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Year 2020, Volume: 9 Issue: 1, 83 - 104, 20.12.2019
https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.541258

Abstract

References

  • Akarli, Engin. The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920. University of California Press, 1993. Akyıldız, Ali, and Zekeriya Kurşun, eds. Osmanlı Arap coğrafyası ve Avrupa emperyalizmi. İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2015. Al-Maghafi, Fadhl. “More than Just a Boundary Dispute: The Regional Geopolitics of Saudi-Yemeni Relations.” SOAS, University of London, 2012. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/15941/2/Al-Maghafi_3478_vol2.pdf. Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, and Qatar. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Ateş, Sabri. Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843-1914. Cambridge University Press, 2013. Bilgin, Pınar. “Thinking Postcolonially about the Middle East: Two Moments of Anti-Eurocentric Critique.” Center for Mellemoststudier, June 2016. https://www.google.com.tr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjz54rjiIrRAhXIvBoKHWy1DXoQFggjMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sdu.dk%2F-%2Fmedia%2Ffiles%2Fom_sdu%2Fcentre%2Fc_mellemoest%2Fvidencenter%2Fartikler%2F2016%2Fbilgin%2Barticle%2B(june%2B16).pdf&usg=AFQjCNEUhMtV_0--tDo8F9vl3tzHrxksYQ&sig2=u63QOpbZF1suUfbBweDKpw. ———. “What Is the Point about Sykes–Picot?” Global Affairs 2, no. 3 (May 26, 2016): 355–59. doi: 10.1080/23340460.2016.1236518. Brunet-Jailly, Emmanuel. “Special Section: Borders, Borderlands and Theory: An Introduction.” Geopolitics 16, no. 1 (January 31, 2011): 1–6. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2010.493765. Buzpınar, Ş Tufan. “Abdülhamid II and Sayyid Fadl Pasha of Hadramawt.” The Journal of Ottoman Studies 13, no. 13 (1993): 227–39. Çelebi, Katib. Tuhfet ül-kibâr fi esfâr il-bihâr. Müteferrika, 1729. Custred, Glynn. “The Linguistic Consequences of Boundaries, Borderlands, and Frontiers.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 26, no. 3 (December 1, 2011): 265–78. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2011.675716. Danforth, Nick. “Stop Blaming Colonial Borders for the Middle East’s Problems.” The Atlantic, September 11, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/stop-blaming-colonial-borders-for-the-middle-easts-problems/279561/. Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniye’nin 1313 Senesine Mahsus İstatistik-i Umumiyesidir. İstanbul: Nezaret-i Umur-i Ticaret ve Nafia, 1316. Elden, Stuart. “Thinking Territory Historically.” Geopolitics 15, no. 4 (November 19, 2010): 757–61. doi: 10.1080/14650041003717517. ———. “Why Is the World Divided Territorially?” In Global Politics: A New Introduction, edited by Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss, Second edition., 220–44. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014. http://eu.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/action/uresolver.do?operation=resolveService&package_service_id=3039366920002418&institutionId=2418&customerId=2415. Felton, John. The Contemporary Middle East: A Documentary History. Washington, D.C: CQ Press, 2008. Filistin Risalesi, 1915. Garfinkle, Adam. “The Fall of Empires and the Formation of the Modern Middle East.” Orbis 60, no. 2 (2016): 204–16. doi: 10.1016/j.orbis.2016.02.001. Gasparini, Alberto. “Belonging and Identity in the European Border Towns: Self-Centered Borders, Hetero-Centered Borders.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 29, no. 2 (April 3, 2014): 165–201. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2014.916067. Gavin, R. J. Aden under British Rule, 1839-1967. Hurst, 1975. Goettlich, Kerry. “The Rise of Linear Borders in World Politics.” European Journal of International Relations, March 16, 2018. doi: 10.1177/1354066118760991. Haddad, Mahmoud. “Iraq before World War I: A Case of Anti-European Arab Ottomanism.” In The Origins of Arab Nationalism, edited by Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Muslih, and Reeva S. Simon. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Halliday, Fred. The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology. Cambridge University Press, 2005. İnalcik, Halil. “Eyalet.” İslam Ansiklopedisi. TDV İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi, 1995. http://www.islamansiklopedisi.info/dia/pdf/c11/c110350.pdf. Jäckh, Ernst. Background of the Middle East. Cornell University Press, 1952. Jones, Stephen B. “Boundary Concepts in the Setting of Place and Time.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49, no. 3 (1959): 241–55. Kelidar, Abbas. “States without Foundations: The Political Evolution of State and Society in the Arab East.” Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 2 (1993): 315–339. Khalidi, Rashid. “The Persistence of the Sykes–Picot Frontiers in the Middle East.” London Review of International Law 4, no. 2 (July 2016): 347–57. doi: 10.1093/lril/lrw019. Kühn, Thomas. “Ordering the Past of Ottoman Yemen, 1872-1914.” Turcica 34 (2002): 189–220. ———. “Shaping and Reshaping Colonial Ottomanism: Contesting Boundaries of Difference and Integration in Ottoman Yemen, 1872-1919.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27, no. 2 (September 18, 2007): 315–31. Kurşun, Ali Murat, ed. Osmanlı İran sınırından anılar. İstanbul: Taş Mektep Yayıncılık, 2014. Kurşun, Zekeriya. Necid ve Ahsa’da Osmanlı hâkimiyeti: Vehhabî hareketi ve Suud Devleti’nin ortaya çıkışı. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1998. ———. The Ottomans in Qatar: A History of Anglo-Ottoman Conflicts in the Persian Gulf. The Isis Press, 2002. McMahon, A. H. “The Southern Borderlands of Afghanistan.” The Geographical Journal 9, no. 4 (1897): 393–415. doi: 10.2307/1774479. Minca, Claudio, and Nick Vaughan-Williams. “Carl Schmitt and the Concept of the Border.” Geopolitics 17, no. 4 (October 1, 2012): 756–72. doi: 14650045.2012.660578. Mojtahed-Zadeh, Pirouz. Boundary Politics and International Boundaries of Iran. Universal-Publishers, 2007. Muhanna, Elias. “Iraq and Syria’s Poetic Borders.” The New Yorker, August 13, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/iraq-syria-poetic-imagination. Nazer, Dima W., Maarten A. Siebel, Pieter Van der Zaag, Ziad Mimi, and Huub J. Gijzen. “Water Footprint of the Palestinians in the West Bank.” JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association 44, no. 2 (April 2008): 449–58. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2008.00174.x. Newman, David. “On Borders and Power: A Theoretical Framework.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 18, no. 1 (March 2003): 13–25. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2003.9695598. Newman, David, and Anssi Paasi. “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography.” Progress in Human Geography 22, no. 2 (1998): 186–207. Okumuş, Ali. Osmanlı Coğrafyası’nda petrol mücadelesi: Kalust S. Gülbenkyan ve Türk Petrol Şirketi. İstanbul: Taş Mektep Yayıncılık, 2015. Ortaylı, İlber. Imparatorluḡun en uzun yüzyılı. Timaş Yayınları, 2008. Ottaway, Marina. “Learning from Sykes-Picot.” Middle East Program Occasional Paper Series. Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2015. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/learning-sykes-picot. Paasi, Anssi. “Generations and the ‘Development’ of Border Studies.” Geopolitics 10, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 663–71. doi: 10.1080/14650040500318563. Partner, Peter. A Short Political Guide to the Arab World. Literary Licensing, LLC, 1960. Patel, David Siddhartha. “Repartitioning the Sykes-Picot Middle East? Debunking Three Myths.” Middle East Brief. Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, November 2016. https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB103.pdf. Prescott, J. R. V. Political Frontiers and Boundaries. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Rankin, K. J., and Richard N. Schofield. “The Troubled Historiography of Classical Boundary Terminology.” In Revised Version of a Paper Presented at the 30th Congress of the International Geographical Union, Glasgow, Scotland, 15-20 August 2004. University College Dublin. Institute for British-Irish Studies, 2004. http://researchrepository.ucd.ie/handle/10197/2245. Rogan, Eugene. “A Century After Sykes-Picot.” Cairo Review, 2015. https://cairoreview-b23.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/CR19-Rogan.pdf. Ryder, C. H. D. “The Demarcation of the Turco-Persian Boundary in 1913-14.” The Geographical Journal 66, no. 3 (1925): 227–37. doi: 10.2307/1782977. Sarıkçıoğlu, Melike. Osmanlı-İran hudut sorunları 1847-1913. Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2013. Stansfield, Gareth. “The Remaking of Syria, Iraq and the Wider Middle East.” RUSI, July, 2013. https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201307_bp_the_remaking_of_syria_iraq_and_the_wider_middle_east_final.pdf. Sykes, Mark, and F. Georges-Picot, “Map of Eastern Turkey in Asia, Syria and Western Persia”. UNISPAL, (1916), http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/3d14c9e5cdaa296d85256cbf005aa3eb/232358bacbeb7b55852571100078477c?OpenDocument, retrieved 19/08/2014. abbr.: United Nations 1916. Traboulsi, Fawwaz. A History of Modern Lebanon. 2 edition. London : New York: Pluto Press, 2012. Winichakul, Thongchai. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. University of Hawaii Press, 1994. Yerasimos, Stefanos. Milliyetler ve Sınırlar: Balkanlar, Kafkasya ve Ortadoğu. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994.

