Transcription
You know, I work in a Middle East studies center, and the Ottoman I mean, understanding World War one is key to understanding anything in the modern Middle East today. If you think about it, World War one, resulted quite literally in the birth of modern Turkey in the treaties that ended, World War one. The Palestinian Israeli conflict has its roots in World War one. The crises today in Iraq, and Syria and the ongoing troubles in Lebanon, again, come from borders and situations that were either developed or intensified by World War one. The issue of Kurdish statehood, of course, comes directly out of the war or not getting a state in their case.
And arguably, the first genocide, the Armenian genocide came about because World War one and it colors relations today between Armenian Turkey and Armenian Azerbaijan. So all of these issues led me to World War I. And, I have given a lot of talks, mostly to teachers groups, about the war. So then, Laura asked me to speak here, and I said, sure. And then she said, but by the way, it's on nineteen fourteen.
And I said, wow, everything that I just mentioned was nineteen fifteen and on. And, okay, what am I gonna talk about? So so I was thinking, well, what happened in nineteen fourteen anyway? Just the Ottoman entry into the war. Oh, okay.
So why did the Ottoman Empire enter the war? And why did they enter on the side of the Central Powers? And I thought, well, that's a really good way to look at all of these other issues that would come about later. But then the more I started thinking about it, the more I realized that these central issues about why the Ottoman Empire entered World War one were important not just as a background to something, a precursor, but or peripheral. But it was the heart of the issue and gets to, the the heart of all the issues facing the Ottoman Empire and facing Europe in nineteen fourteen.
So first of all, let's just get a little bit of of overview. Your first reaction when you hear that the Ottoman Empire entered World War one, was what were they thinking about? I mean, really. Weren't they the sick man of Europe? Shouldn't they just be, you know, like focused on their own survival?
Should they really have been getting involved in an international adventure? Why would they enter the war? And, of course, why would they enter on the side of the Central Powers? Well, let me see if I can Here it is. Okay.
This was the right one. No? No, I was told to point it this way. I got it. Okay.
And I know it was Laura, not me. Okay. So, So so why didn't the Ottoman Empire stayed out of the war? In fact, for a number of years, people have judged the Ottomans rather severely for kind of, for all of these issues. And if you look up here at this map and I don't think I have the right map.
I think I went back one. Let me just sorry about that. No. It's okay. Alright.
So if the Ottoman Empire were to enter the war, can see from this map, they would be fighting in at least three fronts. Okay? You could see up there that Turkey, borders with Russia. And in fact, by, within a few months, the Ottomans would be fighting in the snow, up to their waist in the snow sometimes. They would be fighting on skis.
You're not used to seeing Ottomans on skis, but there are pictures of that. Seriously, there are. So they would be fighting a war on that front. If you look down, you can also see that right here, the Turkish Straits, very important area for all the European powers because it's the key to, Russia having an outlet into the Mediterranean. It's the key to the allies being able to, send supplies to the Russians easily without having to go through Iceland ports.
You know there's gonna be fighting on this front too as well as up here. Then you get the whole issue of the Middle East. British troops are already in Egypt. So there's going to be, fighting in this whole area here. That's where you get Ottomans on camels.
So you have skis, you have camels, you have all trench warfare in, Gallipoli here. You have everything. Why would anybody in their right mind take it on? And in fact, historiography has, judged the Ottoman leadership rather harshly because they didn't have a dog in the fight. They didn't have an immediate stake in the outcome.
So why would they go in? Well, one of the arguments is that they just, rejected some, really quite foolishly, some great offers by the Triple Entente. You know, they could have stayed neutral. And the fact that they did so didn't make a lot of sense. So why didn't they do so?
Well, the thinking goes, the leaders were manipulated or forced into it by Germany. And of course, there's the whole issue of Enver Pasha, who's one of the leaders of Turkey at this time. And was he a war hawk that was enamored of Germany and just wanted to take them into this war that nobody else wanted? Or were the leaders maybe easily manipulated, even, less intelligent? Why would they possibly do it?
Of course, this kind of thinking goes, there were some other secondary concerns that the Ottoman Empire did have legitimate problems with the triple entente. And so, of course, they would gravitate toward, the Triple Alliance. But that still doesn't explain why they would go to war at all instead of remaining neutral. There's also, the idea that the, German victories early on in the war influenced them. Oh, we gotta get on this gravy train.
