Edward J Erickson - Gallipoli & the Middle East 1914–1918: From the Dardanelles to Mesopotamia

Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Edith Cullen Erickson

This edition first published in 2011

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Digital Edition ISBN: 978-1-908273-09-3

Series Commissioning Editor: Charles Catton
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Printed in Dubai

Captain Alfred Shout, posthumous Australian winner of the Victoria Cross, Gallipoli.

W orld War I was limited in time and space, lasting only four years. Its outcome was determined in a single regionnorthern France and Flanders. Yet its unprecedented scale and cost created a spectrum of consequences, earning it another name: the Great War. That war was a Great Surprise. It was expected to be decisive and short. Instead it drew the entire world into an attritional death grapple whose outcome was uncertain until the end, and whose graves are scattered from Nova Scotia to Singapore. The Great War marked the end of European hegemony, the rise of the US and the Soviet Union as superpowers, and the emergence of the non-Western world on its terms. This conflict truly was the defining event of the twentieth century.

For all its impact, World War I remains shrouded in myth, mystery, and mourning. It exists as a series of disjointed images: old photographs and fragments of poems; devastated landscapes; anonymous soldiers scrambling over the top; above all, the endless cemeteries of the Western Front. The History of World War I returns that tragic conflict to the sphere of history. Based on a half-century of sophisticated research, incorporating state-of-the-art graphics, the six volumes of the series present the war on land, at sea, and in the air in a global context, and in human terms.

Dennis Showalter

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.

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.

T he 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 191418 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 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, which attempted to strengthen the government and the military. European advisers were hired, and attempts were made to create model structures. The Crimean War (185356) overtook these efforts and the Turks were set farther behind.