Forget Sykes-Picot. It's The Treaty of Sèvres That Explains The Modern Middle East.

Forget Sykes-Picot. Its the Treaty of Svres That Explains the Moder...
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Forget Sykes-Picot. Its the Treaty of

Svres That Explains the Modern
Middle East.
Elias Groll | 54 mins ago
Ninety-five years ago today, European diplomats gathered at a

porcelain factory in the Paris suburb of Svres and signed a treaty
to remake the Middle East from the ashes of the Ottoman empire.
The plan collapsed so quickly we barely remember it anymore, but
the short-lived Treaty of Svres, no less than the endlessly
discussed Sykes-Picot
agreement, had consequences that can
still be seen today. We might do well to consider a few of them as

the anniversary of this forgotten treaty quietly passes by.
In 1915, as British troops prepared to march on Istanbul by way of
the Gallipoli peninsula, the government in London printed silk
handkerchiefs heralding the end of the Ottoman empire. It was a bit
premature (the battle of Gallipoli turned out to be one of the
Ottomans few World War I victories) but by 1920 Britains
confidence seemed justified: With allied troops occupying the
Ottoman capital, representatives from the wars victorious powers
signed a treaty with the defeated Ottoman government that divided
the empires lands into European spheres of influence. Svres
internationalized Istanbul and the Bosphorus, while giving pieces of
Anatolian territory to the Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, French, British,
and Italians. Seeing how and why the first European plan for
dividing up the Middle East failed, we can better understand the
regions present-day borders, as well as the contradictions of
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contemporary Kurdish nationalism and the political challenges

facing modern Turkey.
Within a year of signing the Treaty of Svres, European powers
began to suspect they had bitten off more than they could chew.
Determined to resist foreign occupation, Ottoman officers like
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk reorganized the remnants of the Ottoman
army and, after several years of desperate fighting, drove out the
foreign armies seeking to enforce the treatys terms. The result was
Turkey as we recognize it today, whose new borders were officially
established in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
Svres has been largely forgotten in the West, but it has a potent
legacy in Turkey, where it has helped fuel a form of nationalist
paranoia some scholars have called the Svres syndrome.
Svres certainly plays a role in Turkeys sensitivity over Kurdish
separatism, as well as the belief that the Armenian genocide
widely used by European diplomats to justify their plans for Anatolia
in 1920 was always an anti-Turkish conspiracy rather than a
matter of historical truth. Moreover, Turkeys foundational struggle
with colonial occupation left its mark in a persistent form of
anti-imperial nationalism, directed first against Britain, during the
Cold War against Russia, and now, quite frequently, against the
United States.
But the legacy of Svres extends well beyond Turkey, which is
precisely why we should include this treaty alongside Sykes-Picot
in our history of the Middle East. It will help us challenge the
widespread notion that the regions problems all began with
Europeans drawing borders on a blank map.
Theres no doubt that Europeans were happy to create borders that
conformed to their own interests whenever they could get away
with it. But the failure of Svres proves that that sometimes they
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couldnt. When European statesmen tried to redraw the map of

Anatolia, their efforts were forcefully defeated. In the Middle East,
by contrast, Europeans succeeded in imposing borders because
they had the military power to prevail over the people resisting
them. Had the Syrian nationalist Yusuf al-Azma, another
mustachioed Ottoman army officer, replicated Ataturks military
success and defeated the French at the Battle of Maysalun,
European plans for the Levant would have gone the way of Svres.
Would different borders have made the Middle East more stable, or
perhaps less prone to sectarian violence? Not necessarily. But
looking at history through the lens of the Svres treaty suggests a
deeper point about the cause-and-effect relationship between
European-drawn borders and Middle Eastern instability: the regions
that ended up with borders imposed by Europe tended to be those
already too weak or disorganized to successfully resist colonial
occupation. Turkey didnt become wealthier and more democratic
than Syria or Iraq because it had the good fortune to get the right
borders. Rather, the factors that enabled Turkey to defy European
plans and draw its own borders including an army and economic
infrastructure inherited from the Ottoman empire were some of
the same ones that enabled Turkey to build a strong, centralized,
European-style nation-state.
Of course, plenty of Kurdish nationalists might claim that Turkeys
borders actually are wrong. Indeed, some cite Kurdish
statelessness as a fatal flaw in the regions post-Ottoman borders.
But when European imperialists tried to create a Kurdish state at
Svres, many Kurds fought alongside Ataturk to upend the treaty.
Its a reminder that political loyalties can and do transcend national
identities in ways we would do well to realize today.
The Kurdish state envisioned in the Svres Treaty would, crucially,
have been under British control. While this appealed to some
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Kurdish nationalists, others found this form of British-dominated

independence problematic. So they joined up to fight with the
Turkish national movement. Particularly among religious Kurds,
continued Turkish or Ottoman rule seemed preferable to Christian
colonization. Other Kurds, for more practical reasons, worried that
once in charge the British would inevitably support recently
dispossessed Armenians seeking to return to the region. Some
subsequently regretted their decision when it became clear the
state they had fought to create would be significantly more Turkish
and less religious than anticipated. But others, under varying
degrees of duress, chose instead to accept the identity the new
state offered them.
Many Turkish nationalists remain frightened by the way their state
was destroyed by Svres, while many Kurdish nationalists still
imagine the state they might have achieved. At the same time,
todays Turkish government extolls the virtues of Ottoman tolerance
and multiculturalism, while Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah
Ocalan, apparently after reading the sociologist Benedict Anderson
in prison, claims to have discovered that all nations are merely
social constructs. The governing Justice and Development Party
(AKP) and the pro-Kurdish HDP spent much of the last decade
competing to convince Kurdish voters that a vote for their party was
a vote for peace competing, that is, over which party was
capable of resolving Turkeys long-simmering conflict by creating a
more stable and inclusive state. In short, as many Americans still
debate the artificial nature of European-made states in the Middle
East, Turkey is fitfully transcending a century-long obsession with
proving how real it is.
Needless to say, the renewed violence Turkey has seen in the past
several weeks threatens these fragile elements of a post-national
consensus. With the AKP calling for the arrest of Kurdish political
leaders and Kurdish guerrillas shooting police officers, nationalists
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on both sides are falling back into familiar, irreconcilable positions.

For 95 years, Turkey reaped the political and economic benefits of
its victory over the Treaty of Svres. But building on this success
now requires forging a more flexible political model, one that helps
render battles over borders and national identity irrelevant.
Photo credit: David Rumsey Map Collection
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11/08/2015 19:26

Forget Sykes-Picot. It's The Treaty of Sèvres That Explains The Modern Middle East.

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Forget Sykes-Picot. It's The Treaty of Sèvres That Explains The Modern Middle East.

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Forget Sykes-Picot. Its the Treaty of Svres That Explains the Moder...

Forget Sykes-Picot. Its the Treaty of

Ninety-five years ago today, European diplomats gathered at a

agreement, had consequences that can

still be seen today. We might do well to consider a few of them as

contemporary Kurdish nationalism and the political challenges

couldnt. When European statesmen tried to redraw the map of

Kurdish nationalists, others found this form of British-dominated

on both sides are falling back into familiar, irreconcilable positions.

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