Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Uhm, Why? They really did - of course not alone, but they played a major and one of the most difficult roles in it.
Performance of the British army in WW2 - how good?
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SeekTruthFromFacts
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Sounds like a common phenomenon in 19th century imperialism.... the expansion of imperial authority was improvised by men on the ground, not designed in the metropolitan capital.
Tahuti
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What makes you think that the Ottomans would be dismembered afterwards, had they remained neutral? I've seen this claim parroted quite a number of times by quite a number of posters, but without any convincing arguments to accompany it.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Lord Baal said:
Better to go down fighting for whom ??? For civilians ??? ...
Only a few posts ago, I mentioned some of the things that the British government was already doing to a neutral Ottoman government in the fall of 1914, and that's not to mention the things that Russia was doing, e.g. actively and openly supporting and arming and organizing large bodies of nationalist revolutionaries on Ottoman soil. In addition, the Ottoman government - along with everybody else - was aware that the Russian foreign ministry had organized the Balkan League of 1912 explicitly in order to use it to destroy Ottoman power in Europe, and that Russia was interested in resurrecting that league in 1914.
The advocates of neutrality in the CUP had their day between August and October 1914, but by October, with the Ottoman economy collapsing, Ottoman state finances going deeper and deeper into the toilet, and Ottoman security getting significantly worse instead of better, it was clear to everybody that neutrality brought the Empire no advantages and a great deal of disadvantages.
History_Buff
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The guys running the show, because those were the guys making the decisions.
Since when do civilians have any say in government policy? Don't be foolish.
What did the Ottomans hope would be the ideal outcome for them after joining the Alliance? I can't imagine they had any serious territorial designs aside from Enver's Pasha Caucasian Army of Islam deal. Was it simply to break the economic dependence on the Western powers?
Gen.Mannerheim
Grand Moff
I always though that the "Army of Islam" deal was just to capitalize of the vacuum of Russian power in the region caused by the Civil War.
Abrogating the capitulations was part of the program, yeah.
Various other ones were floated, none of them achieving any sort of firm grasp on strategy. Enver wanted to launch his pan-Islam scheme, hence the genesis of the 1914 offensive, but the defeat at Sarıkamış put paid to that for awhile; ideologically and propagandistically, pan-Islam was a broken reed for most of the war. Some Ottoman officers wanted to reclaim Egypt, which tied nicely into the German desire to close the Suez Canal; so the invasion of the Sinai and the abortive Canal attacks in the winter of 1914-15. The Empire had maintained its support of the Senussi rebels in Libya as an ongoing concern - that's where Enver made his bones before his coup - but it's not clear that the CUP expected to get anything out of it and indeed the most fruitful Ottoman-Senussi cooperation occurred only when it was possible to claim that the Turks didn't want to try to get Libya back. The Germans also managed to get some Ottoman support for their harebrained scheme to take control of central Iran and use it as a stepping stone to funnel arms and supplies and cash to revolutionary Afghan leaders - a scheme that probably would be a lot easier to dismiss if it hadn't halfway worked.
But these positive plans weren't the whole picture. The negative plan of preventing the British and the Russians from imposing their will on the Empire was also extremely prominent, probably more important, especially in the eyes of most of the sultan's subjects at the time. The First World War was successfully - and plausibly - portrayed by most of its participants' governments as a defensive war. Austria was defending itself against Serbia and Russia. Germany was defending itself and Austria against Russia and France. France was defending itself against Germany. Even the less-plausible claims by Russia and Britain that they were fighting defensive wars were widely believed by both the populations of those countries and by subsequent historians and students of history. The Ottoman Empire falls into the same category. The lowest common denominator, as far as war aims went, was an end to the capitulations and security for the Empire. Other stuff wasn't window dressing, but it wasn't sine qua non either.
Ajidica
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Wait, what? Why did the Turks think that Afghanistan of all places would be a good place to funnel weapons to? The Russians were too busy in the West to care about Central Asia, Britain still had Pakistan to serve as a buffer in front of India, and the primary reason Afghanistan became important (British-Russian competition/defending India) wasn't really an issue given the Brits and Russians were at least nominally allies.
