Tag: WWI

  • Did Britain ever rule over Turkey?

    Did Britain ever rule over Turkey?

    Did Britain ever rule over Turkey? If not, why did Great Britain not take over Anatolia during World War I considering that Germany was allied with the Ottomans at that time?

    No, Britain did not rule over Turkey. During World War I, although Germany was allied with the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Great Britain did not take over Anatolia for a variety of reasons.

    mustafa kemal ataturk

    Firstly, it is important to understand the geopolitical landscape of the time. The Ottoman Empire, once a powerful force in the region, was in decline in the early 20th century. However, it still held strategic importance due to its control of key trade routes, particularly the Suez Canal, which connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and provided a vital shortcut to India, Britain’s prized colony.

    Britain, being aware of the Ottoman Empire’s strategic significance, pursued a policy of maintaining the status quo rather than outright annexation. This approach aimed to preserve stability in the region and protect British interests without jeopardizing delicate alliances and triggering further conflicts.

    Additionally, Britain had other priorities during World War I. The war effort required substantial resources, both human and material, which were primarily allocated to fighting on the Western Front against Germany and Austria-Hungary. British forces were heavily engaged in Europe and the Middle East, including campaigns in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).

    Moreover, the prospect of taking over Anatolia would have presented significant challenges for Britain. It would have required a massive military campaign and an occupation force to maintain control over the vast territory. With limited resources and stretched supply lines, such an endeavor would have been logistically challenging and potentially prolonged the war effort.

    Another crucial factor to consider was the potential backlash from other major powers. Imperial Russia, a key ally of Britain at the time, had territorial ambitions in Anatolia and sought to expand its influence in the region. Any attempt by Britain to seize control of Anatolia would have likely provoked a confrontation with Russia, leading to further complications and potential conflicts.

    Furthermore, the post-war settlement played a role in Britain’s decision-making process. The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920, aimed to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and divide its territories among various powers. However, this treaty was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which recognized the independence of the Republic of Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This effectively marked the end of Britain’s ambitions to rule over Anatolia.

    Patrick S

  • Found after 94 years – the submarine which won two VCs

    Found after 94 years – the submarine which won two VCs

    The first pictures of the First World War submarine E14 on the sea bed off Turkey show that the wreck looks intact, suggesting the remains of the crew are inside.

    A map showing the route taken by HMS E14 into the Dardanelles Straits before she was sunk on the edge of the Aegean Sea.

    By Jasper Copping

    9:00AM BST 17 Jun 2012

    42511706 websub

    She is a vessel unique in the history of the Royal Navy – the only one in which two captains won the Victoria Cross for their exploits aboard.

    Now the submarine HMS E14 has been photographed in her final resting place, 94 years after she went down under heavy shellfire during the First World War.

    The first pictures of the vessel on the ocean bed show her looking largely intact, suggesting the remains of the crew and their personal effects are still inside. The precise location of the wreck in the eastern Mediterranean was a mystery until it was discovered by Turkish divers this month.

    The British government has been informed of the discovery and is due to raise the matter with the Turkish authorities to ensure the site is properly preserved as a war grave.

    E14 sank in January 1918, with the loss of 25 lives, after she was sent around 20 miles into the heavily fortified Dardanelles, the narrow straits between modern-day Turkey’s European and Asian coasts, to torpedo the flagship of the Ottoman empire’s navy.

    She navigated through dense minefields and past a string of enemy forts on both shores but when her captain, Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey White, found that his target was not where it was expected to be, he instead attacked another enemy vessel in their path. However, one of the torpedoes exploded prematurely, damaging E14 and alerting Ottoman forces along the coast to the submarine’s presence.

    White headed back down the straits towards safety but was eventually forced to surface the craft after her controls became unresponsive and the air on board began to run out.

    The vessel was instantly battered by intense bombardment by guns from both sides of the straits, but White left the comparative safety of the boat’s hull to go up on deck to navigate.

    Realising the submarine could not reach the open sea, he directed her towards a nearby beach, in an effort to save the crew. A survivor recalled that his last words were – “We are in the hands of God”, uttered moments before he was killed by a shell and the submarine went under.

    For his actions, he was posthumously awarded the VC. Only seven of E14’s 32 crew managed to escape from the stricken craft.

    Three years earlier, during the Gallipoli Campaign – the allied landings on the coast at the end of the Dardanelles – the same vessel conducted a daring raid through the straits, past dense minefields and deep into enemy territory, in the Sea of Marmara.

    Once there, the submarine dodged hostile patrols and caused havoc among enemy shipping for several days, sinking an Ottoman gunboat and a former White Star liner converted to a troop ship, and disabling another warship.

    For that 1915 mission, her skipper, Lieutenant Commander Edward Boyle, was awarded the VC. He went on to make at least two more tours of the Sea of Marmara on E14, during the boat’s distinguished career.

