A new Sykes–Picot after 100 years?

The year 2015 was the centennial of very important events. The First World War, which began in 1914 and lasted four years, deeply affected the history and sociology of societies as well as the fundamental dynamics of international politics, and continued to shape them in the following period too.

For the Ottoman State, one of the parties to this war, 1915 had also been quite difficult. Tragic events took place, such as the failure of the Canal Operation, the Sarıkamış Operation and the Çanakkale Wars. But there are two great events that took place within this year that have often been dwelt upon in later periods.

In 2016 we will also live through the 100th anniversary of another very important event that emerged in this war atmosphere and was influential to a degree in shaping the following period. The document, which emerged with the exchange of notes carried out on 9 and 16 May and is also known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, envisaged the classification of the Ottoman State's Middle Eastern lands among the party countries. The agreement is named after the two diplomats who conducted the negotiations, Sir Mark Sykes and Georges Picot, and for this reason the agreement in question is perceived as if only Britain and France were parties. Yet the Agreement has another party that would withdraw from it in 1917: Tsarist Russia.

The interesting aspect of the matter is that while the agreement in question was taking shape, Britain was also developing quite different relations over the Arab world and making moves that would leave the Ottoman State in difficulty. Britain, which reached an understanding with Sharif Hussein just before the Sykes-Picot Agreement, had promised Sharif Hussein the establishment of a state in a geography that included Syria and did not cover Lebanon.

When, after the revolution took place in Russia in 1917 and the Bolsheviks seized power, they spilled all of Tsarist Russia's diplomatic correspondence into the marketplace, Sharif Hussein and the other rebels who had revolted against the Ottoman State, that is, against the Caliph, experienced a great shock.

What an interesting coincidence that, 100 years after the Agreement, a new equation including Russia is being attempted in the lands that the Agreement concerned, and a new war of partition is being headed toward. At this stage of the history of international relations, history is taking shape again at a 100-year interval, in different bodies but similarly in content.

Truly, both 100 years ago and today, one of the weak parties of this war of partition is Russia. Tsarist Russia and its successor the USSR, which were able to obtain influential positions in regional politics through interventions in the crisis areas created by the conjuncture, lost their influential positions in the region as the crises were resolved. Russia's recent active intervention in Middle East policy also came with the vacuum created by the civil war in Syria. But since this time the Russians do not want to withdraw from the region after the crisis somehow eases, they are carrying out serious fortification in Syria.

Britain handed over its hegemonic relations in the region to the US after the Second World War. The US became one of the indispensable parts of regional politics after the Second World War. It tried to strengthen this position by intervening directly during the Occupation of Iraq, but its approaching the region's sociology with a "social engineering" perspective made it impossible to obtain the result it wanted and also paved the way for today's developments. If a small study is made of the geography in which the terrorist organization called DAESH took shape and of what kind of sociology it rests on in this geography, a healthier analysis of the process being lived can be made.

The point reached in the end is the Syrian Crisis. Since the US adopted and implemented an ambivalent foreign policy on the solution of this crisis, we are faced with a human drama lived in parallel with the internationalization of the problem.

US President Obama, who gave a very poor exam in this process, does not want to take a risky step in Syria with about a year left in his term. It is certain that Obama has managed the Syrian crisis quite badly, but the opening of so much room to Russia in the region brings various question marks to mind. Is all this happening as a result of a process that Obama too could not resist? To say it more openly, are certain circles in the US consciously making room for Russia in order to be able to determine the policy of the next few decades?

The answer to this question may also show how the next few years will take shape. The US's arms investments in Europe, its military investments in the Asia-Pacific region, and the pulling of conventional forces largely to the Asia-Pacific showed that the US was in the process of building a new defense strategy.

Truly, Russia is a good enemy profile for US public opinion. Prejudices carried over from the USSR period may be useful in a new struggle the US will undertake. The Russia question that Western countries had trouble positioning within the system 100 years ago was thought to have ended with the end of the Cold War. At the point reached, the parties of Sykes-Picot seem to have somehow come together again in Syria. Will a new Sykes-Picot come out of this, or are there other calculations behind the Syrian stage? This is the essential question that will let us see the reality we are living through.