To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  With hindsight, Turkey’s entry to the war was ordained from the moment it admitted the Goeben and the Breslau to the Dardanelles. The subsequent delay had been a product of Turkey’s lack of war-readiness and of Bulgarian neutrality, not of uncertainty in regard to its eventual policy.60 But an observer in Constantinople on the days subsequent to Souchon’s attack still felt that the overall disposition of the government was against belligerence, and that the Russian response to the attack—a request for the removal of the German naval and military missions—gave Turkey an option for peace which a majority wished to exercise.61 Enver’s orders to Souchon had been known beforehand to Talaat and Djemal; indeed, it was the winning of the latter from his pro-Entente stance that proved crucial to Enver’s resolve. But the triumvirate was sufficiently conscious of its numerical weakness in the cabinet to sidestep the request that the latter convene on 29 October. Instead, Talaat contrived that the government should meet with the central committee of the more bellicose Committee of Union and Progress on 30 October. Enver had anticipated a government crisis, and in particular the opposition of Said Halim, the grand vizier, and Djavid. They and three other ministers resigned, but then gave in to the pressure of the central committee, which supported the war by seventeen votes to ten. Some of the support for neutrality did not represent a predilection for peace per se; it was grounded on the army’s continuing low estimate of its combat-readiness.62 Thus, even the lines in the debate for peace or war were not clear cut. Governmental unity was sustained by the dispatch of a conciliatory, albeit—in its account of Souchon’s attack—fictitious note to Russia on 1 November. Said Halim’s inclination was still to resign: Enver’s and Talaat’s pressure, probably not gentle, ensured that he did not. Their hold on government was not so secure, their power not so untrammelled, that they could afford to do without him. Their achievement was considerable. Djavid and three other opponents of intervention did go, and Enver was able to exaggerate the size of the anti-war lobby in order to increase his leverage on Germany. But in effect Turkey embraced a war united in its government and in its purpose; neutralism before the war did not spill over into lack of patriotic resolve during it.

  The Ottoman empire therefore entered the First World War through its own devices, and in pursuit of its own interests. It was neither the innocent pawn in Germany’s more ambitious concepts, nor the victim of Russian and British imperialism. A combination of rationality—represented by Djemal, and arguing that the costs of neutrality had ceased to make the latter a sensible option—and emotion—represented by Enver, and fusing pan-Turanianism with nationalistic fervour—made a strong domestic argument in favour of intervention. But Turkey’s commitment notwithstanding, it is also true that neither Germany nor Britain in the end acted to stop Turkey. This failure was born of the circumstances generated by the onset of the war itself rather than of the long-term agents for Ottoman decline.

  More problematic is the question of Russian responsibility. Russia’s policy in the first half of 1914 had become unwontedly conciliatory towards Constantinople, and its strategic interests in the second half demanded a concentration on the European front, not on the Caucasus. The arrival of the Goeben and the Breslau had renewed the threat of naval inferiority which the Turks’ pursuit of Dreadnoughts had already promised for the years 1914 to 1916. On paper the Goeben could outrun and outfight the Black Sea fleet: her broadside was as heavy as that of all three Russian pre-Dreadnoughts combined. Sazonov’s diplomatic instructions confirmed Stavka’s prudence (if not the fleet commander’s inclination), and contrasted with the response of the British navy on the other side of the straits: the Black Sea fleet was not to provoke Souchon nor to challenge the fiction of his ships’ neutrality. But Russia’s ambitions to control the straits had been fostered by its own brand of navalism and by the long-term plans for the build-up of the Black Sea fleet.63 The determination that if Turkey did not control the Dardanelles Russia should was reawoken by the boost to partition provided after the Turko-German alliance. Turkey’s closure of the straits at the end of September re-emphasized Russia’s economic vulnerability. Thus, while Russian policy still favoured Turkish neutrality, Russian sentiment greeted war against Turkey with acclaim. From the Entente’s viewpoint, the dangers that Russia’s efforts on the eastern front might be distracted by Turkey were offset by the consequent hardening of Russia’s commitment to the war itself.