    The shipwreck was discovered by Selçuk Kolay, a Turkish marine engineer, and Savas Karakas, a diver and filmmaker, who have spent three years trying to find it.

    They established the approximate location from studying documents kept at the National Archives, in Kew, west London, as well as surveying the positions of coastal defences. In 2010, they detected an unusual object on the seabed just off the town of Kum Kale while scanning it from a boat on the surface.

    However, the wreck’s location – near the mouth of the straits – remains a strategically sensitive area, with a military installation on the nearby shore, and diving is forbidden.

    It took a further two years to get permission from the Turkish military authorities before their team were able to dive to the wreck and confirm it as the E14 earlier this month.

    The submarine was found at a depth of 65ft, around 800ft from the beach. It is lying at an angle of almost 45 degrees on the sloping seabed, and all but the front 23ft of the 181ft vessel is covered in sand.

    While the wreck looks largely intact, at least one shell hole is visible near the bows, indicating the battering the submarine took.

    Her location also suggests she was less than a quarter of a mile from getting out of the straits and out of the range of guns.

    Mr Kolay said: “They were almost out of the Dardanelles and would have been safe. The wreck is in a good condition and is one of the best preserved submarines of its type left on the earth. It is of great historical significance, as well as being, of course, a war grave.”

    Boyle, who was born in Carlisle and went to school at Cheltenham College, survived the war and also served in the Second World War, reaching the rank of rear admiral. He died in 1967 in Ascot, Berks, at the age of 84.

    His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Gosport, Hants.

    White was from Bromley, Kent, and had gone to school at Bradfield College, Reading. He was killed at the age of 31, leaving a widow, Sybil, and three children under the age of six.

    His medal is now owned by his grandson, Richard Campbell, 60, from Pulborough, West Sussex, who keeps it in a bank.

    “I have always felt that my grandmother is the only person who really had the right to sell it, if she wanted to,” he said. “It was very dear to her. She had great pride in it, without a doubt.”

  • Turkey: At the Crossroads of East, West, North and South

    Turkey: At the Crossroads of East, West, North and South

    Posted on January 5th, 2012 by Samuel Krech

    Today in our class discussion we talked about the massacre of the Armenian population in Turkey during the first World War along with the Kurdish minority in Turkey and it’s terrorist organization the PKK(Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

    155340 165489510153640 164118593624065 298493 7638569 nOn the Armenian massacre or “genocide” topic we discussed the two differing views that the Turkish and the Armenian people have on the issue. Turkey does not classify this incident as a Genocide but it does take responsibility for the fact that many Armenians were killed on the forced march that they were forced to take. The Turkish government felt that the Armenians were a security threat on their Eastern border and so started the march that, by the end, killed upwards of 650,000 Armenian people, due to starvation and other types of death. On the Armenian side of the issue we see a stance of labeling this happening as a Genocide. They feel that it was a specific policy set by the Turkish government to eliminate them as an ethnic group. So far there has been no official agreement on the issue between the two governments but some progress has been made on the part of the Turkish government in terms of them wanting to open their records to the public to gather the facts of the time and decide what exactly happened, this would be a joint effort with the Armenians but so far they have been non-responsive to this endeavor. Our discussion in class on this topic was a heated one with many varied opinions on the topic and we probably could have talked about it for much longer than we did today.

    Moving on to the PKK, the Kurdish terrorist organization, we see a movement by circles in the Kurdish population working towards an independent Kurdish nation. This group uses both politics and violence to further their cause through their history as an organization we do see some progress towards at least recognition of the importance of the Kurdish minority and their needs as a people.

    In the second part of our day as a class we watched a movie entitled Bliss. This is a film about woman who was physically abused and her journey, along with her future husband, to get away from village where it happened and also to find her place in Turkey. They find friends in unsuspected places and eventually she comes to terms with the problem. This movie, i think, also portrays the differing cultural values that are important to different parts of Turkey. In this village where this woman lived, if you were violated in this way, you had brought shame to the family and should not be a part of this world anymore. By the end of the movie and her eventual escape from this problem we see the people around her questioning this view and changing their minds in favor of the more modern view of this problem, one in which it was not her fault and the family just had to do their best to deal with and move on from the problem. Overall i think this movie was an interesting one.

    So that is a recap of January 5, our on-campus class, Can’t wait to get to Turkey!!

    via Turkey: At the Crossroads of East, West, North and South, January 5 – On Campus Class – Posted on January 5th, 2012 by Samuel Krech.

  • Secrets of WWI battlefield uncovered

    Archaeological survey is one of the most extensive historic war site to date

    By Wynne Parry

    Department of Veterans' Affairs, Australian Government A water bottle with a bullet hole was among the artifacts found during an archeological survey of a First World War site, the Anzac battlefield, on Turkish soil.

    An ongoing archaeological survey of a World War I site in Turkey has so far uncovered a maze of trenches, as well as about 200 artifacts that offer clues to life on a Gallipoli battlefield where troops faced off for eight months.

