Supporters of the Young Turks in Jerusalem, 1909. Much of the early leadership of the Young Turk movement evolved in provincial cities like Salonika and Damascus, where its members could gather in secret and in safety. By 1909 these had become hotbeds of revolutionary activity.

INTRODUCTION

The Road to War

Many conventional ideas about the Ottoman forces engaged in World War I in the Mediterranean and Middle East are unbalanced, such as their army being inherently corrupt, inefficient and prone to collapse. Western historiography tends to present a dismal picture of the Ottoman Army at war. This volume hopes to provide a more balanced look.

The historiography in English of World War I in the Middle East that has evolved over the past 90 years is wide ranging, but tends to be focused on particular campaigns, leaders or units. There are few books that put together a single unitary picture of the entire Middle Eastern theatre, and those that do tend to focus on military, political or cultural matters. Moreover, even today the history of this theatre remains deeply rooted in English and German sources. This situation, of course, was directly caused by the lack of availability of Ottoman or Turkish sources. In fact, in the most widely regarded definitive work on the Turkish fronts, written by the French commandant Maurice Larcher in 1926, only a quarter of the cited sources were Ottoman. The resultant historiography, in turn, tends to tell the story from an overwhelmingly European perspective, which in many ways reflected what the Europeans saw or perceived, rather than reflecting what actually occurred. Today, this situation is rapidly changing, as historians take a fresh look at the events of 1914–18 through the lens of the Ottoman archives and Turkish narratives.

As a result of the way the history of World War I in the Middle East has evolved, there are many popular ideas about the war in this theatre that are largely untrue. For example, one is that the Turks often had large numerical superiorities of men (in most cases they were outnumbered). Another is that German generals provided most of the competent leadership and professional staff work for the Turks. There is also the idea that the Ottoman Army was incapable of modern military operations due to corruption and inefficiency. Finally, many histories present the idea that the Turks suffered unusually high numbers of casualties in campaigns against the Allies. For example, in the Gallipoli campaign, a commonly cited figure by British authors suggests that half a million Turks became casualties, whereas the actual number of Ottoman casualties was about 220,000. Finally, there is a pervasive myth that Arab soldiers serving in the Ottoman Army were unreliable and prone to collapse. None of these ideas are true, and in general Western historiography presents a dismal picture of the Ottoman Army at war, in which Turkish successes are largely attributed to Allied mistakes, the activities of German generals or inhospitable terrain and conditions. With these ideas in mind, this volume hopes to provide a balanced look at the Turkish fronts in the Middle East during World War I.

Although many of those in the Young Turk movement were military officers, some were civilians and government officials. All shared a desire to westernize and modernize both the Ottoman state and society

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Ottoman Empire reached its zenith of power in the seventeenth century, after which it suffered a gradual decline characterized by a loss of competitiveness with the emerging European nation states. In the eighteenth century, the Ottomans lost territory in Hungary and the Balkans to Austria. Similarly, the Russians under Peter and Catherine took back the Black Sea coasts and the Crimea. The Mamluks took control in Egypt, and along the North African coast gained autonomy. The early nineteenth century saw the independence of Greece and Serbia, while Russia seized most of the Caucasus. The Ottoman sultan attempted a programme of reform, called the Tanzimat, whi