Deconstructing the Sykes-Picot Myth: Frontiers, Boundaries, Borders and the Evolution of Ottoman Territoriality

Year 2020, Volume: 9 Issue: 1, 83 - 104, 20.12.2019
https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.541258

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the emergence of the Sykes-Picot order and
deconstruct its mythologization by proposing an evolutionary assessment of
border understanding. This study addresses the following primary research
questions: How did the interplay of domestic, regional, and international developments
lay the groundwork for the formation of the Sykes-Picot territorial order? How
was the administrative structure and regional divisions before the Sykes-Picot
agreement and to which border categorizations did these structures correspond?
Was the Sykes-Picot agreement the only international intervention that affected
the borders of the region or were there other international interventions
before the Sykes-Picot agreement? This study argues that the history of Middle
Eastern border formation is not only an international one but also involves
many aspects that have not widely been taken into consideration. In doing so, this
paper adopts a critical historical perspective to analyze the evolution of
Middle Eastern borders. This paper proposes a three-tracked evolutionary
analytical framework (frontiers, boundaries, borders) to analyze the emergence
of borders and applies it to the emergence of Ottoman territoriality. This
study concludes that the Sykes-Picot agreement is only one, complementary part
of a long process in the emergence of Middle Eastern geopolitics
.

References

  • Akarli, Engin. The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920. University of California Press, 1993. Akyıldız, Ali, and Zekeriya Kurşun, eds. Osmanlı Arap coğrafyası ve Avrupa emperyalizmi. İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2015. Al-Maghafi, Fadhl. “More than Just a Boundary Dispute: The Regional Geopolitics of Saudi-Yemeni Relations.” SOAS, University of London, 2012. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/15941/2/Al-Maghafi_3478_vol2.pdf. Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, and Qatar. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Ateş, Sabri. Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843-1914. Cambridge University Press, 2013. Bilgin, Pınar. “Thinking Postcolonially about the Middle East: Two Moments of Anti-Eurocentric Critique.” Center for Mellemoststudier, June 2016. https://www.google.com.tr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjz54rjiIrRAhXIvBoKHWy1DXoQFggjMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sdu.dk%2F-%2Fmedia%2Ffiles%2Fom_sdu%2Fcentre%2Fc_mellemoest%2Fvidencenter%2Fartikler%2F2016%2Fbilgin%2Barticle%2B(june%2B16).pdf&usg=AFQjCNEUhMtV_0--tDo8F9vl3tzHrxksYQ&sig2=u63QOpbZF1suUfbBweDKpw. ———. “What Is the Point about Sykes–Picot?” Global Affairs 2, no. 3 (May 26, 2016): 355–59. doi: 10.1080/23340460.2016.1236518. Brunet-Jailly, Emmanuel. “Special Section: Borders, Borderlands and Theory: An Introduction.” Geopolitics 16, no. 1 (January 31, 2011): 1–6. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2010.493765. Buzpınar, Ş Tufan. “Abdülhamid II and Sayyid Fadl Pasha of Hadramawt.” The Journal of Ottoman Studies 13, no. 13 (1993): 227–39. Çelebi, Katib. Tuhfet ül-kibâr fi esfâr il-bihâr. Müteferrika, 1729. Custred, Glynn. “The Linguistic Consequences of Boundaries, Borderlands, and Frontiers.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 26, no. 3 (December 1, 2011): 265–78. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2011.675716. Danforth, Nick. “Stop Blaming Colonial Borders for the Middle East’s Problems.” The Atlantic, September 11, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/stop-blaming-colonial-borders-for-the-middle-easts-problems/279561/. Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniye’nin 1313 Senesine Mahsus İstatistik-i Umumiyesidir. İstanbul: Nezaret-i Umur-i Ticaret ve Nafia, 1316. Elden, Stuart. “Thinking Territory Historically.” Geopolitics 15, no. 4 (November 19, 2010): 757–61. doi: 10.1080/14650041003717517. ———. “Why Is the World Divided Territorially?” In Global Politics: A New Introduction, edited by Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss, Second edition., 220–44. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014. http://eu.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/action/uresolver.do?operation=resolveService&package_service_id=3039366920002418&institutionId=2418&customerId=2415. Felton, John. The Contemporary Middle East: A Documentary History. Washington, D.C: CQ Press, 2008. Filistin Risalesi, 1915. Garfinkle, Adam. “The Fall of Empires and the Formation of the Modern Middle East.” Orbis 60, no. 2 (2016): 204–16. doi: 10.1016/j.orbis.2016.02.001. Gasparini, Alberto. “Belonging and Identity in the European Border Towns: Self-Centered Borders, Hetero-Centered Borders.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 29, no. 2 (April 3, 2014): 165–201. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2014.916067. Gavin, R. J. Aden under British Rule, 1839-1967. Hurst, 1975. Goettlich, Kerry. “The Rise of Linear Borders in World Politics.” European Journal of International Relations, March 16, 2018. doi: 10.1177/1354066118760991. Haddad, Mahmoud. “Iraq before World War I: A Case of Anti-European Arab Ottomanism.” In The Origins of Arab Nationalism, edited by Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Muslih, and Reeva S. Simon. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Halliday, Fred. The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology. Cambridge University Press, 2005. İnalcik, Halil. “Eyalet.” İslam Ansiklopedisi. TDV İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi, 1995. http://www.islamansiklopedisi.info/dia/pdf/c11/c110350.pdf. Jäckh, Ernst. Background of the Middle East. Cornell University Press, 1952. Jones, Stephen B. “Boundary Concepts in the Setting of Place and Time.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49, no. 3 (1959): 241–55. Kelidar, Abbas. “States without Foundations: The Political Evolution of State and Society in the Arab East.” Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 2 (1993): 315–339. Khalidi, Rashid. “The Persistence of the Sykes–Picot Frontiers in the Middle East.” London Review of International Law 4, no. 2 (July 2016): 347–57. doi: 10.1093/lril/lrw019. Kühn, Thomas. “Ordering the Past of Ottoman Yemen, 1872-1914.” Turcica 34 (2002): 189–220. ———. “Shaping and Reshaping Colonial Ottomanism: Contesting Boundaries of Difference and Integration in Ottoman Yemen, 1872-1919.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27, no. 2 (September 18, 2007): 315–31. Kurşun, Ali Murat, ed. Osmanlı İran sınırından anılar. İstanbul: Taş Mektep Yayıncılık, 2014. Kurşun, Zekeriya. Necid ve Ahsa’da Osmanlı hâkimiyeti: Vehhabî hareketi ve Suud Devleti’nin ortaya çıkışı. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1998. ———. The Ottomans in Qatar: A History of Anglo-Ottoman Conflicts in the Persian Gulf. The Isis Press, 2002. McMahon, A. H. “The Southern Borderlands of Afghanistan.” The Geographical Journal 9, no. 4 (1897): 393–415. doi: 10.2307/1774479. Minca, Claudio, and Nick Vaughan-Williams. “Carl Schmitt and the Concept of the Border.” Geopolitics 17, no. 4 (October 1, 2012): 756–72. doi: 14650045.2012.660578. Mojtahed-Zadeh, Pirouz. Boundary Politics and International Boundaries of Iran. Universal-Publishers, 2007. Muhanna, Elias. “Iraq and Syria’s Poetic Borders.” The New Yorker, August 13, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/iraq-syria-poetic-imagination. Nazer, Dima W., Maarten A. Siebel, Pieter Van der Zaag, Ziad Mimi, and Huub J. Gijzen. “Water Footprint of the Palestinians in the West Bank.” JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association 44, no. 2 (April 2008): 449–58. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2008.00174.x. Newman, David. “On Borders and Power: A Theoretical Framework.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 18, no. 1 (March 2003): 13–25. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2003.9695598. Newman, David, and Anssi Paasi. “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography.” Progress in Human Geography 22, no. 2 (1998): 186–207. Okumuş, Ali. Osmanlı Coğrafyası’nda petrol mücadelesi: Kalust S. Gülbenkyan ve Türk Petrol Şirketi. İstanbul: Taş Mektep Yayıncılık, 2015. Ortaylı, İlber. Imparatorluḡun en uzun yüzyılı. Timaş Yayınları, 2008. Ottaway, Marina. “Learning from Sykes-Picot.” Middle East Program Occasional Paper Series. Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2015. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/learning-sykes-picot. Paasi, Anssi. “Generations and the ‘Development’ of Border Studies.” Geopolitics 10, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 663–71. doi: 10.1080/14650040500318563. Partner, Peter. A Short Political Guide to the Arab World. Literary Licensing, LLC, 1960. Patel, David Siddhartha. “Repartitioning the Sykes-Picot Middle East? Debunking Three Myths.” Middle East Brief. Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, November 2016. https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB103.pdf. Prescott, J. R. V. Political Frontiers and Boundaries. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Rankin, K. J., and Richard N. Schofield. “The Troubled Historiography of Classical Boundary Terminology.” In Revised Version of a Paper Presented at the 30th Congress of the International Geographical Union, Glasgow, Scotland, 15-20 August 2004. University College Dublin. Institute for British-Irish Studies, 2004. http://researchrepository.ucd.ie/handle/10197/2245. Rogan, Eugene. “A Century After Sykes-Picot.” Cairo Review, 2015. https://cairoreview-b23.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/CR19-Rogan.pdf. Ryder, C. H. D. “The Demarcation of the Turco-Persian Boundary in 1913-14.” The Geographical Journal 66, no. 3 (1925): 227–37. doi: 10.2307/1782977. Sarıkçıoğlu, Melike. Osmanlı-İran hudut sorunları 1847-1913. Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2013. Stansfield, Gareth. “The Remaking of Syria, Iraq and the Wider Middle East.” RUSI, July, 2013. https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201307_bp_the_remaking_of_syria_iraq_and_the_wider_middle_east_final.pdf. Sykes, Mark, and F. Georges-Picot, “Map of Eastern Turkey in Asia, Syria and Western Persia”. UNISPAL, (1916), http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/3d14c9e5cdaa296d85256cbf005aa3eb/232358bacbeb7b55852571100078477c?OpenDocument, retrieved 19/08/2014. abbr.: United Nations 1916. Traboulsi, Fawwaz. A History of Modern Lebanon. 2 edition. London : New York: Pluto Press, 2012. Winichakul, Thongchai. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. University of Hawaii Press, 1994. Yerasimos, Stefanos. Milliyetler ve Sınırlar: Balkanlar, Kafkasya ve Ortadoğu. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994.
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Primary Language English
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Ali Murat Kurşun This is me 0000-0003-4117-8078

Publication Date December 20, 2019
Published in Issue Year 2020 Volume: 9 Issue: 1

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Chicago Kurşun, Ali Murat. “Deconstructing the Sykes-Picot Myth: Frontiers, Boundaries, Borders and the Evolution of Ottoman Territoriality”. All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace 9, no. 1 (December 2019): 83-104. https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.541258.

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