In other words, Germany's aim in this thinking, Germany's war aims in getting the Ottomans in made sense. You want to get them into the war because then you have leverage to convince Romania and Bulgaria. I should point with a pointer for such a big screen. Romania and Bulgaria to get in. Also control of the Straits.
So Germany, had legitimate interests in pushing the Ottomans. But the Ottomans, if they had followed their true interests, should have stayed out. Right? Okay. That's what the thinking is.
However, in recent times, many people are challenging these assumptions. Particularly Mustafa Aksakl, who wrote, The Ottoman Road to War in nineteen fourteen. And he said that the Ottoman entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers was not just something that happened, but the result of public pressure within the Ottoman Empire, logical decision making on the parts of its rulers and a rational assessment of the international situation. So let's look at that and see what could be the reasons and whether it was rational or not. So in order to do that, you need to look at what is happening in nineteen fourteen.
And there are some some different things going on. There are internal challenges in the empire and external, both of which are pushing them toward the central powers. So for the internal challenges, the Ottoman Empire is a multinational empire in an age of nationalism. What does that mean? It means that the whole basis of the Ottoman government is, has been undermined, is in the process of of change.
The Ottoman Empire traditionally had been based on religion. People were divided up, it was called the Millet system. And they identified people according to their religious group, didn't force them to change their religion, made allowed them to be subject to rules by the religious clergy of their denomination. And as you can see in this whole part of Europe, the majority of people there, six hundred years out of under Ottoman rule, didn't change their religion. Right?
It was preserved. It was it was entrenched. This idea of Now were they equal? No. Okay.
The non christ the non Muslims rather, the Christians and the Jews had to pay a tax. And that was considered compensation for the fact that they didn't serve in the military. So it wasn't total equality, but it was a live and let live arrangement And it did preserve the religious integrity, unlike, for example, the Spaniards who went into the new world and introduced a new language and a new religion for that the majority of the people took on. So there was this whole tradition. That's the way everything had been organized.
Then the idea of nationalism comes along. It undermines that. People are saying, you know, okay, I'm Orthodox, but I'm Serb because my language is different than this person who's Orthodox in Greek or Orthodox in Romanian. That was a that was a different concept. Alright.
And then you have also the, great powers of Europe using nationalism to organize, build their countries and challenge the Ottomans. And then you had the Balkan drives for independence. That also came as a blow. So this is is something that is undermining the empire. It's happening the same thing is happening in Austria Hungary, the so called prison of nations, right?
Where, they're facing these internal pressures that they don't quite know how to deal with. The second thing, internally, was the need for modernization of the empire's economic and military structure. They were trying to do that. But at the same time, they are alternately pushed and hindered by the great powers who don't really want, a very sound Ottoman economy and, and political organization, much as they sometimes push for it. In the face of all of this, you have the Young Turks coming to power.
And the, Young Turks, they also are called the Committee of Union and Progress or the CUP, came to power in nineteen o eight. As you can see by their name, the Young Turks, they aren't Ottoman, which is all encompassing, but specifically Turk. Shows, an idea of modern nationalism and they launched a drive toward modernization and reform of the political system and the military. In, in this case then, you can see them as the signs of a new era. A lot of historians, though, have judged them harshly, partly because of the events that overtook them soon after they came to power.
In fact, Stanford Shaw, who wrote a lot about the Ottoman Empire, said the Young Turks the Young Turk era deepened, accelerated, and polarized the major views that have been gathering momentum in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century. Ottomanism and nationalism, liberalism and conservatism, Islamism and Turkism, democracy and autocracy, centralization and decentralization, all to the point where the empire might well have blown up had this not been accomplished by the events of World War I. Again, this is kind of an expression of the idea of the Ottoman Empire being the sick man of Europe, something that was doomed to die and not, something, an empire, an entity that was a real player in the international scene. And I think by the end of, nineteen fourteen, but especially by the end of nineteen fifteen. And people began to realize that there was a lot more to it than that because for an empire that supposedly in its deathbed, it sure fought really, really hard on a lot of fronts.
