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The Fall of the Ottomans

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the Russians had resumed their forward progress by the end of 1877 and reached the outskirts of Istanbul in late January 1878. — location: 356 ^ref-40473

By the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, the Ottomans lost two-fifths of the empire’s territory and one-fifth of its population in the Balkans and eastern Anatolia. — location: 367 ^ref-45344

Ottoman society comprised a wide range of ethnic groups, including Turks, Albanians, Arabs, and Kurds, as well as many different faith communities—the Sunni majority and Shiite Muslims, over a dozen different Christian denominations, and sizeable Jewish communities. — location: 413 ^ref-46363

Immediately after the Action Army restored the CUP to power in Istanbul, Muslim crowds massacred thousands of Armenians in the south-eastern city of Adana. — location: 482 ^ref-50689

Not only were the Dashnaks’ actions condemned by the European powers, but the attack on the bank set off pogroms against Armenians in Istanbul in which as many as 8,000 were killed. — location: 549 ^ref-34834

between 25 and 28 April 1909, some 20,000 Armenians were killed in a frenzy of bloodletting. — location: 558 ^ref-48027

Within two months of surrendering Libya to Italian rule, the Ottoman army had been thoroughly routed and looked certain to lose the last of its European provinces. — location: 669 ^ref-58114

The resulting state of emergency drove Ottoman reformers to abandon their liberalism in a desperate bid to preserve the empire from total collapse. — location: 841 ^ref-10566

28 June 1914. — location: 1025 ^ref-55388

Austria. A group of twenty-nine Islamic legal scholars met in Istanbul to deliberate and drafted five legal opinions (fatwas, or in Turkish, fetvas) authorizing jihad. — location: 1307 ^ref-13449

AUGUST 1914, — location: 1316 ^ref-22199

The majority of the world’s 240 million Muslims in 1914 lived under colonial domination, nearly all of them subjects of an Entente Power: 100 million under British rule, 20 million in French colonies, and a further 20 million within the Russian Empire. — location: 1327 ^ref-50356

Had the Ottomans succeeded in their appeal to global Islam, they could have tipped the balance to the Central Powers’ advantage. — location: 1331 ^ref-41399

outbreak of hostilities in November 1914. — location: 1380 ^ref-46531

2.8 million Ottoman men would serve under arms—about 12 percent of the total population of 23 million— — location: 1381 ^ref-62501

Only after the Anzac convoy was under way did the Ottoman Empire enter the Great War on 2 November. — location: 1605 ^ref-60971

the men of Australia and New Zealand would disembark in Egypt to fight on a Middle Eastern front. — location: 1605 ^ref-33411

the British decided to exempt the Egyptian people from the war entirely. — location: 1635 ^ref-62696

Between 1914 and the end of 1919, some 950,000 Indians signed up for military service, and another 450,000 served as non-combatants, for a total of 1.4 million men sent abroad to participate in the war effort as soldiers, workers, medics, and other auxiliaries. — location: 1682 ^ref-8168

The muftis of the Maliki and Hanafi schools of Islamic law in Algeria made explicit reference to the position of Muslims in India, the Caucasus, and Egypt in opposing the sultan’s call for jihad. — location: 1690 ^ref-14064

The propaganda war both for and against the Ottoman jihad was being fought by European Orientalists—British, French, and German. — location: 1695 ^ref-52534

A number of North African soldiers deserted from French lines in response to this overtly Islamic appeal. — location: 1707 ^ref-54104

Halbmondlager (Crescent Moon Camp) at Wünsdorf-Zossen, near Berlin. The camp’s German commanders spoke Arabic with the prisoners. Camp food was fully compliant with Islamic dietary requirements. The camp even had an ornate mosque, paid for by Wilhelm II himself, to provide for the spiritual needs of Muslim POWs—and to prove the kaiser’s good intentions towards the Muslim world. — location: 1710 ^ref-60955

As the conflict on the western and Russo-German fronts settled into stalemate, only the Ottoman front held the prospect of a quick Allied victory. — location: 1757 ^ref-7272

banks of the Aras River on the evening of 6 November in what would prove the first Ottoman battle of the Great War. — location: 1776 ^ref-41146

Many of the town’s notables openly opposed Young Turk policies they deemed inimical to Arab interests. — location: 1865 ^ref-34350

As he rode from Basra to Muhammerah, Kuwait, and the Najd, Sayyid Talib al-Naqib found every local leader in the Gulf opposed to his Ottoman initiative. — location: 1897 ^ref-58689

Ibn Saud was clearly torn. Given the importance of religion to his own movement, he could not be seen to support the non-Muslim British at the expense of his Arab Muslim brothers in Basra. Yet Ibn Saud was wary of antagonizing the British, given their powerful presence in the Gulf. — location: 1905 ^ref-11920

On reaching its first post station in late November, the Saudi force learned that Basra had already fallen to the British. — location: 1910 ^ref-26580

after centuries of Ottoman rule, it was hard to imagine that the Turks would not eventually return. So long as there remained any chance of an Ottoman restoration, the local townspeople would keep their distance from the British for fear of later reprisals. — location: 1963 ^ref-55419

