Overview of Ottomans
The Ottoman Empire
 Documentation of the early history of the
Ottomans is scarce. According to semilegendary accounts, Ertugrul, khan of the
Kayi tribe of the Oguz Turks, took service with the sultan of Rum at the head of
a gazi force numbering "400 tents." He was granted territory--if he
could seize and hold it--in Bithynia, facing the Byzantine strongholds at Bursa,
Nicomedia (Izmit), and Nicaea. Leadership subsequently passed to Ertugrul's son,
Osman I (r. ca. 1284-1324), founder of the Osmanli Dynasty--better known in the
West as the Ottomans. This dynasty was to endure for six centuries through the
reigns of thirty-six sultans (see Sultans
and Viziers).
Osman I's small amirate attracted
gazis
from other amirates, who required plunder from new conquests to maintain their
way of life. Such growth gave the Ottoman state a military stature that was out
of proportion to its size. Acquiring the title of sultan, Osman I organized a
politically centralized administration that subordinated the activities of the
gazis to its needs and facilitated rapid territorial expansion. Bursa
fell in the final year of his reign. His successor, Orhan (r. 1324-60), crossed
the Dardanelles in force and established a permanent European base at Gallipoli
in 1354. Murad I (r. 1360-89) annexed most of Thrace (called Rumelia, or "Roman
land," by the Turks), encircling Constantinople, and moved the seat of Ottoman
government to Adrianople (Edirne) in Europe. In 1389 the Ottoman
gazis
defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo, although at the cost of Murad's
life. The steady stream of Ottoman victories in the Balkans continued under
Bayezid I (r. 1389-1402). Bulgaria was subdued in 1393, and in 1396 a French-led
force of crusaders that had crossed the Danube from Hungary was annihilated at
Nicopolis.
In Anatolia, where Ottoman policy had been
directed toward consolidating the sultan's hold over the
gazi amirates
by means of conquest, usurpation, and purchase, the Ottomans were confronted by
the forces of the Mongol leader Timur (Tamerlane), to whom many of the Turkish
gazis had defected. Timur crushed Ottoman forces near Ankara in 1402
and captured Bayezid I. The unfortunate sultan died in captivity the next year,
leaving four heirs, who for a decade competed for control of what remained of
Ottoman Anatolia. By the 1420s, however, Ottoman power had revived to the extent
that fresh campaigns were undertaken in Greece.
Aside from scattered outposts in Greece, all
that remained of the Byzantine Empire was its capital, Constantinople. Cut off
by land since 1365, the city, despite long periods of truce with the Turks, was
supplied and reinforced by Venetian traders who controlled its commerce by sea.
On becoming sultan in 1444, Mehmet II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) immediately set out
to conquer the city. The military campaigning season of 1453 commenced with the
fifty-day siege of Constantinople, during which Mehmet II brought warships
overland on greased runners into the Bosporus inlet known as the Golden Horn to
bypass the chain barrage and fortresses that had blocked the entrance to
Constantinople's harbor. On May 29, the Turks fought their way through the gates
of the city and brought the siege to a successful conclusion.
As an isolated military action, the taking of
Constantinople did not have a critical effect on European security, but to the
Ottoman Dynasty the capture of the imperial capital was of supreme symbolic
importance. Mehmet II regarded himself as the direct successor to the Byzantine
emperors. He made Constantinople the imperial capital, as it had been under the
Byzantine emperors, and set about rebuilding the city. The cathedral of Hagia
Sophia was converted to a mosque, and Constantinople--which the Turks called
Istanbul (from the Greek phrase eis tin polin , "to the
city")--replaced Baghdad as the center of Sunni Islam. The city also remained
the ecclesiastical center of the Greek Orthodox Church, of which Mehmet II
proclaimed himself the protector and for which he appointed a new patriarch
after the custom of the Byzantine emperors.
-
 The ancestors of the
Ottomans (Osmanli, Uthmanli) were Oghuz Turks who followed the victorious
Seljuqs into Anatolia in the 11th century. The Ottoman state began as a
Ghazi Kingdom based in old Bithynia, on the fringes of the Mongol dominated
regions of central Anatolia. As Ilkhanate authority waned, Ottoman power
grew and, successfully vanquishing other Ghazi domains, they became the new
Power of the region.
