For a time, however, practical considerations led to the maintenance of Ottoman neutrality. “To Germany the ‘sphere of influence’ in Turkey was of far greater economic and political importance than all her ‘colonies’ in Africa and in the South Seas put together. The latter, under the German flag, were an obvious and quick prey to Great Britain’s naval superiority, but so long as Turkey remained out of the war the German sphere of influence in Anatolia and Mesopotamia was protected by the neutral Crescent flag. As soon as Turkey entered the war, however, Great Britain’s naval superiority could be brought to bear upon Germany’s interests in the Near East as well as upon her interests in Africa and Oceanica. If German imperialists were devoted to a Berlin-to-Bagdad Mittel-Europa project, there were British imperialists whose hearts and minds were set upon a Suez-to-Singapore South-Asia project. The Ottoman Empire occupied a strategic position in both schemes. A neutral Turkey, on the whole, was favorable to German imperialism. A Turkey in armed alliance with Germany presented a splendid opportunity for British imperialism.”[1]
Turkish mobilization, furthermore, was a tediously slow process. The construction of the Bagdad Railway, as we have seen, had not been completed before the outbreak of the Great War.[2] There were wide gaps in northern Mesopotamia and in the Amanus mountains which made difficult the transportation of troops for the defence of Irak, an attack on the Suez, an offensive in the Caucasus, or the fortification of the Dardanelles. The entry of Turkey into the war before the completion of mobilization would have been of no material advantage to Germany and would almost certainly have brought disaster to the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, while the war went well for Germany on the French and Russian fronts, German influence at Constantinople was more concerned with creating sentiment for war and with speeding up mobilization than with encouraging premature intervention. After the Teutonic defeats at the Marne and in Galicia, however, active Turkish support was needed for the purpose of menacing Russian security in the Caucasus and British security in Egypt, as well as for bolstering up German morale. During the latter part of September and the month of October, Marshal Liman von Sanders, Baron von Wangenheim, the commanders of the Goeben and the Breslau, and other German influences at Constantinople exerted the strongest possible pressure on the Ottoman Government to bring Turkey into the war on the side of her Teutonic allies.
On October 31, 1914, the Turkish Government took the fatal step of precipitating war with the Entente Powers, after Enver Pasha, Minister of War, and Djemal Pasha, Minister of Marine, were satisfied that Ottoman preparations were sufficiently advanced to warrant the beginning of hostilities. The outcome of the Bagdad Railway concession of 1903 was the entry of Turkey into the War of 1914![3]
Discouraged by their failure to maintain the peace, and fearful of impending disaster to their country, Djavid Bey and three other members of the Ottoman ministry resigned their posts. There were other indications, also, that intelligent public opinion at Constantinople was not whole-hearted in support of war. But the nationalists—playing upon the “traditional enmity” toward Russia—had their way, and with an outburst of patriotic fervor Turkey began hostilities. In a proclamation to the army and navy the Sultan affirmed that the war was being waged for the defence of the Caliphate and the “emancipation” of the Fatherland: “During the last three hundred years,” he said, “the Russian Empire has caused our country to suffer many losses in territory. And when we finally arose to a sentiment of awakening and regeneration which was to increase our national welfare and our power, the Russian Empire made every effort to destroy our attempts, either with war or with numerous machinations and intrigues. Russia, England, and France never for a moment ceased harboring ill-will against our Caliphate, to which millions of Mussulmans, suffering under the tyranny of foreign domination, are religiously and wholeheartedly devoted. And it was always these powers that started every misfortune that came upon us. Therefore, in this mighty struggle which we are undertaking, we once and for all will put an end to the attacks made from one side against the Caliphate and from the other against the existence of our country.”[4]
Turcophiles in Germany were enthusiastic over Ottoman participation in the Great War. The Turkish military contribution to a Teutonic victory might not be decisive, but neither would it be insignificant. And German coöperation in Ottoman military ventures would certainly strengthen German economic penetration in the Near East, even though Turkish arms might not drive Britain out of Egypt or Russia out of the Caucasus. “Over there in Turkey,” wrote Dr. Ernest Jäckh, “stretch Anatolia and Mesopotamia—Anatolia, the ‘land of sunrise,’ Mesopotamia, an ancient paradise. Let these names be to us a symbol. May this world war bring to Germany and Turkey the sunrise and the paradise of a new era. May it confer upon a strengthened Turkey and a greater Germany the blessings of fruitful Turco-Teutonic cooperation in peace after victorious Turco-Teutonic collaboration in war.”[5]
Asiatic Turkey Becomes One of the Stakes of the War
Whatever may have been the European origins of the Great War, there was no disposition on the part of the belligerents to overlook its imperial possibilities. A war which was fought for the protection of France against German aggression, for the defence of Belgian neutrality, for the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, for the democratizing of a bureaucratic German Empire—this war was fought not only in Flanders and Picardy and the Vosges, but in Africa and Asia and the South Seas; not only in Poland and Galicia and East Prussia, but in Mesopotamia and Syria and the Dardanelles. Anatolia, Palestine, and the region of the Persian Gulf were as much the stakes of the war as Italia irredenta, the lost provinces of France, or the Serbian “outlet” to the Adriatic.
Of all the spoils of the war, Turkey was among the richest. Her undeveloped wealth in minerals and fuel; her potentialities as a producer of foodstuffs, cotton, and other agricultural products; her possibilities as a market—these were alluring as war-time necessities and peace-time assets. Her strategic position was of inestimable importance to any nation which hoped to establish colonial power in the eastern Mediterranean. Her future as a sphere of influence promised unusual opportunities for the investment of capital and the acquisition of exclusive economic rights. It was no accident, therefore, that brought men from Berlin and Bombay, Stuttgart and Sydney, Munich and Marseilles, to fight bitterly for possession of the cliffs of Gallipoli, the deserts of Mesopotamia, and the coast of Syria. Turkey-in-Asia was a rich prize upon which imperialists in Berlin and Vienna, London and Paris and Petrograd, had set their hearts.
No sooner had Turkey entered the war than the imperial aspects of the struggle became apparent. Germany was deluged with literature designed to show that Ottoman participation in the war would assure Germany and Austria their legitimate “place in the sun.” Business men and diplomatists, missionaries and Oriental scholars[6] combined in prophesying that the Turco-German brotherhood-in-arms would fortify the Teutonic economic position in the Near East, disturb Russian equanimity in the Caucasus, menace Britain’s communications with India, and end once and for all French pretensions in Syria. Moslem sympathizers predicted that the Holy War would shake the Entente empires to their foundations. Pan-Germans frankly avowed that the war offered an opportunity to make Berlin-to-Bagdad a reality rather than a dream—some went so far as to believe that German domination could be extended from the North Cape to the Persian Gulf! Mercantilists foresaw the possibility of creating a politically unified and an economically self-sufficient Middle Europe.[7]