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Turkish Campaigns
At the outbreak of World War I, Turkey was politically and militarily in a state of transition. The Young Turk regime was thoroughly established, but it was not united, nor had it recovered from the crushing defeat suffered in the Balkan Wars of 1912-4913. The army was being restored and rearmed by a German military mission. At the same time, Britain was endeavoring to carry out a similar task for the navy, with poor prospects by comparison, since whereas the army contained magnificent fighting material, the navy was largely antiquated. The division of sentiment in the Turkish government was represented by Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the navy minister, and Enver Pasha, the war minister. The former was an old-fashioned Pan-Turk who was prepared to keep out of war if possible, though he was by no means as wholehearted in this resolve as the grand vizier, Mehmet Said Halim Pasha. Enver, on the other hand, had adopted and in part invented the creed of Pan-Turanism, which sought to embrace all speakers of Turanian ( UralAltaic) languages, and he was indifferent to the fate of the Turkish possessions in the purely Arab countries. He was determined on war. On Aug. 2, 1914, a secret treaty providing for the subsequent entry of Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers was signed with Germany. At the last moment, the government had misgivings because the forces of the Allies were making a better showing than had been expected, but Enver pressed for Turkish belligerency. In this he had the collaboration of German Vice Admiral Wilhelm A. T. Souchon, whose determination had enabled him to escape the powerful fleets of France and Britain in the Mediterranean Sea and to bring the battle cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau safely through the Dardanelles. The arrival of a modern battle cruiser at Constantinople (now Istanbul) transformed Turkey's naval position and threatened the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which included no warships of the dreadnought type nor any with the Goeben's speed. The two ships were nominally embodied in the Turkish Navy; and on October 29, Souchon led the combined fleet in the bombardment of the Black Sea ports of Novorossisk, Feodosiya, Sevastopol, and Odessa, thus ensuring war with Russia. Russia declared war on Turkey on November 1, and Britain and France followed suit on November 5. Meanwhile, Turkey had mobilized 36 divisions by the
end of September. The head of the German military mission, Gen. Otto
Liman von Sanders, was a man of ability, energy, and integrity, and
all the work which he was able to supervise was admirably done. The
situation in Turkey's Arab possessions was another matter. The Baghdad
Railway included great gaps, which were covered by execrable roads over
which all supplies had to be borne because the tunnels through the Taurus
and Amanos Mountains had not been pierced. Moreover, on the east side
of the mountains the railway extended only halfway between Aleppo (Halab
) and Mosul, the terminus being Ras el `Ain. For these reasons, it was
impossible to make nearly as good progress east of the Taurus as west
of it. The garrison at Yemen, in southwestern Arabia at the southern
extremity of the Ottoman Empire, seemed useless, although it actually
proved a sharp thorn in the British flank by maintaining a siege of
Aden throughout the war. The reinforcement of the Turkish garrison in
Syria was paralleled and indeed proportionately exceeded by that of
the British garrison in Egypt. The Regular infantry brigade and the
regiment of cavalry stationed there at the beginning of the war were
sent to fight in France, but they were replaced by two Indian and two
British Territorial divisions under the command of Gen. Sir John Grenfell
Maxwell, who had a long experience of the country.
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