- Osman
I..........................................1293-1324
- Orhan............................................1324-1360
- Murad
I...........................................1360-1389
- Beyazid I
Thunderbolt.............................1389-1402
- Mehmet
I........................................1402-1421 with...
- Isa (in Bursa)....................................1402-1406
and...
- Suleyman (in Rumelia).............................1402-1410
followed by...
- Musa..............................................1410-1413
- Murad
II..........................................1421-1444 d. 1451
- Mehmet II the
Conqueror.........................1444-1446 d. 1481
- Murad II
(restored)...............................1446-1451
- Mehmet II the Conqueror
(restored)..............1451-1481
- Beyazid
II........................................1481-1512
- Selim I the
Grim..................................1512-1520
- Suleyman I
Law-giver..............................1520-1566
- Selim II the
Sot..................................1566-1574
- Murad
III.........................................1574-1595
- Mehmet
III......................................1695-1603
- Ahmed
I...........................................1603-1617
- Mustafa
I.........................................1617-1618 d. 1623
- Othman
II.........................................1618-1622
- Mustafa I
(restored)..............................1622-1623
- Murad
IV..........................................1623-1640
- Ibrahim...........................................1640-1648
- Mehmet
IV.......................................1648-1687 d. 1693
- Suleyman
II.......................................1687-1691
- Ahmed
II..........................................1691-1695
- Mustafa
II........................................1695-1703
- Ahmed
III.........................................1703-1730 d. 1736
- Mahmud
I..........................................1730-1754
- Osman
III........................................1754-1757
- Mustafa
III.......................................1757-1773
- Abdulhamid
I......................................1773-1789
- Selim
III.........................................1789-1807
- Mustafa
III.......................................1807-1808
- Mahmud
II.........................................1808-1839
- Abdulmecid........................................1839-1861
- Abdulaziz.........................................1861-1876
- Murad
V................................................1876
- Abdulhamid
II.....................................1876-1909 d. 1918
- Mehmet
V........................................1909-1918
- Mehmet
VI.......................................1918-1922 d. 1926
Top
Ottoman Institutions
At the apex of the hierarchical Ottoman system
was the sultan, who acted in political, military, judicial, social, and
religious capacities, under a variety of titles. He was theoretically
responsible only to God and God's law--the Islamic
seriat (in Arabic,
sharia ), of which he was the chief executor. All offices were filled
by his authority, and every law was issued by him in the form of a
firman
(decree). He was supreme military commander and had official title to all land.
During the early sixteenth-century Ottoman expansion in Arabia, Selim I also
adopted the title of caliph, thus indicating that he was the universal Muslim
ruler. Although theocratic and absolute in theory and in principle, the sultan's
powers were in practice limited. The attitudes of important members of the
dynasty, the bureaucratic and military establishments, and religious leaders had
to be considered.
Three characteristics were necessary for
acceptance into the ruling class: Islamic faith, loyalty to the sultan, and
compliance with the standards of behavior of the Ottoman court. The last
qualification effectively excluded the majority of common Turks, whose language
and manners were very different from those of the Ottomans. The language of the
court and government was Ottoman Turkish, a highly formalized hybrid language
that included Persian and Arabic loanwords. In time Greeks, Armenians, and Jews
were also employed in state service, usually in diplomatic, technical, or
commercial capacities.
The day-to-day conduct of government and the
formulation of policy were in the hands of the divan, a relatively small council
of ministers directed by the chief minister, the grand vizier. The entranceway
to the public buildings in which the divan met--and which in the seventeenth
century became the residence of the grand vizier--was called the Bab-i Ali (High
Gate, or Sublime Porte). In diplomatic correspondence, the term
Porte
was synonymous with the Ottoman government, a usage that acknowledged the power
wielded by the grand vizier.
