The Ottomans lost World War I. The victorious British began the final dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.

Wartime British public statements on the fate of the Ottoman Empire had been conciliatory. The British did not pretend that they did not covet the Ottoman Arab provinces, but they did promise continuing independence for the Ottoman provinces with majority Turkish populations. In 1917, Bonar Law, British Foreign Secretary, told the House of Commons: ‘We are not fighting for additional territory.’ Prime Minister Lloyd George, in his ‘war aims’ speech of 5 January 1918, denounced the secret wartime agreements dividing the Ottoman Empire and denied all imperialist aims: ‘Nor are we fighting to destroy Austria-Hungary or to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race.’ None of this was true.

The actual British intent was to divide the Ottoman Empire among Britain and her allies. On 3 January 1916, Marks Sykes for Britain and François Georges-Picot for France signed the famous Sykes–Picot Agreement dividing the Ottoman Empire. The agreement, later ratified by the French and

British Governments and approved by Russia, divided the Ottoman Arab provinces between Britain and France, except for Palestine, which was to be international. Russia was to receive Eastern Anatolia, and Russia had been promised Istanbul and the Straits in the 1915 Constantinople Agreement. Italy was promised Southwestern Anatolia in the 1915 Treaty of London and the 1917 Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne Agreement. These treaties were later to be broken, mainly at the pleasure of the British, but they indicate that the British had no intention of honouring their public commitments to Turkish sovereignty.

Speaking to the other British delegates at the Paris Peace Conference, Lord Curzon, then a member of the British War Cabinet, gave a more honest assessment of British post-war aims: