What were the Ottoman Empire's goals in WW1?

[RedRalph]

I know one general had the idea of taking central Asia and Azerbaijan from Russia but that seems totally pie-in-the-sky to me. Did they really want any of their European territories back? I cannot for the life of me see how that would have been advantageous to them. So what were they hoping for in a best case scenario by joining the war?

 

[Leoreth]

Just speculating here: maybe seeing British/French influence in the Middle East reduced?

 

[LightSpectra]

They only entered the war because they were a de facto satellite state of Germany at that point, last I read. Presumably they would have pushed their borders through the Caucasus, but I doubt they would've gotten anything in the Middle East, at least not as under the thumb of Germany.

 

[RedRalph]

Just speculating here: maybe seeing British/French influence in the Middle East reduced?

That may well have been a part of it, yeah, but not all. Didn't work out too well, did it

They only entered the war because they were a de facto satellite state of Germany at that point, last I read. Presumably they would have pushed their borders through the Caucasus, but I doubt they would've gotten anything in the Middle East, at least not as under the thumb of Germany.

Azerbaijan?

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

Probably to reverse the fortunes of their dying empire.

 

[Dachs]

I know one general had the idea of taking central Asia and Azerbaijan from Russia but that seems totally pie-in-the-sky to me. Did they really want any of their European territories back? I cannot for the life of me see how that would have been advantageous to them. So what were they hoping for in a best case scenario by joining the war?

Pan-Turkism was never anything close to the driving force behind the Ottoman entry into the war.

Insofar as the Ottomans had any war goals at all when the Empire entered the war, they were almost passive in nature. There was no particularly serious plan to seize Egypt, for instance. The main military forces were deployed on the Caucasus frontier, and even there Turkish goals seem to have been fairly limited, extending to maybe the reconquest of Kars if that. Most of the other war goals entertained at the time were either the product of a minority or wild imaginings independent of government entirely.

A lot of this is due to the nature of the way the Ottomans entered the war. It all started with the bombardment of the Russian Black Sea coast by the German fleet contingent at Constantinople at the behest of the German Admiral Souchon, with the connivance of only a small part of the oligarchic governing committee (Enver, Talaat, and possibly Djemal although a lot of Djemal's actions seem kind of passive-aggressive with respect to the war, for instance withholding most of the funds necessary for mobilization). What internal debate there was over entering the war - and there was a considerable amount - focused on Turkey's relationship to the Great Powers: the capitulations issue, tariffs, and above all the foreign loans. A great part of the reason the Ottoman Empire entered the war was to shake those problems off.

During the war itself and as it evolved into a larger conflict, I am not sure that the Ottoman government spoke with one voice about war goals, if at all; the absolute most, in territorial terms (having gained a measure of economic independence, which was probably the chief war goal insofar as they had any) might have been parts of the Caucasus, Egypt, and Iranian Azerbaijan (which they invaded, and in which Ottoman and British troops fought until nearly the end of the war). While many of these goals changed, especially with the Russian revolutions - the whole Army of Islam thing, for instance, spawning some pretty wild imaginings about Caucasian revision - I think that those territorial goals were the most the Ottoman government was ever going to seriously demand. Recovering the European empire was probably never considered all that strongly. One of the CUP's foreign policy planks by 1914 was in fact an alliance with Bulgaria against Russia and/or Greece.

 

[RedRalph]

Iranian Azerbaijan, eh? I never knew that

 

[r16]

the general idea was , it seems , merely to survive . It doesn't take wild speculation to suggest the Ottoman Empire would be eaten alive after the war no matter who won the war . Maybe being on the winning side would have helped and Anglo-French group had no interest in the services of the Ottoman Empire . It has been post 1923 Republican staplehood of propaganda that Ittihad Terakki were fools to go into war , but Atatürk himself has said the war was ineviteable. The only issue being the timing and Cemal is to blame for that as the Navy minister he was responsible for declaring the Russian dreadnoughts building in the Black Sea would make it impossible to fight after 1915 .

 

[Squonk]

There was no particularly serious plan to seize Egypt, for instance.

I recall 2 turkish offensives on Egypt. They've failed miserably, but they were.

 

[Dachs]

I recall 2 turkish offensives on Egypt. They've failed miserably, but they were.

Not until quite some time after the war started. It was a war goal that developed out of the war itself, not one that they had at the very beginning. Germany, for instance, had little serious inclination to seize or otherwise subjugate Belgium until after Belgium was already occupied and the war had progressed.

 

[LiquidCommander]

Pan-Turkism was never anything close to the driving force behind the Ottoman entry into the war.

I believe it was...to an extent. Under Enver the Young Turks stressed an ideology that asserted the supremacy of the ethnic Turks and advocated a vision of Turks reasserting their supremacy in the Near East and Central Asia, including Persia (under Ottoman leadership, of course).

Of course that's a pretty broad statement, and perhaps his government didn't take those stated goals seriously (or perhaps they viewed them as long term; I haven't read a whole lot on Turkey during WWI). I know that Enver personally wanted to take back Kars and Batumi. Fortunately Enver was an idiot in the art of war; I facepalm everytime I read about him in any books pertaining to the Near East at that time.

 

[Dachs]

I believe it was...to an extent. Under Enver the Young Turks stressed an ideology that asserted the supremacy of the ethnic Turks and advocated a vision of Turks reasserting their supremacy in the Near East and Central Asia, including Persia (under Ottoman leadership, of course).

Pan-Turkism wasn't anything close to the chief driving ideological force in the prewar Ottoman Empire. While Ziya Gokalp was a member of the CUP's Central Committee, he was just one member, and his perspectives on pan-Turkism should not be taken as those of the Ottoman leadership as a whole. Talaat, for instance, a much more important figure than Gokalp, stated that the CUP's goal was "Ottomanizing the Empire" (not a very xenophobic ethnic-nationalist thing to say). Insofar as the CUP pursued "Turkification" policies in the six years before the war, they were defined so as to not exclude, for instance, the Arabs in the southern part of the Empire, and even the Armenians and Greeks were only the targets of very lackluster campaigns. The goal of all of this "Turkification" was not revisionism or irredentism: it was consolidation. Talaat and the others were interested in an Ottoman Empire that could be more internally united and defend itself against the depredations of foreign powers; territorial conquest was hardly on the radar. Gokalp's perspectives on pan-Turkism had to coexist along Ottomanist and Islamist views in the Central Committee, and during the war the latter views frequently ended up prevailing.

 

[LiquidCommander]

The goal of all of this "Turkification" was not revisionism or irredentism: it was consolidation.

I was under the impression it was the former; the latter would make more sense. It does make me wonder if certain parts of the subject peoples viewed it as revisionism or something worse.

 

[Dachs]

That's the thing, isn't it? The problem with that is that even if the CUP's policies were viewed as xenophobic Turkish nationalism by, say, some Arabs, that still didn't motivate them to revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

 

[Tahuti]

That's the thing, isn't it? The problem with that is that even if the CUP's policies were viewed as xenophobic Turkish nationalism by, say, some Arabs, that still didn't motivate them to revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

Actually, the Arabs did revolt against Turks around like 1917. The British helped them, but the motivation to start it was probably around much earlier.

 

[Masada]

Actually, the Arabs did revolt against Turks around like 1917. The British helped them, but the motivation to start it was probably around much earlier.

There's a little bit of a difference between talking about rebelling and actually rebelling. You've also dated the beginings of the Arab Revolt about six months late - it started towards the middle of 1916. The cause of the rupture between Hussein and the Ottomans was that the latter intended to remove the former to secure their position in the Hejaz. Hussein got wind of this via the British and pre-empted the Ottomans moves by revolting the exact opposite of what they had wanted to happen. If it wasn't for the war Hussein's rather piss-poor attempt at revolt would have been crushed. As it was, it still didn't manage to achieve all that much. The Ottamans still managed to keep the 'Arabs' bottled up in the Hejaz for the better part of the war anyway. So it isn't unfair to suggest that the revolt only happened as a result of the war and only survived because the Ottomans couldn't spare the resources to put it down. Not that the loss of the Hejaz hurt them all that much anyway. Besides, the CUP's Ottomangization began before the war and was, more or less, wound up by the time hostilities rolled around.

 

[Tee Kay]

The term "Arab Revolt" implies a general widespread movement across the Arab world against the Ottoman Empire but that was not what actually happened. Primarily, it was the revolt of Hejaz, and specifically the Sharif of Mecca. Few Arabs outside of Hejaz actually took up arms against the Ottomans, and even in the Hejaz many cities remained loyal or otherwise under Ottoman control (most notably Medina).

Edit: or, what he said ^

 

[Squonk]

You have some point, but not quite. Arab Great Syria certainly welcomed end of ottoman rule and later on elected Faysal, one of sons of sharif, as its king. Panarabic ideology was already widespread in this region. 'Asir fought on british side, alongside Higaz. Madina remained in ottoman hands simply because there was ottoman army there, supplied by railway.

 

[Tee Kay]

And there's a difference between welcoming the result of a rebellion and actively participating in it.

 

[aronnax]

They only entered the war because they were a de facto satellite state of Germany at that point, last I read. Presumably they would have pushed their borders through the Caucasus, but I doubt they would've gotten anything in the Middle East, at least not as under the thumb of Germany.

To call it a satellite state of Germany isn't exactly correct.

Sure they had good links with them and all that. But they weren't in any sense a puppet that declared war blindly. Like Bulgaria, they were thinking about throwing their lot with the Germans but weren't convinced until the Germans won the battle of <can't remember which one>