The Ottoman Empire had Turkish origins and
Islamic foundations, but from the start it was a heterogeneous mixture of ethnic
groups and religious creeds. Ethnicity was determined solely by religious
affiliation. Non-Muslim peoples, including Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, were
recognized as millets (see Glossary) and were granted communal
autonomy. Such groups were allowed to operate schools, religious establishments,
and courts based on their own customary law. Top
Selim I and Süleyman the
Magnificent
Selim I (r. 1512-20) extended Ottoman
sovereignty southward, conquering Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. He also gained
recognition as guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Selim I's son, Süleyman I (r. 1520-66), was
called the "lawgiver" (kanuni ) by his Muslim subjects because of a new
codification of seriat undertaken during his reign. In Europe, however,
he was known as Süleyman the Magnificent, a recognition of his prowess by those
who had most to fear from it. Belgrade fell to Süleyman in 1521, and in 1522 he
compelled the Knights of Saint John to abandon Rhodes. In 1526 the Ottoman
victory at the Battle of Mohács led to the taking of Buda on the Danube. Vienna
was besieged unsuccessfully during the campaign season of 1529. North Africa up
to the Moroccan frontier was brought under Ottoman suzerainty in the 1520s and
1530s, and governors named by the sultan were installed in Algiers, Tunis, and
Tripoli. In 1534 Kurdistan and Mesopotamia were taken from Persia. The latter
conquest gave the Ottomans an outlet to the Persian Gulf, where they were soon
engaged in a naval war with the Portuguese.
When Süleyman died in 1566, the Ottoman Empire
was a world power. Most of the great cities of Islam--Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem,
Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad--were under the sultan's crescent flag. The
Porte exercised direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces,
Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces
were governed under special regulations, as were satellite domains in Arabia and
the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars. In addition, the native rulers of
Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) were vassals of the
sultan.
The Ottomans had always dealt with the European
states from a position of strength. Treaties with them took the form of truces
approved by the sultan as a favor to lesser princes, provided that payment of
tribute accompanied the settlement. The Ottomans were slow to recognize the
shift in the military balance to Europe and the reasons for it. They also
increasingly permitted European commerce to penetrate the barriers built to
protect imperial autarky. Some native craft industries were destroyed by the
influx of European goods, and, in general, the balance of trade shifted to the
disadvantage of the empire, making it in time an indebted client of European
producers.
European political intervention followed
economic penetration. In 1536 the Ottoman Empire, then at the height of its
power, had voluntarily granted concessions to France, but the system of
capitulations introduced at that time was later used to impose important
limitations on Ottoman sovereignty. Commercial privileges were greatly extended,
and residents who came under the protection of a treaty country were thereby
made subject to the jurisdiction of that country's law rather than Ottoman law,
an arrangement that led to flagrant abuses of justice. The last thirty years of
the sixteenth century saw the rapid onset of a decline in Ottoman power
symbolized by the defeat of the Turkish fleet by the Spanish and Portuguese at
the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and by the unbridled bloody succession struggles
within the imperial palace, the Seraglio of Constantinople. Top
Köprülü Era
Ottoman imperial decadence was finally halted
by a notable family of imperial bureaucrats, the Köprülü family, which for more
than forty years (1656-1703) provided the empire with grand viziers, combining
ambition and ruthlessness with genuine talent. Mehmet, followed by his son Ahmet,
overhauled the bureaucracy and instituted military reforms. Crete and Lemnos
were taken from Venice, and large provinces in Ukraine were wrested temporarily
from Poland and Russia. The Köprülü family also resumed the offensive against
Austria, pushing the Ottoman frontier to within 120 kilometers of Vienna. An
attempt in 1664 to capture the Habsburg capital was beaten back, but Ahmet
Köprülü extorted a huge tribute as the price of a nineteen-year truce. When it
expired in 1683, the Ottoman army again invaded Austria, laying siege to Vienna
for two months, only to be routed ultimately by a relief force led by the king
of Poland, Jan Sobieski.
