Partition of the Ottoman Empire

The partition of the Ottoman Empire was the break-up of the empire's remaining lands after its defeat in the First World War, between the armistice of 30 October 1918 and the abolition of the sultanate on 1 November 1922. Planned in wartime deals among the Allies, it handed most of the Arab Middle East to Britain and France as League of Nations mandates and created new states, while Turkish nationalists overturned the plans for Anatolia and founded the Republic of Turkey.

The Ottoman Empire entered the war in alliance with Germany. Long before it ended, the Allies were bargaining over its lands. In 1915 Russia claimed Constantinople and the straits. The secret Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 divided much of the Arab Middle East into British and French spheres, and a 1917 agreement promised Italy much of south-western Anatolia. At the same time Britain encouraged Arab hopes of independence in return for the Arab Revolt, led by the Hashemite family of Mecca, and in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 backed a Jewish national home in Palestine. These commitments were hard to reconcile, and the Russian Revolution ended Russia's share.

The Armistice of Mudros, signed on 30 October 1918, ended the fighting in the Middle East. The Ottomans gave up their garrisons outside Anatolia, demobilised their army and allowed the Allies to occupy the straits and other strategic points. From November 1918 British, French and Italian troops occupied Constantinople, where they stayed until 1923. In 1919 the peace conference allowed Greece to land troops at Smyrna, now İzmir.

The Arab provinces were placed under League of Nations mandates, confirmed at the San Remo conference in 1920. France received Syria and Lebanon, where it carved out Greater Lebanon as a haven for the Maronite Christians. Britain took Mesopotamia, which became Iraq with Faisal, a son of Sharif Hussein, as king, and Palestine, from which Transjordan was separated under his brother Abdullah. An Arab government proclaimed in Damascus could not hold out against the French. In the Arabian Peninsula, Hussein's Kingdom of Hejaz was later absorbed by Ibn Saud, who founded Saudi Arabia in 1932, while Yemen became independent and the Gulf sheikhdoms stayed under British protection.

In 1920 the sultan's government signed the Treaty of Sèvres, which would have left the Turks only part of Anatolia. Greece was to receive Smyrna and eastern Thrace, Italy and France zones in the south, and a large Armenian state was to stretch across the east. A nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, based in Ankara, rejected the treaty and fought the Turkish War of Independence. Between 1918 and 1923 it forced Greek, Armenian and Italian forces out of Anatolia, France withdrew by agreement, while treaties with the Soviet republics settled the north-eastern border.

On 1 November 1922 the Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate, and the last sultan, Mehmed VI, left Constantinople aboard a British warship. The Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923 replaced Sèvres and recognised the borders of the new state, and the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed on 29 October 1923. The caliphate followed in March 1924. One dispute remained: the province of Mosul, claimed by both Turkey and British-ruled Iraq, was awarded to Iraq after a League of Nations inquiry and a treaty in 1926.

The partition drew many of the borders of the modern Middle East. British and French rule lasted in various forms until after the Second World War, and in Palestine the clash between Arab nationalism and Zionism could not be resolved and fed into the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Our 1914 map shows the Ottoman Empire before the war. The 1920 map shows the rump Ottoman state with the new mandates of Syria and Palestine and the Kingdom of Hejaz, and by 1930 the Republic of Turkey has taken its place.