplomat Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Georges-Picot, who initialled a joint memorandum on 3 January 1916. Ratified in diplomatic exchanges between 9 and 16 May, the secret compact was designed to balance the imperial ambitions of the Entente powers across the Middle East.

The origins of these discussions lay earlier in the First World War. In March 1915, Russia sought assurances from its allies regarding Constantinople and the Turkish Straits. To balance competing claims, the British and French developed complementary compacts that would divide Ottoman provinces outside the Arabian Peninsula into defined zones of direct administrative control and indirect imperial influence, with Russia giving its assent in return for claims on Ottoman territory in the east, and Italy later receiving promises of its own in Anatolia.