[3][4] Colonel von Götze, secret negotiator of the Prussian king and military attaché, already came in 1798 on invitation from the Sultan to inspect Turkish units.
[3][4] Once Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839), for the same purpose, abolished the old-fashioned Janissary corps in 1826, it was again Prussia who helped reform the military: future Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, at the time Captain of the Prussian General Staff, and Lieutenant von Berg from the First Special Regiment, were detached to Istanbul in 1835, where Moltke stayed until 1839.
[4] Sultans Abdulmecid (1839-1861) and Abdulaziz (1861-1876) did continue reforming the Army with the help of Prussian know-how, but they preferred hiring retired officers who trained and commanded Turkish units, prominently during the Crimean War (1853-1856).
[3] After 1880, Abdulhamid began a sustained policy of bringing German military and civilian officers to his realm, and of putting them in a leading position in the effort of reforming the Army.
[3] As a result, several German officers arrived between 1882 and 1883, including Colonel Kähler as Head of Commission, followed in this position between 1883 and 1895 by Major Baron Colmar von der Goltz, who would stay in the Ottoman Empire almost uninterruptedly until his death in April 1916 in Baghdad.
The Kaiser Wilhelm II sent the mission of General Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, which served two periods in Turkey within two years (8 months total).
[5] Germany considered an Ottoman-Russian war to be imminent, and Liman von Sanders was a general with excellent knowledge of the Imperial Russian Army.