Middle East is pretty simple. It was Ottoman for centuries. It was Ottoman for so long, that what was before them isn't of any relevancy. Once Ottomans were in decline, Euros sat down and agreed on how to exploit the resources. That is the #1 and only source of today's issues.
It's not
that simple.
*cracks knuckles*
Ottoman power in the Middle East had already been falling apart throughout the 19th century. In the 1830s, Egypt revolted and took control over a large part of the Levant for a while. They were driven back, but ever since, Egypt had only been nominally part of the Ottoman Empire. A lot of local rulers in the Middle East took inspiration from that. In the latter half of the 19th century, Kurdish emirs began extending their power, terrorising Christians and Turcomans in the process. The Ottoman rulers were virtually powerless, which led to the formation of nationalist Turkish groups such as the Young Turks, who wanted ethnically cleansed or segregated rule over the Middle East. On their model, groups such as the Young Kurds formed. The Ottomans let them go ahead, because the Kurds promised to make war on the Armenians, whom they suspected of being Russian allies, and had actually already gotten to the first step of genocide before the First World War started. The Arabs in the penninsula were restless and ready to revolt, only lacking the resources. There were movements for Armenian, Kurdish, Arab and Turcoman national states long before Sykes and Picot sat down to draw lines on a map. There were repeatedly pogroms and massacres against Christians, Yezids and other non-orthodox Muslims, mostly conducted by the Kurds. The Ottomans were already sitting on a powder keg, and if anything, European involvement actually helped contain it for a few decades, albeit at the price of oppression and dictatorship, and probably a much larger explosion that we are currently witnessing.
Nowadays, a lot of Turks and Muslims are looking at the Ottoman Empire with rose-tinted glasses, because they were an independent Muslim state that was eventually conquered by European powers. But truth be told, very few people in the Middle East shed a tear for the Ottomans when they disappeared, and to Arabs, they had always been foreign occupation.
I'm aware that the UK and France, mainly, carved up the old ottoman power, as always, in their interest, but... My confusion lies in what do you mean by Arab run? You mean free of European puppets?
In the First World War, the Allies had promised the Arabs a single, independent national state that would include all Arab territories. When the war ended, they immediately broke that promise by splitting up this territory into European colonies and installed rulers who were at their mercy, not determined by the people. Many of those rulers remained in power after independence was formally granted, some countries are still ruled by their descendants.