And ask anybody who'd been at Gallipoli if it was an easy ride. So, there were some real advances, though, going on in the Ottoman Empire, at least with military technology, some attempts at constitutional reform. Not too much of a chance to do very much because of international events, as we'll see. So there were some, attempts at modernization. Did you know that the Ottomans had armored cars?
They had some modern military technology. They had, motor boats and, you know, all these kind, well this, okay, they're, they're taking it across the city to make a statement, but they didn't really think they were gonna drive anywhere like that. But, but, the Ottomans also had an air force. You know, in nineteen twelve, they founded an air force. So they had aircraft.
So the Ottomans weren't militarily negligible, as people like to say, because hindsight is twenty twenty and you all know what's going to happen at the end. So as we shall see, there were major earth shaking problems in the international arena, though, which prevented any of these things which might have improved the Ottoman Empire. So let's look at some of the international things. In order to do that, we need a new map. In this map, you can see that the Ottoman Empire let me let me show you with this pointer here.
Uh-oh. I I didn't wanna go there. Okay. Let me show you with the pointer here. The Ottoman Empire, is shrinking over time.
First, they lost these light areas, then these areas, then eventually the darker areas, by nineteen fourteen, all that is left is this right here. Okay? So the Ottoman Empire has been steadily shrinking. It's been around more than six hundred years. And quite honestly, the European political scene is making a lot of these empires shrink if they're not European.
The great powers controlled something like eighty percent of the worlds, you know, that they divided up among them. The Ottomans are the last holdout. So you you can you can see that this is becoming an issue. The defense of Ottoman territorial integrity served as, a means of I need to quote this. The defense of Ottoman territorial integrity, quote, served as a means of maintaining a European power balance that might otherwise collapse.
So the British ambassador in Istanbul, actually wrote to the foreign secretary, sir Edward Grey, in nineteen thirteen that all the powers, including ourselves, are trying hard to get what they can out of Turkey. They all profess to the maintenance of Turkey's integrity, but no one ever thinks of this in practice. This is how the decisions were being made in foreign countries about the Ottoman Empire. People talked a lot about preserving its integrity. But if it wasn't convenient, which it usually wasn't, we can dispense with it.
The Ottomans were faced with this situation, that they were not considered important, in the world scene. The Balkan issues were at the heart of it. It's traditionally, this is the grounds of Ottoman expansion. From the Battle of Kosovo in thirteen eighty nine, they had controlled a lot of this area. So as they're losing this, this is a blow to the heartland of their empire.
And at first, when you look at this, it's kind of obvious who, would be a threat to the Ottoman Empire, right? At first, Austria Hungary was a big threat. And maybe I need to go on. All right. At first, Austria Hungary had been a big threat.
But Austria Hungary, by nineteen fourteen, is a satiated power. It has taken all the territory it wants. In fact, it took more territory than it wanted. It annexed, Bosnia, Herzegovina in, nineteen o eight. Even though Austria needed more Slavs like Custer needed more Indians.
Okay? This was not a good idea. But the alternative was letting Serbia had it. So have it. So in other words, the Austro Hungarian Empire was at the limits of its expansion, if not beyond it.
So it's no longer, a big rival for the Ottomans from this point. You'll see it opts out, which does make it a potential ally. Well, who was supporting all of the European things? You can see, from in, from nineteen ten to nineteen twenty two, the Ottoman Empire fought a series of wars. World War I was just the middle of this conflict for them.
They were continually at war for at least, twelve years. First of all, nineteen ten to nineteen twelve, there were, there was resistance to the centralization, efforts of the Committee of Union and Progress, the Young Turks, in Albania, in Syria, in Yemen. And the Ottomans had to fight to put it down. International wars though, from nineteen eleven on, you have the Turco Italian War where, which was already spoken about earlier this morning, where Italy moved in and took Libya. Well, they got it, right?
So the Ottomans are are fighting and then losing territory. Nineteen eleven to nineteen thirteen, there's the Saudi Ottoman wars and which involves Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And the British are assisting in this. They are making agreements with some of these gulf leaders that are supposed to be under Ottoman rule, but are are not so tightly a part of the empire. Nineteen twelve to nineteen thirteen, there's the first and the second Balkan wars.