    The survey is one of the most extensive to date of an historic battlefield.

    On April 25, 1915, less than a year after World War I broke out, Allied forces — from Australia, New Zealand, Britain and France — landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula, now part of Turkey. Almost a century ago, this land belonged to the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany and the Central Powers.

    The survey is being conducted on the Anzac battlefield, which measures 2 miles by 1.5 miles (3.2 kilometers by 2.4 kilometers), where the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps (known as the Anzacs) faced off against troops from the Ottoman Empire until Dec. 19 and Dec. 20, 1915, when the Anzac troops evacuated.

    As at other WWI battlefields, troops fought from trenches dug into the ground. Some of the networks of trenches found near the frontline of the Anzac battlefield were so dense that they would be difficult to map, even using modern techniques, according to the researchers.

    The trenches for both sides were remarkably close to each other, largely because of the rugged terrain, which made their layout much less orderly than trench systems established at WWI battlefields in western Europe, according to Richard Reid of the Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs and Ian McGibbon of New Zealand’s Ministry for Culture and Heritage, both senior historians working on the project.

    The frontline trenches were occupied at all times, since the two sides could be just 10 to 20 yards (9.1 to 18.3 meters) apart. At a spot on the Anzac battlefield called Quinn’s Post, both sides constantly lobbed bombs at each other, so troops were regularly rotated in and out, Reid and McGibbon wrote to LiveScience in an email.

    The survey, done as part of the second season of field work at the site, also uncovered the top of a tier of terraces constructed to house reserve troops at Quinn’s Post on the Allied side. This discovery was a pleasant surprise because erosion was feared to have obliterated these terraces, they wrote.

    “In terms of archaeology, the most significant finds are perhaps related to living conditions on both sides of the lines — the eating and drinking habits of the troops. A Turkish oven was located, and 200 relics of the fighting, ranging from bullets to bullet-holed water cans,” they wrote.

    These include pieces of medical bottles; tin containers that once held food, such asbully beef, sardines and jam; expended ammunition; shrapnel and barbed wire fragments. It appears the Turkish troops had more access to fresh-cooked meals than troops on the Allied side, where food tins were more abundant.

    “Despite the historical importance of the Gallipoli battlefield, our knowledge of this area to date has been based on maps and written accounts. This area has never been studied in detail through modern archaeological survey methods,” said Warren Snowdon, Australia’s Minister for Veterans’ Affairs in a statement.

    The survey, part of the five-year-long Turkey, Australia and New Zealand Historical and Archaeological Survey of the Anzac Battlefield is one of the largest investigations in battlefield archaeology ever attempted, according to the Australian government.

    This year and last year, excavators have found almost 18,763 feet (5,719 meters) of trenches, 16 cemeteries, about 200 artifacts and numerous collapsed tunnels, dugouts and other features. The next session of field work is planned for September 2012.

    From a military perspective, the Turks won the campaign but lost more than 80,000 dead. The Ottoman Army never really recovered from this effort, and ultimately had to accept defeat in 1918, wrote McGibbon and Reid.

    Ultimately, this campaign was important to the development of modern Turkey, New Zealand and Australia, they wrote.

    You can follow LiveScience writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

    via Secrets of WWI battlefield uncovered – Technology & science – Science – LiveScience – msnbc.com.

  • Ottoman Troops – Israeli history

    Ottoman Troops – Israeli history

    By LENNY BEN-DAVID

    07/21/2011 12:43

    JPost special feature: A Library of Congress collection of photographs that document Israel before the creation of the state.

    ww12

    The Library of Congress has recently digitalized a collection of over 10,000 photographs, taken by the “American Colony” in Jerusalem, a group of Christian utopians who lived in Jerusalem between 1881 and the 1940s. The photographers returned to the US, and bequeathed their massive collection to the Library of Congress in 1978.

    The collection includes Winston Churchill’s visit to Jerusalem, Jewish expulsions from the Old City during Arab riots, and the building of Tel Aviv.

    This week’s collection focuses on the prelude to the 1917 war in Palestine. World War I did not only take place in the trenches of Europe. A massive war also took place in the Middle East between 1914 and 1918 with the British Empire engaging the armies of the German and Ottoman Empires.

    The war years were marked by severe persecution and hardship for the Jewish communities of Palestine. War was waged from the shores of the Suez Canal to Damascus. Armies of hundreds of thousands of men fought over control of the Canal, the water wells in the Sinai, Gaza, the Arabian peninsula, Beersheba, Jerusalem, Jericho and Damascus. Great cavalry charges, military railroad construction, air bombing raids, camel transport were hallmarks of the war. German officers commanded Turkish, Austrian and German troops, and British officers commanded British, Australians and Indians.

    via Israeli history photo o… JPost – Features – Insights & Features.