The 1916 agreement allocated control and influence in Ottoman territory. Kurdish division also involved an older Ottoman–Iranian frontier, the unfulfilled Sèvres provisions and later decisions over Syria and Mosul.

Four-panel chronology showing Sykes–Picot in 1916, Sèvres in 1920, Lausanne in 1923 and the League Council’s frontier decision in 1925
Original editorial chronology separating four stages of the settlement. The 1920 autonomy proposal never entered into force; the 1925 decision included conditions and requested local guarantees. This is a modern diagram, not a historical map. Kurdish History · CC BY 4.0.

A wartime agreement about a future settlement

Sykes–Picot was a secret British–French wartime arrangement concluded in May 1916, named after negotiators Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot. It addressed the future disposition of Ottoman territory. The surviving terms refer to Russian consultation and to arrangements with an Arab state or confederation. [1][2] They contain no scheme for a Kurdish state. That omission matters, but the agreement should be read as a proposed allocation of imperial power, rather than a completed drawing of every modern border.

Direct control and influence were different categories

The text distinguishes blue and red areas, where France and Britain respectively could establish direct or indirect control, from areas A and B, envisaged as Arab state territory with French or British priority in enterprise, loans and advisers. The brown area was assigned a proposed international administration. Further clauses concerned ports, railways, customs and arms. [1] These categories combined territorial ambition with economic and strategic access. Treating all five areas as identical colonies obscures what the document actually proposed.

The Iranian frontier was older

Kurdish communities already lived on both sides of an Ottoman–Iranian frontier. Keith McLachlan’s Iranica entry traces agreements including Amasya in 1555 and Zohab in 1639, alongside later disputes and nineteenth-century delimitation. [3] Such agreements did not instantly create a fully surveyed, immovable border. They do establish why the division involving Iran cannot originate entirely in a British–French plan for Ottoman lands in 1916. Frontier-making had a much longer history.

Sèvres proposed a different Kurdish mechanism

The postwar settlement changed the wartime framework. The French Diplomatic Archives describes successive military administrations and the San Remo decisions of 1920. [2] In August that year, Sèvres Article 62 proposed a local autonomy scheme for specified predominantly Kurdish areas, including safeguards for Assyro-Chaldeans and other minorities. Article 64 made possible independence conditional on a majority request and a favourable League Council assessment and recommendation. It also contemplated voluntary adhesion by Kurds in the Mosul vilayet. [4] This was neither automatic independence nor a plan covering every Kurdish-inhabited area. The treaty never entered into force. [5]

Lausanne did not finish the Iraq frontier

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne contained no equivalent Kurdish autonomy scheme. Article 3 used the 1921 Franco-Turkish agreement for the Syrian frontier, while leaving the Iraq frontier to British–Turkish negotiations within nine months, then referral to the League Council if talks failed. Its rights provisions also require careful reading: Articles 38–39 included protections applying to inhabitants or Turkish nationals, while Articles 40–41 specified institutions and education for non-Muslim minorities. [6] Absence of Kurdish autonomy should not be confused with absence of every general protection.

Mosul required a later decision

On 17 December 1925 the British prime minister read the League Council’s decision of the previous day to Parliament. It specified the Brussels line and conditions relating to continued British responsibility for Iraq. The decision also requested administrative measures securing the Kurdish local guarantees recommended by the commission. [7] This record shows why Lausanne alone did not resolve Mosul, and why a border award must be distinguished from the separate question of whether promised safeguards were put into practice. A decision requesting guarantees is not evidence of their full implementation.

Why the distinction matters for Kurdish history

Sykes–Picot remains part of a history in which Kurdish political aspirations encountered imperial bargaining and competing state projects. Radpey’s study examines that wider process of Kurdish self-determination and statelessness. [8] Its stages involved different participants, texts and territorial possibilities. Reading the 1916 clauses alongside Sèvres, Lausanne and the Mosul decision preserves the significance of outside power while allowing Kurdish political choices, older frontiers and later negotiations to remain visible.

Sources and further reading

  1. Yale Law School, Avalon Project, “The Sykes-Picot Agreement: 1916”: reproduced agreement terms, control areas, influence, international administration and economic clauses.
  2. French Diplomatic Archives, Syria and Lebanon thematic series 1SL/1V/2323–2356: historical introduction on Sykes–Picot, military administrations and San Remo.
  3. Keith McLachlan, “Boundaries i. With the Ottoman Empire”, Encyclopaedia Iranica: the older Ottoman–Iranian frontier and later delimitation.
  4. Treaty of Sèvres, British Treaty Series No. 11 (1920), printed p. 21, Articles 62–64; original Foreign Office scan.
  5. UK Parliament, Hansard, “Treaty of Sevres”, 18 February 1983: Douglas Hurd’s statement that the treaty never entered into force.
  6. Treaty of Lausanne, Part I, Articles 3 and 38–41; English text published by Türkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
  7. UK Parliament, Hansard, “Iraq and Mosul, New Treaty”, 17 December 1925: text of the preceding day’s League Council decision and Kurdish local guarantees.
  8. Loqman Radpey, “Kurdistan on the Sèvres Centenary”, Nationalities Papers 50/5 (2022): Kurdish self-determination and the changing post-Ottoman settlement.