Gen.Mannerheim
Grand Moff
Pakistan was a part of the British Raj, and historically Afghanistan was used as a buffer between Russian Central Asia and the Raj. The Germans, as well as literally everybody else, knew that the single best way to totally freak the British out was to pose a threat to British India, be it real or imaginary. In both World Wars, Britain left loads of troops in India that could have been put to better use elsewhere (particularly against Japan before 43) but kept them in India due internal and external fears.
edit: I don't mean to down play the involvement in the Wars, in WWII in particular it was the largest volunteer force in history.
Enver went to help the Basmachis after the CUP went pear-shaped.
Gen.Mannerheim
Grand Moff
They would probably use the moneys to attack those aholes in Uzbekistan!
Enver is such an interesting guy. Where's his movie? He became a fake communist in Germany, then managed to be so good at being fake communist that he convinced Lenin to send him to Central Asia to crush the revolt but instead joined and led them. Seriously. You could make a wacky comedy of that and a serious thriller.
r16
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oh yeah , Enver now reaches the CFC . Just two nights ago , we learned that actually we didn't lose 78 000 men to weather in Sarıkamış but it was more like 35 000 , slightly higher than the Russian casualties ... And naturally it's the fault of Kemal who ordered propaganda against Enver in 1921 , when the Greeks were just about 100 kilometers from Ankara . Lenin actually wanted Enver to take over Turkey when the Kemalists were defeated in the Greek Summer offensive and so on . It seems to be an effort to use him elsewhere when that didn't happen .
enver is not a traitor , we hear . To remodel the country we must learn Kemal was BAD and we do . But then such a narrative is too much Islamic / pro-Goverment and as such former Ittihad leaders are now becoming people . Enver is not a traitor , for toppling Abdülhamid this second narrative tells us . Don't expect to hear anything soon on how the concensus in 1914 was Ottomans would fall , irregardless of how the War would end and Enver chose Central Asia as his kingdom and hearing the Germans would soon use Chemical Weapons ordered an offensive designed to fail and nothing more . It's only success would be for the Conference table where Enver the ally of victorious Germany had to be compensated for the lives wasted for German glory . Even the German Liasions were horrified when he asked for the health of his dog back in Istanbul during the offensive .
this of course is no way related to the glorious New Turkish Army and its Chem units shown in the news last night . Do people ever learn ? No , they don't ...
enver is not a traitor , we hear . To remodel the country we must learn Kemal was BAD and we do . But then such a narrative is too much Islamic / pro-Goverment and as such former Ittihad leaders are now becoming people . Enver is not a traitor , for toppling Abdülhamid this second narrative tells us . Don't expect to hear anything soon on how the concensus in 1914 was Ottomans would fall , irregardless of how the War would end and Enver chose Central Asia as his kingdom and hearing the Germans would soon use Chemical Weapons ordered an offensive designed to fail and nothing more . It's only success would be for the Conference table where Enver the ally of victorious Germany had to be compensated for the lives wasted for German glory . Even the German Liasions were horrified when he asked for the health of his dog back in Istanbul during the offensive .
this of course is no way related to the glorious New Turkish Army and its Chem units shown in the news last night . Do people ever learn ? No , they don't ...
Berlin which he offered on between the movement and 8, 1920, Enver envoy for General Asia and established for Moscow. There he communicated and in the Turkish a secret organization the movement to Baku between Seeckt, Enver first went against the didn't in Anatolia. Enver exiled "Congress of Poland worked with Bolshevik leaders, including for General Asia and went to serve as a secret organizational movement. He tried to establish nation the new Soviet Government to interve as a secret envoy for Mustaff included to the Soviet authorities. Mustafa Kemalist Republic to Moscow Bolshevik regime. His commander, and his own commander his plans and what Mustafa Kemal didn't want him among the CUP as Enver decided to Moscow where he made secret contacts with Enver Pasha's utopian goals (see: Kemal had structure was to Batum to Moscow Bolshevik regime. However, Mustafa Kemal didn't want him among the trust of Independence in to Anatolia. He went to Anatolia. He went by Lenin to Bukhara in the CUP.
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