The First World War a century ago is undoubtedly epoch-making and affects the political landscape in many places. However, no depth can be compared with the Middle East. The tension it has caused to the Arab world has not been alleviated to date. In Africa, Latin America, and Europe after World War II, which caused tragic casualties, most countries basically accepted the borders imposed on them by history, but the countries of the Middle East did not accept them. The countries established in the Middle East after 1914 and the divided borders are still considered illegal by the nationals of these countries and their neighbors. In this vast region, only Egypt and Iran have a long history and have not been cut off by foreigners.
Even in the face of a difficult crisis, territorial integrity can be finally realized. There are also two countries, because the powers and blood of the founders are relatively stable, they are the Republic of Turkey established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Abdul Azi I. Ibn Saudi Arabia unified Saudi Arabia in 1932. These four relatively stable countries surround the core of the Middle East, and in this core region are five countries plus an area that currently seems unlikely to become a country: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine. In the past few decades, no country has been able to compare with the Middle East in terms of the number of wars, civil wars, and terrorist attacks, especially considering that the area of the region is relatively small. To explain the unusual history and current situation in this region, we need to understand the following: the frustrating situation in the Middle East before the First World War; the unreasonable intervention of the superpowers; the discovery of rich oil resources in the Middle East; the founding of Israel and the Cold War.
A few days after Franz Joseph declared war, the Ottoman Empire did not seem to have decided whether to join the war, and if it entered the war, it was joining the Alliances or the Allies. But shortly after the official war started, the Ottoman Empire decided to form an alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1914, Germany and the Ottoman Empire signed a secret agreement; soon after, two German warships, Gobain number and cruiser Breslau was chasing the British Navy, has fled to the east from the Mediterranean to the west and hid Constantinople. After arriving in Constantinople, the two warships were handed over to the still-neutral Ottoman Navy, and were renamed the Yavuz and Midiuri. The German officers and sailors on the ship were replaced by Turkey. The military uniform became the Turkish navy. After receiving two German cruisers in the Golden Horn of Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire immediately imposed a mine blockade on the Dardanelles. The reason for the declaration of war was also established: the Ottoman Empire and Germany blocked the sea passage between Russia and its allies. Soon after, the original Goben bombarded the Russian city on the Black Sea coast. Russia, Britain and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
The British-French Joint Fleet arrived at the southern tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula and decided to implement the landing campaign. The battle began with the shelling of warships, but it quickly developed into a full-scale ground attack, but the result was a fiasco. The Ottoman victory led to the resignation of the British Navy Secretary Winston Churchill, and the modern Turkish founders became famous for this battle (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk). This bloody battle is also a national pain in Australia and New Zealand. The NZ Force has tens of thousands of soldiers killed in the Battle of Gallipoli. The defeat of the Allied forces in Gallipoli became a strategic turning point in the Middle East battlefield. As the plan to attack the heart of the Ottoman Turkish Empire was defeated, the Allies turned their attention to the remote areas of this "sick man of Europe" to attack the Arab provinces that defended the relatively weak. This plan coincides with the Arab people’s eagerness to leave the Ottoman Empire. In July 1915, Sir Henry McMahon, then the British High Commissioner in Egypt, began secretly with the Arab province of Hanzhi and the holy city of Mecca, Sharif (meaning "sacred") Hussein Bin Ali. Communication. Hussein and his three sons, as well as the elite of Damascus, were dreaming of establishing a unified Arab country. The Arab country started from the Taurus Mountains in southeastern Turkey, south to the Red Sea, west to the Mediterranean, and east to Iran. In October 1915, in a letter to Hussein, McMahon unabashedly revealed the British will: the British will recognize and support the dream of the establishment of a unified Arab in the Mecca, and support the Arabs.
The Arabs abide by the credit and fulfill the agreement with the British, the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire began the insurgency, a move to the British march through Jerusalem to Damascus from the Sinai Peninsula has a decisive help. The British side sent Arab pass, archaeologist and spy Thomas Edward Lawrence, organized the Arab rebels to carry out surprise attacks, and his famous history, known as "Lawrence of Arabia." The British side has been treacherous and has not fully fulfilled the Arab agreement. In a secret letter sent back to the UK in early 1916, Lawrence believed that the Arab rebellion would be very beneficial to the British Empire because "this is in line with our short-term goal of dissolving the Islamic group, defeating the Ottoman Empire and creating chaos within it.” But the British side did not consider the unified Arab countries that Hussein and his sons dreamed of. For the British, the ally of France is much more important than the Arabs who took up arms for independence. At this time, the British and French troops were fighting side by side on the west line, and countless British and French soldiers were sent to the meat grinder. "The friendship between Britain and France is worth ten Syria’s." British Prime Minister David Lloyd George gave the French Prime Minister George Clemenceau a guarantee. Prior to this, France claimed to have ownership of the Christian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Although the British side is more willing to dominate the Arab world, under the strong pressure of Germany as a common enemy, Britain is willing to share the hegemony of the Middle East with France.
