Ottoman Empire in World War I
[3] On 11 November 1914,[a] Mehmed V, Sultan of the Ottoman Caliphate, declared Jihad (meritorious struggle or effort) against the powers of the Triple Entente during World War I.
[11] In a 2017 article, it was concluded that the declaration, as well as earlier jihad propaganda, had a strong impact on attaining the loyalty of Kurdish tribes, who played a major role in the Armenian and Assyrian genocides.
[15] The Ottoman Empire started military action after three months of formal neutrality, but it had signed a secret alliance with the Central Powers in August 1914.
Enver Pasha set off for the Battle of Sarikamish with the intention of recapturing Batum and Kars, overrunning Georgia and occupying north-western Persia and the oil fields.
Enver Pasha offered to surrender all ambitions in the Caucasus in return for recognition of the Ottoman reacquisition of the east Anatolian provinces at Brest-Litovsk at the end of the negotiations.
Most military observers recognized that the uneducated Ottoman soldier was lost without good leadership, and at Gallipoli Mustafa Kemal realized the capabilities of his men if their officers led from the front.
[26] Cemal's policies did nothing to alleviate the famine that was gripping Syria; it was exacerbated by a British and French blockade of the coastal ports, the requisitioning of transports, profiteering and—strikingly—Cemal's preference for spending scarce funds on public works and the restoration of historic monuments.
[26] There was little the Empire could do to influence the course of events, other than try to prevent news of the uprising spreading to keep it from demoralizing the army or acting as propaganda for anti-Ottoman Arab factions.
Low moral from a lack of supplies and the nature of the fighting meant many soldiers abandoned their posts and turned to banditry, some bands at some point controlling large swaths of land behind the front lines.
The debt and financial control (revenue generation) of the empire was intertwined under single institution, which its board was constituted from Great Powers rather than Ottomans.
The alliance was created as part of a joint-cooperative effort that would strengthen and modernize the failing Ottoman military, as well as provide Germany safe passage into neighboring British colonies.
[33] The Constantinople Agreement on 18 March 1915 was a set of secret assurances, which Great Britain promised to give the Capital and the Dardanelles to the Russians in the event of victory.
[35] The tsarist regime's desire to control the Eastern Anatolia and the straits (perceived as an underbelly), in the end created the conditions that brought about Russia's own downfall.
[36] Vehib cautioned withdrawing forces, as due to the politics in Russia—neither Russia's Caucasus Army nor Caucasian civil authorities could give assurances that an armistice would hold.
[37] On 7 November 1917 the Bolshevik Party led by Vladimir Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government in a violent coup plunged Russia into multitude of civil wars between different ethnic groups.
The Bolsheviks' position brought a conflict with the Germany's aim to preserve control over the East European lands it occupied and with Bulgaria's claims on Dobruja and parts of Serbia.
The ambassador to Berlin, Ibrahim Hakki Pasha, wrote: "Although Russia may be in a weakened state today, it is always an awesome enemy and it is probable that in a short time it will recover its former might and power.
Kamenev agreed and added "an international commission should be established to oversee the return of refugees (by own consent) and deportees (by forced relocation) to Eastern Anatolia.
The creation of an independent Ukraine promised to cripple Russia, and the recovery of Kars, Ardahan and Batum gave the CUP a tangible prize.
The Empire recognized that Russia's Muslims, their co-religionists, were disorganized and dispersed could not become an organized entity in the future battles of ideals, rhetoric, and material.
Ottoman armies had tied down large numbers of Allied troops on multiple fronts, keeping them away from theatres in Europe where they would have been used against German and Austrian forces.
In order to consolidate a buffer zone with Russia (both for the Empire and these new states), however, Ottomans needed to expel the Bolsheviks from Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus before the end of war.
[44] The British in Mesopotamia were already moving north, with forty vans (claimed to loaded with gold and silver for buying mercenary) accompanied with only a brigade, to establish a foothold.
Talaat convinced the other members of the ruling CUP that they must resign, as the Allies would impose far harsher terms if they thought the people who started the war were still in power.
Two days after taking office, Ahmed Izzet Pasha sent the captured British General Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend to the Allies to seek terms on an armistice.
[citation needed] Lloyd George countered that the French had concluded a similar armistice on short notice in Salonica, and that Great Britain and Russia had committed the vast majority of the troops in the campaigns against the Ottomans.
[47] The financial losses are also huge with an expense of 398.5 million Ottoman Lira, the equivalent of 9.09 billion gold francs of the time: the Empire was practically bankrupt in 1918.
[51][52] The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople to Ankara, the majority of whom were eventually murdered.
The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian desert.
[58] Raphael Lemkin was explicitly moved by the Armenian annihilation to define systematic and premeditated exterminations within legal parameters and to coin the word genocide in 1943.