  Russia’s handling of the developments of September and October had been significantly aided by decrypts of the signals between Pallavicini and the foreign ministry in Vienna. It had passed the contents of these to London, but the impression of imminent Turkish belligerence which they conveyed was at odds with the more reassuring reports from Mallet and from Britain’s military attaché in Constantinople, Francis Cunliffe-Owen. Britain did not appreciate that it was receiving top-grade political intelligence until 20 October.64 Thereafter its expectation of war with Turkey meant that Souchon’s attack caused little surprise. Together with France, Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Turkey on 30 October. On the next day Churchill, cock-a-hoop, signalled the commencement of hostilities, and ordered the bombardment of the Dardanelles. Technically Britain and Turkey were not yet at war, and indeed Sazonov’s reply to the Turkish note did leave open the possibility of negotiation. On 2 November Russia declared war, and on 3 November Carden opened fire on the outer fortifications of the Dardanelles. On 4 November Grey was still hoping to postpone Britain’s war with Turkey, but the Royal Navy’s actions had forced the hand of the Foreign Office, and indeed of the cabinet. On 5 November both Britain and France followed Russia’s lead.65

  TURKEY’S CAPACITY FOR WAR

  ‘Turkey is militarily a nonentity!... If Turkey was described before as a sick man, it must now be described as a dying man . . . Our military mission is like a medical board, that stands by the deathbed of a hopeless invalid.’66 These were the words with which Moltke had assessed the military capacities of his new allies when writing to Conrad on 13 March 1914. But within days of 2 August both chiefs of the general staff were sketching out offensives for this ‘dying man’ that simultaneously embraced the Caucasus, Bessarabia, Odessa, and the Suez Canal. Rational assessment was prey to wishful thinking: once again the push to extremes—world power or decline, annihilating victory or defeat— failed to include the possibility of a middle way. The Turkish army was a far more potent force than Moltke’s March 1914 assessment allowed for: by the beginning of 1916 it had achieved major defensive victories; throughout the war it would tie down large numbers of British and Russian troops; the Dardanelles would remain closed to Entente traffic; and Turkey’s defeat would come no sooner than that of Germany itself. But equally, the Turkish army was not a finely honed instrument well adapted for modern war, and nor was the Turkish economy sufficiently advanced to support it even if it had been.

  The army to which Liman von Sanders was appointed in January 1914 was a bewildering blend of the new and the unreformed. One historian of modern Turkey has written of officers ‘with up-to-date training for an out-of-date army’.67 But even this oversimplifies the issues. Abdul Hamid had opposed modernization for fear of the army’s potential role in domestic politics. In von der Goltz’s day the activities of the German military mission were circumscribed, its pressure for reform contained. The effect was to channel the Germans’ efforts into military education, and specifically into the service academies. In the 1890s up to twenty young officers a year had gone to Germany for further tuition. Finally, in 1907, six model battalions under German-trained Turkish officers were established for the instruction of officers and NCOs. Two main consequences accrued. First, at least until 1907, training was theoretical rather than practical, confined to the classroom and the barrack-yard. Secondly, its beneficiaries were regimental officers, not generals. Only once, in 1894, was von der Goltz allowed to conduct a staff ride. The formation of the model battalions confirmed the generational division within the officer corps.68

 
The frustrations of internal policing, which had fostered the army’s politicization despite Abdul Hamid’s best endeavours, and the aftermath of the 1908 revolution served to deepen this split. The older generation, pre-eminently Sevket himself, argued that the army’s political role was disinterested, finite, and above party. Some of the younger generation, notably Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), agreed in principle but acted very differently in practice; many identified with the Unionists. Thus, to professional fissures were now added political differences.

