The Ottoman Third Army lacked proper supplies for these conditions, and incurring heavy losses retreated under Russian fire.

Enver hoped a success would facilitate opening the route to Tbilisi and beyond, with a revolt of Caucasian Muslims; another strategic goal was to cut Russian access to hydrocarbon resources around the Caspian Sea.

On 30 October 1914, the 3rd Army headquarters was informed by High Command in Istanbul about an exchange of fire during the pursuit of Goeben and Breslau in the Black Sea.

Hasan İzzet Pasha managed to stabilize the front by letting the Russians 25 kilometers inside the Ottoman Empire along the Erzurum-Sarikamish axis.

Behaeddin Shakir and the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa (the predecessor of the MIT of Turkey), were given the task to raise volunteers among the population in the region.

At this moment, In December 1914, General Nikolai Istomin ordered withdrawal from major Russian units at the Persian Campaign at the height of the Battle of Sarikamish.

Persia was denuded of Russian soldiers, and large bodies of troops were hurried forward to the front by rail from Kars, Erivan, and Julfa—almost, but not quite, too late.

Yet larger reinforcements were dispatched to Sarikamish, and they arrived to find that though the place had been reft from Russian hands the battle was being waged with no less determined persistence and tenacity by their compatriots.

Hardly any information regarding the battle of Ardahan can be obtained beyond statements that after the place was bombarded, the Russians drove the Stange Bey Detachment group out.

These broken remnants fled in confusion back to Ardanuch, but, hotly pursued, were not allowed to rest there long, as it was reoccupied by the victors on 18 January 1915, some survivors from the Battle made good their escape into their own territory.

The left wing which made up of This detachment unit, known as Stanke Bey, consisted of two battalions of the 8th Infantry Regiment and two artillery batteries.

[9] It was brought at the outset of the war from Constantinople and landed at Kopa and other ports on the Black Sea south of Batum, and supplemented by many irregulars in the district of the Choruk (northeast of Erzerum), where its concentration was effected.