Partition of the Ottoman Empire

The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey.

Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.

The sometimes-violent creation of protectorates in Iraq and Palestine, and the proposed division of Syria along communal lines, is thought to have been a part of the larger strategy of ensuring tension in the Middle East, thus necessitating the role of Western colonial powers (at that time Britain, France and Italy) as peace brokers and arms suppliers.

After the Ottoman government collapsed completely, its representatives signed the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, which would have partitioned much of the territory of present-day Turkey among France, the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy.

While a part of the Triple Entente, Russia also had wartime agreements preventing it from participating in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the Russian Revolution.

Britain anticipated a need to secure the area because of its strategic position on the route to Colonial India and perceived itself as locked in a struggle with Russia for imperial influence known as The Great Game.

[9] French control was met immediately with armed resistance, and, to combat Arab nationalism, France divided the Mandate area into Lebanon and four sub-states.

Under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne Mosul fell under the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, but the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland.

In 1925 they recommended the region remain connected to Iraq, and that the UK should hold the mandate for another 25 years, to assure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population.

Lastly, the British promised via the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence that the Hashemite family would have lordship over most land in the region in return for their support in the Great Arab Revolt.

Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, was appointed the first High Commissioner in Palestine.

When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed an independent state in Damascus, but were too weak, militarily and economically, to resist the European powers for long, and Britain and France soon re-established control.

During the 1920s and 1930s Iraq, Syria and Egypt moved towards independence, although the British and French did not formally depart the region until after World War II.

The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen became independent in 1918, while the Arab States of the Persian Gulf became de facto British protectorates, with some internal autonomy.

The Russians, British, Italians, French, Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians all made claims to Anatolia, based on a collection of wartime promises, military actions, secret agreements, and treaties.

In March 1915, Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, Sergey Sazonov, told British and French Ambassadors George Buchanan and Maurice Paléologue that a lasting postwar settlement demanded Russian possession of "the city of Constantinople, the western shore of the Bosporus, Sea of Marmara, and Dardanelles, as well as southern Thrace up to the Enos-Media line", and "a part of the Asiatic coast between the Bosporus, the Sakarya River, and a point to be determined on the shore of the Bay of İzmit.

However, in 1919 the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos obtained the permission of the Paris Peace Conference to occupy İzmir, overriding the provisions of the agreement.

The French army, along with the British, occupied parts of Anatolia from 1919 to 1921 in the Franco-Turkish War, including coal mines, railways, the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak, Karadeniz Ereğli and Constantinople, Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace and the region of Cilicia.

The promised territories included eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of western Anatolia around the city of İzmir.

The South West Caucasian Republic was an entity established on Russian territory in 1918, after the withdrawal of Ottoman troops to the pre-World War I border as a result of the Armistice of Mudros.

After fighting broke out between it and both Georgia and Armenia, British High Commissioner Admiral Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe occupied Kars on 19 April 1919, abolishing its parliament and arresting 30 members of its government.

In April 1915, Russia supported the establishment of the Armenian provisional government under Russian-Armenian Governor Aram Manukian, leader of the resistance in the Defense of Van.

After the fall of the Russian Empire, Georgia became an independent republic and sought to maintain control of Batumi as well as Ardahan, Artvin, and Oltu, the areas with Muslim Georgian elements, which had been acquired by Russia from the Ottomans in 1878.

After the demise of the Ottoman power, Georgia regained Ardahan and Artvin from local Muslim militias in 1919 and Batum from the British administration of that maritime city in 1920.

This border was ratified again with the Treaty of Moscow (1921), in which the Bolsheviks ceded the already Turkish-occupied provinces of Kars, Iğdır, Ardahan, and Artvin to Turkey in exchange for the Adjara region with its capital city of Batumi.