Weekly Geopolitical Report – Sykes-Picot: 100 Years Later (May 23, 2016)
by Kaisa Stucke, CFA
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the disintegrating Ottoman Empire territories in the Middle East into British-controlled and French-controlled areas following WWI. One hundred years after the agreement, the effects of the borders established by these European powers continue to reverberate as the region remains unstable. The Middle East has a rich and complex history that could fill several volumes of books. Although we will give a condensed overview of the long history in the region, we will focus on the WWI time period, specifically the circumstances that led to the Sykes-Picot Agreement.