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Treaties and Consequences
World War I in the Middle East, Lisa Adeli, Univ. of Arizona
Name _____________________ Date _____
Directions: Take notes on main points, write a
question, or sketch a representation of the topic.
World War I was a transformative event in world history,
possibly the single greatest catalyst for change on a
global scale. This is especially true in the Middle East, a
battleground during the war and the place where it
lasted the longest. World War I truly marked the birth of
the modern Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire took part in the Middle Eastern
theatre of World War I, under the terms of the OttomanGerman Alliance. Already staggering from the Balkan
Wars of 1912-1913, Ottoman troops battled for the next
four years on several fronts. In the northeast, they
fought against the Russians; in the west (Dardanelles
and Gallipoli) against British forces and the Australian
and New Zealand Arm Corps; in the south (Egypt,
Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Arabia, Iraq) against the
French, British, and their allies.
Although the Ottomans won a number of important
battles (such as Gallipoli), the war had a devastating
effect on Ottoman society, with both soldiers and
civilians suffering greatly. Troop movements, a British
blockade, and the absence of men who would normally
have farmed the land, combined with a plague of locusts
in Palestine, resulted in widespread famine. As in other
theaters of the war, the movement of soldiers and the
resulting lack of sanitation spread diseases. Typhus,
typhoid, cholera, and an influenza pandemic caused
terrible suffering and death throughout the Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire found itself facing internal unrest
from its national minorities, particularly the Arabs.
Britain and France used Arab dissatisfaction with
Ottoman rule to the advantage of the Allied cause. In
1915, the British opened negotiations with Sharif
Hussein of Saudi Arabia in an exchange of letters
between the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali and the
British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry
McMahon. In the Hussein McMahon agreement, the
McMahon promised Hussein that if he revolted against
the Ottoman Empire, the Allies would support his bid to
rule an independent Arab state spanning from Syria to
Yemen. In June, 1916, Hussein led the Arab Revolt,
assisted by a young, Arabic-speaking British officer, T.E.
Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”).
Meanwhile, in May 1916, France and Britain signed the
secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, dividing the Arab lands
into French and British mandates. In 1917, the British
signed the Balfour Declaration, establishing a Jewish
homeland in Palestine. Though all three of these
agreements were relatively ineffective in determining
the postwar settlement, they serve as the basis for much
of the present conflict in the region.
Although the Ottoman Empire had a generally good
record with regard to human rights, the pressures of the
world war and the rise of modern nationalism led to the
worst kind of wartime abuse: genocide. Since the early
19th century, there had been tensions between the
Ottoman government and the Armenians, resulting in
discrimination, persecution, and a series of well
documented massacres of the Armenians. With the
pressure of a world war, some members of the Ottoman
government looked at the Armenians as potential allies
of the Russian enemy, with whom Armenians shared
geographical proximity and the Christian religion. In
1915 Ottoman forces began rounding up Armenians,
especially in the eastern part of the country, and putting
them to death. There were executions into mass graves
and the “relocation” of men, women and children into
the Syrian Desert, where many died of disease and
starvation. It is estimated that between 1 and 1.5
million men, women and children died.
By 1918, it was clear that the Ottoman Empire had lost
the war. Its European territories had already been lost;
its Arab territories were falling away; its population was
exhausted and depleted by long years of war. However,
the harshness of the peace settlement, the Treaty of
Sevres in 1920, still came as a shock.
The Treaty of Sevres ended the Ottoman Empire and
separated the Arab lands from Turkey. To the dismay of
Arab nationalists, however, they did not get the large,
independent Arab state that they expected. The newly
established League of Nations put into place a Mandate
System that authorized Britain and France to govern
former Ottoman lands, France declaring a mandate over
Syria and Lebanon and Britain a mandate over Iraq and
Palestine. The Kurdish people were similarly
disregarded. Kurdish lands were divided among Iran,
Iraq, Turkey and Syria; today, the Kurds are the largest
group of people in the world without their own country.
In Turkey, nationalists were outraged by the Treaty of
Sevres. While most Turks accepted the treaty’s
dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, they could not
accept that the treaty divided Turkish lands into zones
occupied by Greece, Italy, and France and put the
Turkish Straits under international control. It was
especially galling when Greek occupying forces marched
in; a people who had been a subject nation would now
be the conquerors.
The ensuing revolt, known in Turkey as the War of
Independence, began almost immediately. Led by
Mustafa Kemal, later called Ataturk, the fighting caused
the Allies to withdraw occupying forces from Anatolia.
In 1923 a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, replaced
the Treaty of Sevres, ending the last segment of World
War I and creating the modern republic of Turkey. The
population exchanges that followed forced expulsions of
½ million Turks (Muslims) from Greece and of 1.5 million
Greeks (Christians) from western Turkey.
Over a decade of war had devastating effects on the
Middle East. Millions had died. Total Ottoman
population losses may have reached 5 million people,
including deaths from combat, disease, the Armenian
genocide, and the expulsion of peoples during the
population exchanges.
The roots of many contemporary Middle Eastern
conflicts go back to the Great War and its settlements.
The ongoing enmity between Armenia and its neighbors
Turkey and Azerbaijan can be traced directly back to
1915. Over the past century, Kurdish unrest has been a
continuing theme in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria:
sporadic warfare, revolution, and even mass killings
(such as Iraqi attacks against its rural Kurdish population
in the 1980s). The Persian Gulf War and bloody civil
wars in Lebanon and Syria are rooted in social/political
issues that developed or were intensified during the First
World War and its immediate aftermath. Finally, the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the most continuous source
of unrest in the Middle East, was greatly accelerated by
Allied wartime promises and postwar policies. Even one
century after the outbreak of war in 1914, the Great War
continues to affect the Middle East and the world in
which we live.