Sykes–Picot Agreement in the context of "Mandatory Palestine"

The Turkish War of Independence (15 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after the Ottoman Empire was occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern question, ending the Ottoman sultanate and the Ottoman caliphate, and establishing the Republic of Turkey. This resulted in the transfer of sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for nationalist revolutionary reform in Republican Turkey.

While World War I ended for the Ottomans with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allies continued occupying land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, and to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman commanders therefore refused orders from the Allies and Ottoman government to disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil, Sultan Mehmed VI dispatched general Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), to restore order; however, he became an enabler and leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance. In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allies. The Allies pressured the Ottoman "Istanbul government" to suspend the Constitution, Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon (French: Mandat pour la Syrie et le Liban; Arabic: الانتداب الفرنسي على سوريا ولبنان, romanized: al-intidāb al-faransī ʻalā sūriyā wa-lubnān, also referred to as the Levant States; 1923−1946) was a League of Nations mandate founded in the aftermath of the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, concerning the territories of Syria and Lebanon. The mandate system was supposed to differ from colonialism, with the governing country intended to act as a trustee until the inhabitants were considered eligible for self-government. At that point, the mandate would terminate and a sovereign state would be born.

During the two years that followed the end of the war in 1918—and in accordance with the Sykes–Picot Agreement signed by the United Kingdom and France during the war—the British held control of most of Ottoman Iraq (now Iraq) and the southern part of Ottoman Syria (now Israel, Palestine and Transjordan), while the French controlled the rest of Ottoman Syria (including Lebanon, Alexandretta, and portions of Cilicia). In the early 1920s, British and French control of these territories became formalized by the League of Nations' mandate system. And on 29 September 1923 France was assigned the League of Nations mandate of Syria, which included the territory of present-day Lebanon and Alexandretta in addition to modern Syria. The League of Nations monitored the mandates through the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC). The PMC allowed other states to voice their thoughts on the management of the mandates, such as in economic matters.

The partition of the Ottoman Empire (30 October 1918 – 1 November 1922) was a geopolitical event that occurred after World War I and the occupation of Constantinople by British, French, and Italian troops in November 1918. The partitioning was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I, notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, after the Ottoman Empire had joined Germany to form the Ottoman–German alliance. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states. The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural, and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.

The League of Nations mandate granted the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, the British Mandate for Mesopotamia (later Iraq) and the British Mandate for Palestine, later divided into Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan (1921–1946). The Ottoman Empire's possessions in the Arabian Peninsula became the Kingdom of Hejaz, which the Sultanate of Nejd (today Saudi Arabia) was allowed to annex, and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen. The Empire's possessions on the western shores of the Persian Gulf were variously annexed by Saudi Arabia (al-Ahsa and Qatif), or remained British protectorates (Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar) and became the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.

The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. However, his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.

The United States had joined the Triple Entente in fighting the Central Powers on April 6, 1917. Its entry into the war had in part been due to Germany's resumption of submarine warfare against merchant ships trading with France and Britain and also the interception of the Zimmermann telegram. However, Wilson wanted to avoid the United States' involvement in the long-standing European tensions between the great powers; if America was going to fight, he wanted to try to separate that participation in the war from nationalistic disputes or ambitions. The need for moral aims was made more important when, after the fall of the Russian government, the Bolsheviks disclosed secret treaties made between the Allies. Wilson's speech also responded to Vladimir Lenin's Decree on Peace of November 1917, immediately after the October Revolution in 1917.

Arab nationalism (Arabic: القومية العربية, romanized: al-qawmīya al-ʿarabīya) is a political ideology asserting that Arabs constitute a single nation. As a traditional nationalist ideology, it promotes Arab culture and civilization, celebrates Arab history, the Arabic language and Arabic literature. It often also calls for unification of Arab society. It bases itself on the premise that the people of the Arab world—from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea—constitute one nation bound together by a common identity — ethnicity, language, culture, history, geography, and politics.

Rooted in the 19th-century Nahda under Ottoman rule, Arab nationalism emerged in the early 20th century as an opposition movement in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, later evolving into the overwhelmingly dominant ideological force in the Arab world. Initially focused on resisting Ottoman control, it later opposed Western imperialism after World War I due to the undesirable outcome of the Arab Revolt — in successfully achieving their primary goal of dissolving the Ottoman Empire, the Arab rebels simultaneously enabled the partitioning of their would-be unified Arab state by Britain and France. Anti-Western sentiment grew as Arab nationalists rallied around the Palestinian cause, viewing Zionism as a threat to the region's integrity and linking the Arab–Israeli conflict to Western imperialism due to the Balfour Declaration. Arab unity was considered a necessary instrument to "restoring this lost part" of the nation, which in turn meant eliminating the "relics" of foreign colonialism. Its influence steadily expanded over subsequent years. By the 1950s and 1960s, the charismatic Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser championed Arab nationalism following his seizure and nationalization of the Suez Canal and his "victory" over British–French–Israeli forces in the 1956 Suez Crisis, and political parties like the Ba'ath Party and the Arab Nationalist Movement demonstrated remarkable capabilities for mobilization, organization, and clandestine activities. This ideology seemed to be on the rise across the Arab states, with independent Arab governments such as Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Egypt adopting Arab nationalism as official state policy.

The Arab Union is a theoretical political union of the Arab states. The term was first used when the British Empire and French empire promised the Arabs a united independent state in return for revolting against the Ottoman Empire, with which the United Kingdom and France was at war. It never came to fruition following the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Despite this, many in the Arab world have since called for the creation of a pan-Arab state. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser made several unsuccessful attempts to unite Egypt with other Arab countries (including Iraq and North Yemen), and briefly succeeded in forming the United Arab Republic with Syria in 1958, which dissolved in 1971. The union is considered as one of the solutions to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Similar attempts were made by other Arab leaders, such as Hafez al-Assad, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Faisal I of Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Gaafar Nimeiry and Anwar Sadat.