The Berlin-Baghdad Express

One of Hussein's sons, Faisal - the future king of Syria and Iraq - came to Constantinople to iron out the Hashemite family's differences with the Young Turk regime.

Oppenheim did not want to discuss relocating the locus of spiritual power with the Sherifs in Mecca; 'the Ottoman Caliphate must remain the unique and central focus towards which the eyes of all Muslims are directed,' he said.

"[3] Mehmet Yercil, in Times Higher Education, wrote positively about the book but noted that "McMeekin tends to give some credence to the official, apologetic Turkish view that the Armenians, like the Hejaz Arabs a while later, could become a fifth column, especially after the defeat of the Ottoman Third Army against Russia had left the gates of Eastern Anatolia wide open.

Yercil wondered how that could "account for the fact that, for example, this reviewer's west-central Anatolian home town, Eskişehir, before the war had an Armenian quarter and a Rue Arménienne that no longer exist?"

On the other hand, his handling of two very complex subjects, namely how the Ottoman Empire entered the war, and what really happened on the Caucasian front after the Bolshevik capitulation in 1917, are the best one will encounter in the historical field.