And that's when the Ottomans lost, the rest of their territory in the Balkans. They lost, Macedonia and Albania and the area in there. So a lot of people thought of World War one as the third Balkan War, and the Ottomans fought on a lot of fronts, as I've mentioned, three different fronts. And then when Europe had the treaty and World War I officially ended, it continued in, until nineteen twenty two, 'twenty three when the last, treaty was signed ending the war that created the modern state of Turkey. What this is showing is that, the Ottoman Empire has fought a whole long, series of wars and that they are threatened.
The international community is not helping the Ottomans. They need an ally who is going to help them. They can't rely on the goodwill of the great powers. They need to take matters into their own hands. And here is a map from the Balkan War so you can kind of see what's going on here.
The Balkan Wars were the most difficult of all those wars I just showed you briefly and the most shocking to the Ottomans. And this is what laid the groundwork for their entry into World War I. And so what does all of this have to do with nineteen fourteen and World War I? And why ally with Germany? Okay.
So you could see here, the threats to the Ottoman Empire are coming from a lot of different directions. And Austria Hungary, that used to be the big threat to the Ottoman Empire, as I mentioned, for complicated reasons, mostly because of their own internal nationality problems, they, like the Ottoman Empire, are essentially conservative. They don't wanna lose anything anything because they are, a multinational empire in an age of nationalism. And anything that happens is going to reduce their territory. But look at who else has been a threat to them.
Russia is challenging the Ottoman Empire, both in this area and through the straits. Russia is probably public enemy number one to the Ottoman Empire because, the Russians need to control the straits in order to assure their access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. But these are Ottoman lands here. The Russians keep talking about taking them. Sometimes people talk about making them international.
The Ottomans are like, say what? I mean, our our capital is right there on the straits. You can't just take this territory and give it to somebody else. Russia also is the one who comes in and helps the Orthodox Christians whenever they rebel against the Ottoman Empire. The Russians have set themselves up as the protector to the Slavs.
And in cases where they're not Slavic, like Armenians and, Romanians and Greeks, it's okay because they're Christian. So we'll, you know, the Russians will protect them anyway. And this is a direct threat to to the Ottoman Empire. As we've seen, it's resulted in the loss of all of that territory. As, this territory is being taken away, you find that, the Russians are also making some agreements about the Armenians.
And, you know, in the Armenian genocide, people always talk about how, the Ottomans set up the Armenians, you know, or, or took out after the Armenians. You know, the Armenians were were an innocent people victimized because of the war by the Ottomans who accused them of stuff that mostly they didn't do and took out after them. And all that is true. But one part of the story that's missing is how often to take a fall, because they will say, well, we could move into this area here. And they had a proposal to make some of these provinces into an Armenian state under Russian rule.
And the Ottomans are saying, wait a minute, so you're taking Turkish territory, not just, you know, I mean, what we consider the Anatolian heartland and, and, taking it over. So in other words, the tragedy which befell the Armenians was really a product of an ongoing struggle between the Russians and the Turks. And they they paid the price, you know, for a struggle that wasn't really theirs. Also, the Russians use the divide and conquer thing against the Ottomans. So in this part of, Anatolia, besides the Armenians, who do you have?
You have the Kurds. And the Russians would often encourage fighting between the two groups. That played into the Armenian genocide too, where you have Kurdish involvement with that. So you could see that the great power impact, the impact of Russia on the Ottoman Empire was very, very serious. And so there was no way that the Ottomans could easily come to terms with Russia.
Britain and France weren't all that much better because Britain had taken Egypt and was always supporting Egypt and and doing things in there. And then everybody allowed Italy to go into Libya right here. Also, the French were involved. The French were involved very early on in Syria and Lebanon. And the British, I forgot to mention, just for good measure, had taken Cyprus.
Plus, they were supporting the Greeks. And the Greeks and the Turks are already in a big conflict. They're fighting over these I don't know if you could see them. These little there are some little islands here. They're part of Greece to this day, but they're right off the Turkish coast.
You can get there in an hour or two by, by, speedboat, but you have to use your, your passport if you're going from Turkey because you're crossing into Greece. And then with the Balkan wars, there's even more of a bitter conflict in, in that whole area. And it looks like already by nineteen fourteen, there was talk of population exchanges. In fact, there were hundreds of thousands of Muslims being expelled from the Balkans and there was talk about further population exchanges that would actually take place in nineteen twenty three. But this was already discussed in nineteen fourteen.
I mean, if World War I hadn't come along, probably the Ottoman Empire would have gone to war with Greece. In this case, what would have happened? Well, the British, and the entente were tended to back Greece. So there is this idea that the Ottomans didn't have much to gain from the Triple Entente. The final thing which, bothered them about the Triple Entente is that the British and French the British and French and the rush and the, Germans were all involved in making economic improvements and military improvements in the Ottoman Empire.
You know, Germany building the railroad and Britain and France giving loans and then saying we have to protect our investments by controlling the Ottoman economy. And the symbol of this was something called the capitulations, where basically, British and French citizens had extraterritoriality. You know, they could do what they want and not be subject to Ottoman law. This was very unpopular in this growing Ottoman public opinion. Now, Ottoman public opinion didn't mean the peasants living in the countryside.
It meant the politically active group in Istanbul that knew about these things. And that was, that was very unpopular. The Germans didn't have that. Okay. And so the idea is, when you're looking for an ally, who would be your best ally?
Well, if you went with Germany, you could maybe get rid of those capitulations, which was the first thing the Ottomans did after they declared war, right? If you had Germany as an ally, well, they came with Austria Hungary, but Austria Hungary isn't a threat to you anymore. So they would be a good, I mean, a good potential ally. While any agreement with the entente was dangerous because it meant that they might make concessions of your territory to the Russians, You know, come on, Ottomans, get along with Russia. Just give them those, those territories and, or let's, let us control the Straits, which they'd already said they wanted to do.
Therefore, the Ottomans were in a bad situation. They knew they were shockingly vulnerable. They had lost all that territory in the Balkan Wars. There were refugees pouring in. The Ottomans were not protected by the international state system.
Whenever people said, well, you could just rely on the international state system, they said, yeah. Like what happened with Libya? Like what happened with Albania and Macedonia? Come on. That had failed, though.
They needed some ally. And that ally was going to be, was going to be Germany. It's the only one that made sense. So it was a logical assessment that they needed an ally. But did that mean they had to actually jump into the war?
That's the, the real question here. The thing is, Germany, I mean, the Ottoman Empire didn't just jump into the war. They were kind of dragged into it over a period of time. All right. So let me see how I'm doing from time.
Okay, good. Don't want to go over. So why enter the war at all? Why not remain neutral? The Ottomans knew that they weren't ready for a war.
They knew the risk they were, they were running. And they hoped to stay out of it. But they, like everybody else in Europe, seemed to think it was going to be a really short war. So if they just signed this alliance with Germany, they could just drag their feet for a while. And by the time they needed to go in, the war would be over.
And they'd be on the winning side. It was it was, a calculated risk, but one that they really had no choice. The army was modernized and reorganized with the help of German, German military, with a German military mission under Lehman von Sanders from nineteen thirteen. Enver Pasha supervised this. You need to see these people who are the movers and shakers.
This is Enver Pasha. He's the war minister. He's the one that people say was the hawk that wanted to come in on the side of Germany. He did favor Germany. He was the war minister and Germany was reorganizing the military for them.
But whether his actions were delusional, that's what we're getting at. Now remember that a lot of historians' arguments about why the Ottomans went to war centered around this guy. When the Germans are reorganizing the military, the Ottomans got rid of a lot of their old leadership. You know, they retired some of the officers who'd been around a while. They brought the junior officers up and encouraged them to innovate.
And the military's budget was more than doubled. So they weren't just, you know, oh, we'll go to war even though we're not prepared. They were trying to prepare in case they had to go to war. The next member of the triumvirate, the Young Turk, triumvirate, which got even more power, after a pretty violent coup in nineteen thirteen, the end of nineteen thirteen. The second member is Jamal Pasha.
He was the minister of the Navy and the Navy was, reorganized by, guess who, Britain. So he, he worked a lot with the British and did a lot of the same kind of reforms that were done in the military. Then there's the third member or it wouldn't be a triumvirate. There is Talat Pasha, the minister of the interior. And well, how does the minister of the interior play into the war?
Well, he was the one who was going to, be the architect of the Armenian genocide. The French were involved too. They worked with, Jaudarmari. So everybody was involved. Now when war seemed imminent, the Ottoman leaders, based their decision on putting sovereignty, on pursuing sovereignty in an age of imperialism.
