When World War I erupted, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany as part of the "Central Powers." In the end, the Central Powers lost and the Turkish empire of the Ottomans ceased to exist as an empire. Turkey remained as a country, but it lost control over other territories that it had held before.
The League of Nations created a system for governing former German and Ottoman territories, called "the mandate system." The mandate system authorized a member nation of the League of Nations to govern a former German or Turkish colonial area after the conclusion of World War I. There were mandate territories in Africa and Asia, as well as the Middle East. As an example, the former Turkish provinces of Syria, Iraq and Palestine in the Middle East were divided into a French mandate territory and British mandate territory. The British mandate rule over Palestine has much to do with the history of the development of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
After World War I, the borders of the Ottoman Empire were reduced to those of Turkey. Turkey,s borders with Syria and Iraq were made after the end of the Ottoman empire and the French and British occupation in the provinces. The borders were permanently defined by the Treaty of Moscow after the 1877-1878 war.