While McMahon and Hussein secret communications, Sir Mark Sykes behalf of the British, and French diplomat François Georges - Agreement "Picco is the exact opposite of a conspiracy Sykes - Picot agreement". When Osman was not yet dead, the agreement could not wait to plan the division of power between Britain and France in the Arab provinces of the post-Ottoman period. France will get the Arab province in the north and the Arab province in the south. "My plan is to go to Acre from the west, to Kirkuk in the east, draw a line, and divide the French with the North and the South." At the end of 1916, Sykes reported to the Prime Minister's Office of Downing Street and the secret agreement of the French.
The Sykes - Pico Agreement is a shameless imperialist transaction. Britain and France have arbitrarily determined the fate of other nations and countries, ignoring the conflict between Arabs and Kurds and the existing borders. The border line delineated by this agreement is doomed to the endless conflict in the Middle East for the next century.
Belfort redraws the border
The secretly signed document was not made public at first. In 1917, the October Revolution broke out in Russia, summoned to Germany, and publicized the Sykes - Pico Agreement. At this time, the British had signed another secret agreement - this time, the Arabs and The French were kept together in the dark. The British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to re-British coalition advocates the Jewish state guarantee, "the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine." The British side can agree to the oppressed Jews for national self-determination and generously give them a piece of the Ottoman Empire. The main reason is that with the deepening of the First World War, international criticism of British imperialist practices has increased. The voices of these criticisms have made the imperialists in the British cabinet government feel inconvenient, especially one of the critics named Woodrow Wilson, who has just succeeded in re-electing the US president. The British were betrayed and did not fulfill their pre-war commitment to Hussein to establish a unified Arab state. As the victors of World War I, Britain and France divided the Middle East into four countries. Due to geographical differences, ethnic conflicts and historical conflicts, these four countries are still the most difficult countries in the world today.
Fatal and lasting impact
Just before the signing of the relevant treaty, a question was placed before the two countries, the northern side of Palestine, and the border of the later state of Israel. A think tank wrote in a letter to British Prime Minister Lloyd George: "The fact is that any demarcation between the Arab countries between Aleppo and Mecca is unnatural. Therefore, the boundaries should be completely Depending on the actual needs, the strategy is the final demarcation guide.” Finally, the final border was delineated by a British general with the help of a manager of the British - Persian oil company. Of course, the world is not only the people of the Arab world who refuse to accept the country's borders. Europe has similar problems, but the following three reasons have caused the fatal and lasting consequences of the demarcation in the Middle East:
First, at the very beginning of the 19th century, many countries in Europe developed national identity and created a political class; for Arabs, the First World War broke their historical dreams. The Ottoman Turks adopted a laissez-faire policy when they ruled the Middle East, but they did not introduce any political structures in the Arab world to cultivate cultural or economic upper levels. On the contrary, when the Arab national consciousness develops slightly, the Ottoman rulers will exile or execute the leaders of the relevant movements. This kind of behavior has seriously affected the political awakening of the Middle East in the 20th century, and the historical unity of politics and religion in the Middle East has further hindered the political growth of the Arab world.
Second, the volatility of France and the United Kingdom in reshaping the borders of the Arab provinces in the Ottoman Empire has made conspiracy theorists feel that the border may change at any time. This concern has plagued Arabs for decades after the demarcation. . There are still rumors today that a sharp turn at the junction of the desert area between Jordan and Saudi Arabia is due to the fact that the colonial minister, Churchill, was struck by elbows when he was crossed. This is certainly a bit ridiculous, but Sykes, Pique, Lloyd and Clemenceau's arbitrariness in the Middle East is no different from this absurd rumor.
Third, unlike Europe, the tensions created by this unsustainable peace in the Arab world have not been eliminated in a one-off volcanic eruption. In the Second World War, this was not the main battlefield. The conflicts left by World War I have not been resolved. The catastrophic World War II has brought new problems to this place. The founding of Israel, together with the Cold War and the competition for oil resources in the Persian Gulf, have caused unbearable problems in the Middle East. The weight of history. And these overlapping problems have caused endless conflicts, even today, 100 years after the outbreak of World War I, we still can't see the end of these conflicts.
References
Fawcett, L. L. E. (Ed.). (2016). International relations of the Middle East. Oxford University Press.
Lesch, D. W. (1992). Syria and the United States: Eisenhower's Cold War in the Middle East (pp. 5-13). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Roshwald, A. (2002). Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-23. Routledge.
