Gallipoli & the Middle East 1914-1918 (eBook)

Supporters of the Young Turks in Jerusalem, 1909. Much of the early leadership of the Young Turk movement evolved in provincial cities like Salonika and Damascus, where its members could gather in secret and in safety. By 1909 these had become hotbeds of revolutionary activity.

INTRODUCTION

The Road to War

Many conventional ideas about the Ottoman forces engaged in World War I in the Mediterranean and Middle East are unbalanced, such as their army being inherently corrupt, inefficient and prone to collapse. Western historiography tends to present a dismal picture of the Ottoman Army at war. This volume hopes to provide a more balanced look.

The historiography in English of World War I in the Middle East that has evolved over the past 90 years is wide ranging, but tends to be focused on particular campaigns, leaders or units. There are few books that put together a single unitary picture of the entire Middle Eastern theatre, and those that do tend to focus on military, political or cultural matters. Moreover, even today the history of this theatre remains deeply rooted in English and German sources. This situation, of course, was directly caused by the lack of availability of Ottoman or Turkish sources. In fact, in the most widely regarded definitive work on the Turkish fronts, written by the French commandant Maurice Larcher in 1926, only a quarter of the cited sources were Ottoman. The resultant historiography, in turn, tends to tell the story from an overwhelmingly European perspective, which in many ways reflected what the Europeans saw or perceived, rather than reflecting what actually occurred. Today, this situation is rapidly changing, as historians take a fresh look at the events of 1914–18 through the lens of the Ottoman archives and Turkish narratives.

As a result of the way the history of World War I in the Middle East has evolved, there are many popular ideas about the war in this theatre that are largely untrue. For example, one is that the Turks often had large numerical superiorities of men (in most cases they were outnumbered). Another is that German generals provided most of the competent leadership and professional staff work for the Turks. There is also the idea that the Ottoman Army was incapable of modern military operations due to corruption and inefficiency. Finally, many histories present the idea that the Turks suffered unusually high numbers of casualties in campaigns against the Allies. For example, in the Gallipoli campaign, a commonly cited figure by British authors suggests that half a million Turks became casualties, whereas the actual number of Ottoman casualties was about 220,000. Finally, there is a pervasive myth that Arab soldiers serving in the Ottoman Army were unreliable and prone to collapse. None of these ideas are true, and in general Western historiography presents a dismal picture of the Ottoman Army at war, in which Turkish successes are largely attributed to Allied mistakes, the activities of German generals or inhospitable terrain and conditions. With these ideas in mind, this volume hopes to provide a balanced look at the Turkish fronts in the Middle East during World War I.

Although many of those in the Young Turk movement were military officers, some were civilians and government officials. All shared a desire to westernize and modernize both the Ottoman state and society

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Ottoman Empire reached its zenith of power in the seventeenth century, after which it suffered a gradual decline characterized by a loss of competitiveness with the emerging European nation states. In the eighteenth century, the Ottomans lost territory in Hungary and the Balkans to Austria. Similarly, the Russians under Peter and Catherine took back the Black Sea coasts and the Crimea. The Mamluks took control in Egypt, and along the North African coast gained autonomy. The early nineteenth century saw the independence of Greece and Serbia, while Russia seized most of the Caucasus. The Ottoman sultan attempted a programme of reform, called the Tanzimat, which attempted to strengthen the government and the military. European advisers were hired, and attempts were made to create model structures. The Crimean War (1853–56) overtook these efforts and the Turks were set farther behind.

By the 1870s the English press had dubbed the Ottoman state ‘the sick man of Europe’, and it seemed destined to fragment piece by piece as the European powers took its land and its own ethnic minorities gained independence. From this notion grew the ‘Eastern Question’, which attempted to frame what the future Middle East might look like politically when the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed. Three of the Great Powers concerned themselves with the Eastern Question: Great Britain, France and Russia. The British interests lay in the security of the Suez Canal and the security of India. The French were interested in spreading influence in the Levant and eastern Mediterranean. The Russians wanted access to the Mediterranean through control of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, as well as acquiring territory in the Caucasus and Trans-Caspian region. In a nutshell, Britain supported the continuation of the Ottoman state while the Russians wanted to destroy it.

The 1870s brought significant growth to the nationalist ambitions of many of the ethnic minorities within the Ottoman Empire, particularly the Bulgarians, Albanians, Macedonians and the Armenians. Firebrands within these communities formed revolutionary groups dedicated to independence by force of arms. In Bulgaria in 1876, a nationalist insurgency resulted in a violent Ottoman campaign of repression and massacres. These ‘Bulgarian horrors’ as they were termed led to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. In truth, Russia and many Europeans supported and encouraged the Bulgarians to rise against the Turks. In any case, the Tsar unleashed his armies on the Ottoman provinces in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. The Russians quickly pinned the Turks in several fortresses and drove them back to the outskirts of Constantinople while taking Batum and Kars in the east. They forced the Turks to sign the Treaty of Santo Stefano, which created a Greater Bulgaria under the wing of the Russians. The new Greater Bulgarian state had access to the Mediterranean Sea and was regarded as a puppet of the Russians.

A scene from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. Although ultimately defeated in the war, the Ottoman Army successfully defended the city of Plevna against greatly superior Russian forces using field entrenchments. The siege of Plevna foretold the kind of fighting that would characterize much of World War I.

The treaty so destabilized the balance of power in Europe that Bismarck convened the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Supported by the British and the Austrians, Bismarck managed to dismantle the Santo Stefano Treaty and restore to the Turks much of what they had lost. In the end Bulgaria survived, but with a much reduced area. The Treaty of Berlin in 1878 was a reprieve for the Turks that allowed them to resume modernization and Westernization. It should be noted here that the Europeans, including the British and French, maintained an iron grip on the Ottoman economy by the imposition of capitulations dating back to the late 1700s. These capitulations granted the Europeans favourable trade privileges that were largely tax free and were a festering wound in European–Ottoman relations.

As the twentieth century approached, many young Turkish army officers and civil servants grew disenchanted with the pace of modernization and formed a secret group called the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). They were popularly known in the West as the Young Turks. The CUP was dedicated to the overthrow of the sultanate and the establishment of a Western-style parliamentary democracy. The first among equals of the CUP was the Salonika Group, centred on officers of the Ottoman Third Army. On 23 July 1908, the Young Turks forced the sultan to abdicate peacefully. However, a counter- revolution in April 1909 pushed the Young Turks briefly out of power, until the Action Army marched on Constantinople to depose the sultan on 27 April 1909. Many of the future leaders of the Ottoman Government and the later Turkish republic were prominent members of the CUP at this time, including Enver, Taalat, Cemal and Mustafa Kemal.

The new government was, at first, democratically inclined and open to the idea of minority participation. However, over the next several years CUP ideology hardened and the rights of the minority communities were decreased. Naturally, this generated much unhappiness and led to the revival of the revolutionary committees. In turn, fresh insurgencies and violence broke out in Albania, Macedonia,...