They were trying to maintain their sovereignty while the greater powers were trying to get rid of it. And remember that Europe's territorial control covered eighty five percent of the globe, and, the Ottoman Empire is one of the last holdouts. So the road to security had to be through, an alliance. And we've already talked about why Germany was that person or that country. The Ottomans tried to remain neutral for for a while, and you'll you'll see why that didn't work.
When World War I broke out in August nineteen fourteen, the Ottomans were happy. They had an alliance with Germany, which was supposed to have the best and the strongest army. They would protect the Ottoman Empire from, you know, obviously Russia and Britain and France to the Ottomans seemed to be on the march. And they felt Germany would protect them. And they thought the war would be short and they wouldn't have to be involved, as I already mentioned.
Public opinion in the Ottoman Empire turned against the entente. Even though there were a lot of reasons for the government to, you know, be angry at the Entente? What would make public opinion mad? And it had to do with boats, with ships. The Ottomans had ordered from the British, you know, had ordered from British shipyards the delivery of of two, of two battleships cruisers.
That was the word I was looking for. Thank you. I'm not a military person. And so the Ottomans had developed two cruisers that were being built in England. And just, when the ships were, were about ready to be delivered, the order was canceled.
Because the war started, the British took the ships for their own use. Not that the Ottomans were in the war or anything, but they they took the ships. Well, Ottoman public opinion was outraged. They had done this big thing in the press. There were, school children delivering their their, money, you know, their change in order for the Ottomans to build this boat.
I mean, to have these ships built. They were really excited about it. And then when the orders canceled, it really looked like the British were out to get the Ottomans. To make matters worse, right after that, the Greeks got some ships from the Americans. And the Ottomans said, uh-huh, We know where this is going.
You know, they're arming the Greeks, and they're not giving us the ships. So you find that there's a lot of of anger about that. The Ottomans, well, let me show you the picture on that. Uh-huh. So at about, you know, right after this, there were some, German ships that were, fleeing from an attack in the Mediterranean.
And they sailed through the Straits into Ottoman waters. And, you know, the Allies were about to go after them. And the, the Ottomans gave them, the German crew fezzes and commandeered the ships and said, these are our two ships now. They belong to us. And there's still a German crew on them wearing fezzes.
And but but, they become part of the Ottoman Navy. Now this is just another step toward the Ottomans being being pushed into this war. One of the ships would be used on the attack that on, Russian Black Sea positions that actually brought them into the war. The, conditions of the war then offered an appropriate pretext for a lot of other things. Not only did they get their two ships after all, by being allied with Germany, but the war offered them the chance to end those capitulations to the British and French citizens.
And that was extremely popular among that segment of the Ottoman population that was literate and politically active. And so they were they were able to do that. Wartime also mobilized the population behind the Istanbul government. You're not going to be fighting against your government in a time of war. Regardless of all that, the Ottomans went to great lengths to stay out of it.
The Russians promised all kinds of guarantees, which the Ottomans really wanted, if they would remain neutral. But the Germans are pushing them to join. And you could see why the Germans would want them to join. Because if the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, I mean, you could see geographically. Right?
It just makes sense for German, for Germany. Also, what they felt is bringing the Ottoman Empire in the war would get Romanian Bulgaria, would push them in to the alliance too. And so you could see why the Germans would want them to come in, but the Ottomans are still hoping they could stay out. They also would like the Germans would also like the Ottomans so that they could attack Russia up through the Black Sea here. Right?
So having the Ottomans was really important for the Germans. Not as important for the Ottomans to be in the war, but it was very important as we've already seen for them to have an ally, and that ally had to be Germany. By the, end of October nineteen fourteen, Germany said, you are coming into this war or you're not gonna be an ally anymore. When it came down to that, the Ottomans felt like there was no choice, because they, you know, they needed all the the German assistance. So the Ottoman ships, including that the German ship that you saw before, attacked the Russians, up through the Black Sea.
And on October twenty ninth nineteen fourteen, almost exactly a hundred years ago, And then the Triple Entente declared war on the Ottomans November fourth, which this week, of course, was the hundredth anniversary of that. And here are the Ottoman leaders declaring, the war. So in conclusion then, over the next four years until the middle of October nineteen eighteen, the Ottomans, the sick man of Europe, fought really well on a lot of fronts. And you could see here the trench warfare in Gallipoli. You can see, Ottoman soldiers fighting in Europe itself.