“At 10:45 we again arrived at the railroad pier whereupon the Commander of the British landing party informed the writer that the Captain of the ship had signaled his thanks for having witnessed fairplay, the British stepped into the steamboat, shoved off and the incident was closed.” — location: 2192 ^ref-7554

Perhaps, had they focused their efforts on a single campaign, they might have stood a chance of success. The rush to take on two Great Powers with inadequate preparation condemned both campaigns to catastrophic failure. — location: 2271 ^ref-64290

Increasingly, Armenians were no longer seen as fellow Ottomans. — location: 2353 ^ref-30667

Eti reported that in every battalion between three and five Armenians were shot daily “by accident” and mused, “If it goes on like that, there won’t be any Armenians left in the battalions in a week.”23 — location: 2403 ^ref-4163

this spontaneous change of plan placed the whole campaign in jeopardy. — location: 2419 ^ref-13347

Over one-third of the men of IX Corps never reached the Sarıkamış region. — location: 2424 ^ref-14018

In this way we left 10,000 men behind under the snow in just one day.” — location: 2454 ^ref-37495

whatever enthusiasm for jihad Muslims in the Russian Empire might have shown in the early stages of the Sarıkamış campaign, the totality of Ottoman defeat ruled out the prospect of an Islamic uprising on the Russian front. — location: 2524 ^ref-38132

Cemal would have only 20,000 to 25,000 Ottoman soldiers with which to take on a dug-in British force at least twice that size—a suicidal proposition. — location: 2544 ^ref-22848

loss of neither a man nor a beast along the way—a tribute to the detailed planning behind the Suez campaign. — location: 2613 ^ref-7929

British gunships destroyed all of the Ottoman pontoons. Those Turkish soldiers who had succeeded in crossing the canal were either captured or killed. — location: 2679 ^ref-31857

His dreams of glory shattered, Suleyman Askeri took his pistol and ended his own life in Khamisiya. — location: 2763 ^ref-48015

On reflection, British commanders declared Shaiba “one of the decisive battles of the War.” — location: 2768 ^ref-20176

BETWEEN DECEMBER 1914 AND APRIL 1915, THE OTTOMANS TOOK the initiative on three fronts without success. In the Battle of Sarıkamış, the Ottoman Third Army was nearly destroyed, while Cemal Pasha managed to retreat from the first assault on the Suez Canal with nearly all of his Fourth Army intact. Suleyman Askeri’s attempt to regain Basra also ended in failure. These campaigns revealed Ottoman commanders to be unrealistic in their expectations and the average Ottoman soldier to be incredibly tenacious and disciplined under even the most extreme conditions. These battles also revealed the limits of the sultan’s call for jihad. Where Ottoman troops suffered defeats, local Muslims were discouraged from rising against the Entente Powers. By dealing the Ottomans a decisive defeat, the Allies believed they could lay to rest the threat of jihad once and for all. — location: 2775 ^ref-32215

the Constantinople Agreement—the first of several wartime partition plans for an Ottoman Empire that proved far more resistant to defeat than its enemies ever anticipated. — location: 2873 ^ref-18298

mobile howitzers fired from behind the hillsides flanking the straits and dropped shrapnel onto the unprotected decks of Allied ships, inflicting heavy casualties. — location: 2936 ^ref-29068

allies wasted weeks trawling the broadest part of the Dardanelles, where there were no mines. — location: 2948 ^ref-15237

One row of twenty mines had claimed four ships of the line. — location: 2984 ^ref-65142

It was, in fact, the first Ottoman victory of the Great War. — location: 3002 ^ref-17542

Three battleships had been sunk, and three others were so badly damaged that they were effectively out of service; — location: 3013 ^ref-44074

total strength of the Allied battle fleet was reduced by one-third in a single day’s action with no significant damage inflicted on Ottoman positions. — location: 3015 ^ref-41303

The defeat of 18 March spelled the end of the naval campaign in the Dardanelles and set in motion plans for the ground campaign. — location: 3018 ^ref-36335

No battlefield in the Great War would prove more global than Gallipoli. — location: 3046 ^ref-41565

Colonel Mustafa Kemal, commander of Ottoman troops at Arıburnu, — location: 3094 ^ref-60372

“I don’t order you to attack, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die other troops and commanders can take our places.” — location: 3095 ^ref-3148

“No opposition,” Colonel Williams recorded optimistically. “We shall land unopposed.” He spoke too soon. Three minutes later, as the tows reached the shore, the disciplined Turkish defenders opened fire. — location: 3147 ^ref-54811

By dawn on Monday, 26 April, the British held four of their five landing sites; — location: 3213 ^ref-18952

The intensity of Ottoman resistance had caught them by surprise and denied the British their ambition of reaching the high ground of Achi Baba (Elçı Tepe), five miles inland. — location: 3215 ^ref-666

the British never would reach Achi Baba. — location: 3217 ^ref-61595

a group of Ottoman soldiers penetrated Australian lines, pretending to be Indian troops serving in one of the British imperial units. — location: 3306 ^ref-16364

Young Turks faced urgent demands for military resources on several fronts at once—especially in the Caucasus, where Russo-Armenian cooperation threatened the Ottomans in a region of particular vulnerability. In addressing that threat, the Young Turks would resort to means for which they have been accused of crimes against humanity down to the present day. — location: 3342 ^ref-55775