He was a member of the group of German officers who assisted in the direction of the Ottoman Army during World War I. Kress von Kressenstein was part of the military mission of Otto Liman von Sanders to the Ottoman Empire, which arrived shortly before World War I broke out.

[2] Kress joined Djemal Pasha's army in the Ottoman Province of Jerusalem as a military engineer and was later chief of staff.

With Djemal Pasha directing affairs from his base in Damascus, Kress von Kressenstein led a larger Ottoman army across the Sinai desert, again.

In the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917, the British were defeated again, the credit for this victory largely going to Kress von Kressenstein.

Kress von Kressenstein was kept on as commander of the Ottoman 8th Army defending Gaza and he was also awarded Prussia's highest order, the Pour le Mérite.

Kress von Kressenstein was able to withdraw his defeated troops in fairly good order to new defensive positions in the north.

In the middle of 1918, with the Ottoman-German alliance breaking down, Kress von Kressenstein was sent with a small German force to Georgia, that was protected by Germany after its independence.

He wrote in several articles about his experiences in the Ottoman army and the Caucasus, and published in 1938 a full book about the war in the Sinai, Jerusalem and Gaza.