The siege of Vienna was the high-water mark of
Ottoman expansion in Europe, and its failure opened Hungary to reconquest by the
European powers. In a ruinous sixteen-year war, Russia and the Holy
League--composed of Austria, Poland, and Venice, and organized under the aegis
of the pope--finally drove the Ottomans south of the Danube and east of the
Carpathians. Under the terms of the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, the first in
which the Ottomans acknowledged defeat, Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia were
formally relinquished to Austria. Poland recovered Podolia, and Dalmatia and the
Morea were ceded to Venice. In a separate peace the next year, Russia received
the Azov region (see fig. 6).
The last of the Köprülü rulers fell from power
when Mustafa II (r. 1695-1703) was forced by rebellious janissaries to abdicate.
Under Ahmet III (r. 1703-30), effective control of the government passed to the
military leaders. Ahmet III's reign is referred to as the "tulip period" because
of the popularity of tulip cultivation in Istanbul during those years. At this
time, Peter the Great of Russia moved to eliminate the Ottoman presence on the
north shore of the Black Sea. Russia's main objective in the region subsequently
was to win access to warm-water ports on the Black Sea and then to obtain an
opening to the Mediterranean through the Ottoman-controlled Bosporus and
Dardanelles straits. Despite territorial gains at Ottoman expense, however,
Russia was unable to achieve these goals, and the Black Sea remained for the
time an "Ottoman lake" on which Russian warships were prohibited.
Top
External Threats and
Internal Transformations
During the eighteenth century, the Ottoman
Empire was almost continuously at war with one or more of its enemies--Persia,
Poland, Austria, and Russia. Under the humiliating terms of the Treaty of
Kuchuk-Kaynarja that ended the Russo-Ottoman War of 1768-74, the Porte abandoned
the Tartar khanate in the Crimea, granted autonomy to the Trans-Danubian
provinces, allowed Russian ships free access to Ottoman waters, and agreed to
pay a large war indemnity.
The implications of the decline of Ottoman
power, the vulnerability and attractiveness of the empire's vast holdings, the
stirrings of nationalism among its subject peoples, and the periodic crises
resulting from these and other factors became collectively known to European
diplomats in the nineteenth century as "the Eastern Question." In 1853 Tsar
Nicholas I of Russia described the Ottoman Empire as "the sick man of Europe."
The problem from the viewpoint of European diplomacy was how to dispose of the
empire in such a manner that no one power would gain an advantage at the expense
of the others and upset the political balance of Europe.
The first nineteenth-century crisis to bring
about European intervention was the Greek War of Independence (1821-32). In 1827
an Anglo-French fleet destroyed the Ottoman and Egyptian fleets at the Battle of
Navarino, while the Russian army advanced as far as Edirne before a cease-fire
was called in 1829. The European powers forced the Porte to recognize Greek
independence under the London Convention of 1832.
Muhammad Ali, an Ottoman officer who had been
designated pasha of Egypt by the sultan in 1805, had given substantial aid to
the Ottoman cause in the Greek war. When he was not rewarded as promised for his
assistance, he invaded Syria in 1831 and pursued the retreating Ottoman army
deep into Anatolia. In desperation, the Porte appealed to Russia for support.
Britain then intervened, constraining Muhammad Ali to withdraw from Anatolia to
Syria. The price the sultan paid Russia for its assistance was the Treaty of
Hünkar Iskelesi of 1833. Under this treaty, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits
were to be closed on Russian demand to naval vessels of other powers.
War with Muhammad Ali resumed in 1839, and
Ottoman forces were again defeated. Russia waived its rights under the 1833
treaty and aligned itself with British efforts to support the Ottoman Empire
militarily and diplomatically. Under the London Convention of 1840, Muhammad Ali
was forced to abandon his claim to Syria, but he was recognized as hereditary
ruler of Egypt under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. Under an additional protocol,
in 1841 the Porte undertook to close the straits to warships of all powers.
