Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

August 14, 2015

How a Never-Implemented Treaty Helped Shape the Modern Middle East

Britain and France tried and failed to divide Turkey.

In 1920, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Sèvres, partitioning the Ottoman empire between them. But after the reorganized Ottoman army defeated French and British forces and Turkey was founded as a modern nation-state, the treaty was scrapped. Nick Danforth argues that, while the Sykes-Picot treaty (in which France and Britain divided other parts of the Middle East) gets considerably more attention, Sèvres left its own important legacy:

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