  Most officers, whatever their age, liked to see their loyalties as Ottoman rather than Turkish. After all, many were Macedonian in origin or had found in Macedonia the forcing ground for their political and professional motivations. In reality, the supra-national ideal found only weak expression within the army. Although the latent conflict between Ottomanization and Turkification was no more explicit than it was elsewhere, it was not possible for either idea to provide the means to reunify the officer corps. The conscription law of 1886 made all male Muslims aged over 20 liable for three years’ active service and for a total of seventeen in the various categories of reserve.69 But Kurds, Arabs, nomads, and the inhabitants of Constantinople were all exempt. Thus, less than half the population was eligible for service, and its burden fell disproportionately on the Anatolian peasant. A revised recruitment law introduced in 1912 and promulgated in May 1914 embraced non-Muslims who did not pay taxes (but not those who did). It posited an army of 1.2 million men, but as only two of its twenty-five annual classes served in the active army the regulars’ peacetime establishment was set at 200,000. The lack of population registers for many parts of the country made evasion easy. Non-appearance meant that the actual strength was probably nearer 150,000, rising on mobilization to 800,000, or only about 4 per cent of the population. Sevket simplified the arrangements for mobilizing the massive number of reservists required to flesh out this diminutive force by introducing a regional corps organization. He established four army ‘inspections’ (Constantinople, Erzincan, Damascus, and Baghdad) and a total of thirteen corps, each of whose divisions (thirty-six in all) recruited locally.70 But thus was Ottomanization forfeit. Furthermore, the army did not even have a common language. Only 40 per cent of the total population spoke Turkish; Said Halim, the grand vizier, could not write it. The script was a problem, particularly for the transmission of orders by telegraph. It took four different forms, and—because the Turks wrote Arabic and Persian words phonetically—the spelling lacked standardization. The Young Turks, partly to ease commercial transactions and partly through their support for Turkification, were committed to the standardization and Latinization of the language. Enver, when he became minister of war, struggled to introduce into the army a common form of Arabic, but by the second year of the war had to abandon the attempt.71

  Sevket was the dominant figure in the army’s reform between 1909 and 1913. The suppression of the so-called ‘counter-revolution’ of 1909 was the first step in the elimination of the older generation of officers, and it was his authority that papered over the political and professional fissures of the officer corps.72 His initial aim was simply to make good the perceived deprivations of the Hamidian era. As minister of war in 1910 he refused to allow his department’s budget to be subject to the ministry of finance’s controls, and successfully demanded an extraordinary credit of £T5 million as well as an ordinary budget of £T9.5 million.73 Modern equipment was ordered from Germany. But in 1912 either this had yet to be delivered or Turkish soldiers had still to be trained in its use; thus, not only was the Turkish army defeated, the empire’s foreign indebtedness was increased. Sevket, now grand vizier, rethought his approach. He aimed for financial retrenchment. His assumption in 1913 was that Turkey would not face war for some time. Its immediate target should therefore be a small, professional army, capable of expansion in case of crisis—hence the 1914 recruitment law and the corps organization.74 Enver continued on the same lines. The War Ministry’s budget for 1914/15 showed a 30 per-cent cut, partly achieved by lowering the soldier’s pay. His attention was on increasing the pace of mobilization through the improvement of roads and through the training of reservists. In February 1914 he reckoned that the army would be fit for war in five years.75

  It is customary, when explaining Turkey’s military performance in the First World War, to set it in the context of the two Balkan wars, to argue that Turkey was at war continuously from 1912, or even—if the rebellions in the Yemen, Lebanon, Albania, and Macedonia are included—from 1910. Thus, by 1918 the empire was militarily exhausted. But this interpretation misses the point. The experience of the Balkan wars proved crucial to the reform and reinvigoration of the Turkish army. The major problems that Turkey encountered in embarking on a fresh war in 1914 were less the consequence of economic strain than of the fact that the transformation of the army initiated by Sevket was incomplete, that the army was caught between having partially abandoned one system and having not yet fully embraced another. Furthermore, the war for which this army was being prepared in 1913 was presumed not only to be more distant in time than 1914, but also to be a Balkan, not a world war.

  When Turkey opted for intervention its army was indeed ill-equipped. It was short of 280 guns and 200,000 rifles; it had only 150 small-arms rounds per man, and 1,088 shells per gun. Lack of animals deprived it of mobility. The Anatolian horse was too small for the cavalry, which was 20 per cent below its establishment, and too weak for the draught of artillery; the low number of pack horses had been reduced yet further by the depredations of the Balkan wars. Efforts in the 1890s to form an irregular Hamidieh cavalry from the Turkoman and Kurdish tribes had floundered after 1909: the lack of horses meant that half of them were in fact infantry. Even more problematic than their locomotion were their loyalties. Raising men eroded the authority of the tribal chiefs, and those they procured were largely motivated by hatred of the Armenians; nearer the Persian frontier their sympathies frequently lay with Russia.76 For the army as a whole, as significant as lack of stocks and lack of horses was lack of standardization. Some of the Turkish army’s equipment was excellent: they had Mauser magazine-rifles and French 75 mm quick-firing field guns. But within the same units were found weapons of different bores, and different vintages, and different nationalities. The Mausers were of two calibres, and alongside them were single-shot Martinis. The heavy artillery was antiquated; Turkey’s field guns came from Schneider in France, its field howitzers from Krupp in Germany, and its mountain artillery from Skoda in Austria-Hungary. The supply services, already primitive, were presented with a logistical problem far more complex than that of any of the major European powers. Turkey’s equipment problems were characterized as much by the transitional stage of its modernization as by the exhaustion of the Balkan wars.77