The Ottoman Empire fought two more wars with
Russia in the nineteenth century. The Crimean War (1854-56) pitted France,
Britain, and the Ottoman Empire against Russia. Under the Treaty of Paris, which
ended the war, Russia abandoned its claim to protect Orthodox Christians in the
Ottoman Empire and renounced the right to intervene in the Balkans. War resumed
between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Russia opened hostilities in
response to Ottoman suppression of uprisings in Bulgaria and to the threat posed
to Serbia by Ottoman forces. The Russian army had driven through Bulgaria and
reached as far as Edirne when the Porte acceded to the terms imposed by a new
agreement, the Treaty of San Stefano. The treaty reduced Ottoman holdings in
Europe to eastern Thrace and created a large, independent Bulgarian state under
Russian protection.
Refusing to accept the dominant position of
Russia in the Balkans, the other European powers called the Congress of Berlin
in 1878. At this conclave, the Europeans agreed to a much smaller autonomous
Bulgarian state under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. Serbia and Romania were
recognized as fully independent states, and the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and
Herzegovina were placed under Austrian administration. Cyprus, although
remaining technically part of the Ottoman Empire, became a British protectorate.
For all its wartime exertions, Russia received only minor territorial
concessions in Bessarabia and the Caucasus. In the course of the nineteenth
century, France seized Algeria and Tunisia, while Britain began its occupation
of Egypt in 1882. In all these cases, the occupied territories formerly had
belonged to the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire had a dual economy in the
nineteenth century consisting of a large subsistence sector and a small
colonial-style commercial sector linked to European markets and controlled by
foreign interests. The empire's first railroads, for example, were built by
foreign investors to bring the cash crops of Anatolia's coastal
valleys--tobacco, grapes, and other fruit--to Smyrna (Izmir) for processing and
export. The cost of maintaining a modern army without a thorough reform of
economic institutions caused expenditures to be made in excess of tax revenues.
Heavy borrowing from foreign banks in the 1870s to reinforce the treasury and
the undertaking of new loans to pay the interest on older ones created a
financial crisis that in 1881 obliged the Porte to surrender administration of
the Ottoman debt to a commission representing foreign investors. The debt
commission collected public revenues and transferred the receipts directly to
creditors in Europe.
The 1860s and early 1870s saw the emergence of
the Young Ottoman movement among Western-oriented intellectuals who wanted to
see the empire accepted as an equal by the European powers. They sought to adopt
Western political institutions, including an efficient centralized government,
an elected parliament, and a written constitution. The "Ottomanism" they
advocated also called for an integrated dynastic state that would subordinate
Islam to secular interests and allow non-Muslim subjects to participate in
representative parliamentary institutions.
In 1876 the hapless sultan was deposed by a
fetva (legal opinion) obtained by Midhat Pasha, a reformist minister
sympathetic to the aims of the Young Ottomans. His successor, Abdül Hamid II (r.
1876-1909), came to the throne with the approval of Midhat and other reformers.
In December of that year, on the eve of the war with Russia, the new sultan
promulgated a constitution, based on European models, that had been drafted by
senior political, military, and religious officials under Midhat's direction.
Embodying the substance of the Young Ottoman program, this document created a
representative parliament, guaranteed religious liberty, and provided for
enlarged freedom of expression. Abdül Hamid II's acceptance of constitutionalism
was a temporary tactical expedient to gain the throne, however. Midhat was
dismissed in February 1877 and was later murdered. The sultan called the
empire's first parliament but dissolved it within a year.
Unrest in Eastern Rumelia led the European
powers to insist on the union of that province with Bulgaria in 1885. Meanwhile,
Greek and Bulgarian partisans were carrying on a running battle with Ottoman
forces in Macedonia. In addition, the repression of revolutionary activities in
Armenia during 1894-96 cost about 300,000 lives and aroused European public
opinion against the Ottoman regime. Outside support for a rebellion on Crete
also caused the Porte to declare war on Greece in 1897. Although the Ottoman
army defeated the Greeks decisively in Thrace, the European powers forced a
compromise peace that kept Crete under Ottoman suzerainty while installing the
son of the Greek king as its governor.
More isolated from Europe than it had been for
half a century, the Ottoman regime could count on support only from Germany,
whose friendship offered Abdül Hamid II a congenial alternative to British and
French intervention. In 1902 Germany was granted a ninety-nine-year concession
to build and operate a Berlin-to-Baghdad rail connection. Germany continued to
invest in the Ottoman economy, and German officers held training and command
posts in the Ottoman army.