And there's the one I told you about, the Ottomans on skis and the Ottomans on camels or fighting forces on camels. So, they fought really well, which makes you kind of wonder if the fall of the Ottoman Empire would have been inevitable. But whatever it is, it happened. The Central Powers lost the war. And historians with twenty twenty hindsight say, well, that was a mistake.
After the war, there was a show trial of Ottoman leaders. They were accused of entering the war without reason and rejecting these really good offers and all the arguments that I told you about before. Doing this for, purely personal reasons. Impinging on the liberties destroying the economy. This became this, which was a politically motivated, move, became the basis of what has been written, about the Ottoman entry into the war.
But Ottoman leaders, far from being impulsive and irrational in joining Germany and declaring war on the entente, were thinking long term. They were thinking they really had no choice. If they were going to survive, they had to have an alliance. And if when Germany got to the point that says you come into the war or lose the alliance, they had no choice. They had to to take the risk.
Jamal Pasha, who's the navy minister, said on November second nineteen fourteen, when I contemplate all that Russia has done for centuries to bring about our destruction and all that Britain has done during these last few years, then I consider the new crisis that has emerged to be a blessing. I believe it is the Turks' ultimate duty either to live like an honorable nation or to exit the stage of history gloriously. For the Ottomans, it was do or die. And they made the calculation and lost. And so that's We're happy to take question and answer.
As you all know, there are microphones down at the end of either aisle. Also, Daniel will be happy to bring you a microphone if need be. Or if you just walk this close, I can also, take a question from here as well. Yeah. I'm just wondering as you say the Ottoman Empire was composed of a number of different nations.
Did the, ruling, Turkish government actually was that composed of just Turkish elites or was there other nationalities involved? Okay. That is a really good question, because in fact, that's a very essential question. In earlier area eras of Ottoman history, the government had been drawn from many different peoples. In fact, at the height of the Ottoman Empire, most of the people ruling the empire besides the Sultan, but everybody from the Grand Vizier down were slaves.
I mean, they were drawn from the Balkan population, and raised to positions of power based on ability. In later times, the Ottomans relied a lot on, the Greeks, the Greek speaking community. And, to some extent, the Armenians played an important economic role too. So they had had a lot of different people involved. By World War I, the actual ruling relief were the, were the Young Turks, and they were Turkish only.
There's already stirrings of nationalism even in the Arab world. The Arabs are beginning to say, and you could read as the war goes on, especially this movement takes root among the young officers. Wait a minute, we're Arabs, why are we listening to, you know, to this Turkish leadership? So this is a process by which the Ottoman Empire is shrinking in its outlook, as well as its actual size. And with the age of nationalism, that's kind of inevitable.
So there's always this tension going on. When the Ottomans lost the European territories, I think in a lot of ways they began to think as if the old, you know, we're all Muslims is was still gonna cut it. That, yes, we have Turkish nationalism, but we know the Arabs will be behind us. But then that's more and more proving not to be true. So it was it was kind of a a thing, but but I think you do see a narrowing.
And that maybe is part of the problem. Our last question will be from the side. Yes. I was wondering what was the exact nature of the capitulation and how did it come about? And also, had the Ottomans paid the British for the ships, before they were supposed to be delivered?
Okay. Last question first because it's easier. Yes. The Ottomans had paid for the ships and then they didn't get them. And so they were upset because again, this whole idea of, you know, school children.
As for the capitulations, what it was is that the, later in the, in the nineteenth century, as the Ottomans are trying to reform their economy, the British and French were helping them out with it and, and floating them loans in order to modernize, and modernize their military. And then in order to protect their investments, they they had people there that were going to advise the Ottomans and on on the loan. And then they became sort of, you know, they had this privileged position. They were able to make decisions, but it wasn't necessarily what was, in the view of the Ottomans, it wasn't what was benefiting them, but what was benefiting, Britain and France. And so it was really a public relations thing.
I think more than a, more than a serious threat to their, interests. I hope that answered it. If you will join me and give a round of applause for doctor Ahmed.