  Furthermore, not until January 1914, and the appointment of Enver as minister of war, were the professional and political splits of the officer corps properly addressed. The need to neutralize the army politically, to force officers to choose between membership of the army and membership of the Committee of Union and Progress, had been recognized by Sevket and advocated by a group of younger officers, including Mustafa Kemal.78 In addition, the Balkan defeats had highlighted the incompetence of many senior officers. But Sevket was assassinated and Izzet Pasha, minister of war in 1913, proved reluctant to execute the purge of the officer corps widely recognized as essential. This, therefore, was Enver’s major task on appointment. At a stroke he removed both military inefficiency and political opposition from the army. The total number of officers dismissed is variously given, with figures ranging from 200 to 2,000, and a safe average would be over 1,000. Most generals aged over 55 were out; so too were those promoted from the ranks without professional education; young majors found themselves in command of regiments, lieutenant-colonels in charge of divisions. Many German observers argued that Enver had done no more than buoy up his own political position, and that the current of promotion was still determined—and
continued to be throughout the war—by political favouritism. But they missed the point. Enver did use the army as his political base; his ‘Special Organization’, or Teskilat-i Mahsusa, formed in 1914, was a secret service responsible to him alone and funded by the war ministry. Built on the experience of terrorist and guerrilla operations in Macedonia and Libya, it became the vehicle for his political objectives, foreign and domestic, pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic.79 But in the army as a whole ability was not placed second to political reliability; Kemal himself, whose calls for the army’s political neutrality were in reality cloaks for his own enormous ambition, and who was opposed to Turkish intervention in the war, was not a victim of Enver’s purge. What German officers were often reacting to was less politicization per se than democracy; officers from humble backgrounds, without the breeding or the aristocratic pretensions of German officers, and schooled by the events of 1908 to 1913, seemed lacking in the sense of duty and personal honour which German observers expected.80

  Enver’s refashioning of the army’s officer corps masked the commencement of an assumption of overall strategic control that was completed by the autumn. His friends dubbed him ‘Napoleonlik’; Pomiankowski, the Austrian military attaché, called him a dilettante. Both descriptions were merited, but neither was true. Enver’s ambitions, both for himself and for Turkey, were Napoleonic; his abilities—at least as a commander—were not. A ‘matinee idol’, in the words of the American ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Enver also impressed another advocate of action rather than reflection, Winston Churchill, who described him as ‘A charming fellow—vy good looking & thoroughly capable’.81 Enver’s self-belief derived from his successful organization of the defence of Libya; significantly, he had not even won that campaign, but he had established the infrastructure for a protracted defence. His strengths were administrative rather than operational. The war ministry was the basis of his political power both domestically and internationally; his mastery of it was what forced the Germans, hitherto wedded to the older, Hamidian generation of officers, to take him seriously. As Francis Cunliffe-Owen, Britain’s military attaché, observed, Enver made his department ‘as up to date in its methods as the Kriegsministerium82 During the course of the year the range of Enver’s responsibilities rapidly expanded. The committee of national defence, created by the Committee of Union and Progress in 1911 in response to the invasion of Libya, and taken formally within the purview of government after the coup of January 1913, was placed under the ministry of war. Reflecting the rhetoric of the French Revolution and charged with social and economic mobilization for war, it gave Enver a role in agriculture, industry, commerce, and education.83 The arrival of the Goeben and the Breslau, and the consequent de facto subordination of the navy to German control, weakened the hold on the fleet of Djemal, the minister of marine. Not until September was Limpus’s naval mission asked to leave; thus, Souchon’s dealings were with Enver, and Djemal’s role became secondary. With the outbreak of war Djemal went to Syria as military governor and commander of the 4th army, delegating the daily running of his ministry to Enver. Meanwhile, on 21 October 1914 the Sultan became titular commander-in-chief, and appointed Enver as his deputy. Enver thus gathered into his hands responsibility for both services, and for command as well as administration.