Opposition to the sultan's regime continued to
assert itself among Westernized intellectuals and liberal members of the ruling
class. Some continued to advocate "Ottomanism," whereas others argued for pan-Turanism,
the union of Turkic-speaking peoples inside and outside the Ottoman Empire. The
Turkish nationalist ideologist of the period was the writer Ziya Gökalp, who
defined Turkish nationalism within the context of the Ottoman Empire. Gökalp
went much farther than his contemporaries, however, by calling for the adoption
of the vernacular in place of Ottoman Turkish. Gökalp's advocacy of a national
Turkish state in which folk culture and Western values would play equally
important revitalizing roles foreshadowed events a quarter-century in the
future. Top
The Young Turks
The repressive policies of Abdül Hamid II
fostered disaffection, especially among those educated in Europe or in
Westernized schools. Young officers and students who conspired against the
sultan's regime coalesced into small groups, largely outside Istanbul. One young
officer, Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk), organized a secret society
among fellow officers in Damascus and, later, in Thessaloniki (Salonika) in
present-day Greece. Atatürk's group merged with other nationalist reform
organizations in 1907 to form the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Also
known as the Young Turks, this group sought to restore the 1876 constitution and
unify the diverse elements of the empire into a homogeneous nation through
greater government centralization under a parliamentary regime.
In July 1908, army units in Macedonia revolted
and demanded a return to constitutional government. Appearing to yield, Abdül
Hamid II approved parliamentary elections in November in which the CUP won all
but one of the Turkish seats under a system that allowed proportional
representation of all millets . The Young Turk government was weakened
by splits between nationalist and liberal reformers, however, and was threatened
by traditionalist Muslims and by demands from non-Turkish communities for
greater autonomy. Abdül Hamid II was forced to abdicate and was succeeded by his
brother, Mehmet V, in 1909. Foreign powers took advantage of the political
instability in Istanbul to seize portions of the empire. Austria annexed Bosnia
and Herzegovina immediately after the 1908 revolution, and Bulgaria proclaimed
its complete independence. Italy declared war in 1911 and seized Libya. Having
earlier formed a secret alliance, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria
invaded Ottoman-held Macedonia and Thrace in October 1912. Ottoman forces were
defeated, and the empire lost all of its European holdings except part of
eastern Thrace.
The disasters befalling the empire led to
internal political change. The liberal government in power since July 1912 was
overthrown in January 1913 in a coup engineered by Enver Pasha, and the most
authoritarian elements of the Young Turk movement gained full control. A second
Balkan war broke out in June 1913, when the Balkan allies began fighting among
themselves over the division of the spoils from the first war. Taking advantage
of the situation, Ottoman forces turned on Bulgaria, regaining Edirne and
establishing the western boundary of the empire at the Maritsa River.
After a brief period of constitutional rule,
the leadership of the CUP emerged as a military dictatorship with power
concentrated in the hands of a triumvirate consisting of Mehmet Talat Pasha,
Ahmet Cemal Pasha, and Enver, who, as minister of war, was its acknowledged
leader in the war. Top
World War I
As the two European alliance systems drew
closer to war in 1914, Enver's pronounced pro-German sympathies, shared by many
in the military and bureaucracy, prevailed over the pragmatic neutrality
proposed by Talat and Cemal. Germany had been pro-Ottoman during the Balkan
wars, but the Porte had no outstanding differences with either Britain or France
in the summer of 1914. In guiding his government toward alignment with Germany,
Enver was able to play on fear of the traditional Ottoman enemy, Russia, the
ally of Britain and France in the war.
On August 2, 1914, Enver concluded a secret
treaty of alliance with Germany. General mobilization was ordered the next day,
and in the following weeks concessions granted to foreign powers under the
capitulations were canceled. It remained for Germany, however, to provide the
casus belli. Two German military vessels--the battleship
Göben and the
heavy cruiser Breslau --that had been caught in a neutral Ottoman port
when war broke out in Europe were turned over to the Ottoman navy. In October
they put to sea with German officers and crews and shelled Odessa and other
Russian ports while flying the Ottoman flag. Russia declared war on the Ottoman
Empire on November 5, followed the next day by Britain and France. Within six
months, the Ottoman army of about 800,000 men was engaged in a four-front war
that became part of the greater conflict of World War I.
Enver launched an ill-prepared offensive in the
winter of 1914-15 against the Russians in the Caucasus, vainly hoping that an
impressive demonstration of Ottoman strength there would incite an insurrection
among the tsar's Turkish-speaking subjects. Instead, a Russian counteroffensive
inflicted staggering losses on Ottoman forces, driving them back to Lake Van.
During the campaign in eastern Anatolia, assistance was given to the Russians by
Armenians, who saw them as liberators rather than invaders. Armenian units were
also part of the Russian army. Enver claimed that an Armenian conspiracy existed
and that a generalized revolt by the Armenians was imminent. During the winter
months of 1915, as the shattered Ottoman army retreated toward Lake Van, a
massive deportation of many Armenians was undertaken in the war zone to other
Ottoman Provinces such as Lebanon, Syria, etc. It shortly degenerated into a
mutual massacre among the local peoples. The most conservative estimates put the
number of dead at 350,000, but other sources cite other figures.The situation of
those Armenians who survived the march out of Anatolia was scarcely improved
under the military government in Syria. Others managed to escape behind Russian
lines. The episode occasioned a revulsion in Western Europe that had its effect
in the harsh terms meted out by the Allies in the postwar settlement.
In the spring of 1915, the Allies undertook
naval and land operations in the Dardanelles that were intended to knock the
Ottoman Empire out of the war with one blow and to open the straits for the
passage of supplies to Russia. Amphibious landings were carried out at
Gallipoli, but British forces, vigorously opposed by forces commanded by Atatürk,
were unable to expand their beachheads. The last units of the expeditionary
force were evacuated by February 1916.
In Mesopotamia the Ottoman army defeated a
British expeditionary force that had marched on Baghdad from a base established
at Basra in 1915. The British mounted a new offensive in 1917, taking Baghdad
and driving Ottoman forces out of Mesopotamia. In eastern Anatolia, Russian
armies won a series of battles that carried their control west to Erzincan by
July 1916, although Atatürk, who was then given command of the eastern front,
led a counteroffensive that checked the Russian advance. Russia left the war
after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The new Russian government concluded the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers in March 1918, under which the
Ottoman Empire regained its eastern provinces.
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali, the sultan's regent in
Mecca and the Hijaz region of western Arabia, launched the Arab Revolt in 1916.
The British provided advisers, of whom T.E. Lawrence was to become the best
known, as well as supplies. In October 1917, British forces in Egypt opened an
offensive into Palestine; they took Jerusalem by December. After hard fighting,
British and Arab forces entered Damascus in October 1918. Late in the campaign,
Atatürk succeeded to command of Turkish forces in Syria and withdrew many units
intact into Anatolia.
Ottoman resistance was exhausted. Early in
October, the war government resigned, and the Young Turk triumvirate--Enver,
Talat, and Cemal--fled to exile in Germany. Mehmet VI (r. 1918-22), who had
succeeded to the rule upon his brother's death in July, sued for peace through a
government headed by liberal ministers that signed an armistice at Mudros on
October 30, 1918, that had been dictated by the Allies. Allied warships steamed
through the Dardanelles and anchored off Istanbul on November 12, the day after
the end of the war in Europe. In four years of war, the Ottoman Empire had
mobilized about 2.8 million men, of whom about 325,000 were killed in battle. In
addition, many civilians, including both Turks and Armenians, are believed to
have died of war-related causes. Talat and Cemal, who were held responsible for
the deportation of Armenians and the mistreatment of refugees, were assassinated
by Armenian nationalists in 1921. The following year, Enver was killed while
fighting the Bolsheviks in Central Asia. Top
TransAnatolie Tour
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