Can the Ottoman Empire gain anything from joining the Entente during WWI?

I asked this in my class, and from what i understand, the Ottomans had nothing to gain from fighting with Britain and France as both were complicit in dividing and occupying its territories. They would have to give up to much,even if they have less to gain from the Central Powers than say Bulgaria.

There's also just a trust gap. You have Russia, the age-old enemy, France, who helped in Crimea but openly desires the Levant, Italy (eventually), who shook them down three years prior, Serbia, who shook them down two years prior, and Britain, who tempers the others...for a price, and who's only getting more and more active on their borders and inside the Empire with their intelligence activities. Who the hell would trust an alliance like that?
 

NoMommsen

Donor
IIRC during the autumn 1914 the ottomans asked for :
- end of the capitulations ("special rights" for the foreigners)
- security from Bulgaria
- security of their hold on the straits
- some money

The Entente powers offered for on-going neutrality (according to Strachan) :
- guarantee of turkish neutrality and its territory (as guaranteed to Belgium ?)
- and the right to make some more debts for purchasing weapons from the Entente
- ... that's it
but also asked/demanded :
- usage of the straits to their (the Ententes) wishes
- sending away the german ships
Nothing about the most important : the capitulations

OTOH the germans said to all of the ottoman demands :
- YES, if you enter war on our side
Asked for 5 millions turkish pounds in gold (at that time roughly equal the british pound ~ 20 million goldmarks), the germans deposited 2 million turkish poungs in gold at Constantinople in october, the rest liable on actually entering the war.
Beside leather of boot-soles the germans also accepted an ever increasing wishing/shopping list of the ottomans for guns, rifles, ammo, uniforms, ....

Hard to see how the ottomany could be convinced to even join the Entente ... no to forget what @TRH just said.
 
I think the Entente would have to be in more dire straits than OTL to offer a better deal to the Turks rather than passing on them and calling it rain. Alternatively, getting Italy in the CP might do it... but probably causes the Entente to lose.
 

Deleted member 94680

After the exhaustion of OTL WWI, I don't think you could get political support for decades within Britain, France or Russia to launch an all out war to dismember an Ottoman Empire that had been a neutral or an ally.

They'd be too tired to do another war out of pure greed, having lived through WWI.

What? Where would the motivation be for a War of aggression against an ally? Just that western imperialist nations are inherently evil and grasping? They are both democracies, you know, and need to generate popular enthusiasm for a War - look at the OTL 1922 crisis.

However, if Ottoman siding with the Entente (or even just remaining neutral) is a *really* big difference maker allowing the Entente to win the war completely by 1916 or something, then maybe before too long, Russia, France or Britain or could warm up again to wars of imperial acquisition to the extent that they might attack and dismember Turkey.

Wait, so if 'Johnny Turk' swings the war in our favour and saves the day that's the motivation for attacking Turkey? What?


The smart move for the Ottomans is to join the Entente and offer a few token troops for the Western Front. The smarter move is to stay neutral and wait for inducements in the midst of the '16 manpower crisis. Unfortunately, the CUP leadership isn't that smart.

The possibility of territorial guarantees is not that much of an 'attention grabber' compared to the offer of returning lost territory. The balance of power would imply the Germans were going to lose eventually and the Ottomans couldn't really offer enough to tip it the other way. Even with the concessions in place, being on the WAllies' side would be the better deal for the Sublime Porte. Even if the CP had won, the Ottomans being returned to Europe would be an obvious target for resumed hostilities when Britain and France had recovered their strength. They were on a highway to nothing OTL so any other choice is probably better.
 
There's also just a trust gap. You have Russia, the age-old enemy, France, who helped in Crimea but openly desires the Levant, Italy (eventually), who shook them down three years prior, Serbia, who shook them down two years prior, and Britain, who tempers the others...for a price, and who's only getting more and more active on their borders and inside the Empire with their intelligence activities. Who the hell would trust an alliance like that?
Not a problem. The Turks could count on the Anglo-Russian-French alliance collapsing after a succesful war. It does OTL and there would be no reason not to expect one if the Ottomans are neutral or pro entente.

In an Anglo-Russian cold war, Ottoman friendship counts for a lot. The Ottomans would almost certianly fare better in an Entente victory than in a CP one. The Sultan definitely thought so as did many in the cabinet. Only the Goeben gave the Germans leverage
 
Possible gains would include:

-restoration of full or partial Ottoman sovereignty over Albania
-Greece badgered into ceding the disputed Aegean islands
-being allowed to fully or partially dissolve the autonomous Armenia
-if Bulgaria joins the Central Powers (unlikely), extensive territorial gains in Bulgarian Thrace
-financial and economic gains

I'm not sure if anything is possible in, say, Egypt.
Restauration of pre annexion 1878 Bosnia as Ottoman province ( maybe autonomous entity)? ? Ok, that could lead to war with Serbia, and Italy might want to grab some more territory in the Balkans.
 
Not a problem. The Turks could count on the Anglo-Russian-French alliance collapsing after a succesful war. It does OTL and there would be no reason not to expect one if the Ottomans are neutral or pro entente.

In an Anglo-Russian cold war, Ottoman friendship counts for a lot. The Ottomans would almost certianly fare better in an Entente victory than in a CP one. The Sultan definitely thought so as did many in the cabinet. Only the Goeben gave the Germans leverage

A few problems with this. First, if history's an indication, the Turks can't beat even one of the big four Entente members in a war. If a surviving Tsarist regime decides that with Germany down for a generation, the time has come to make a run for the Dardanelles, the Turks have had it. If France decides the Levant is theirs for the taking, who's to stop them? Hell, if the Serbs teamed up with their Greek and Romanian allies for another run at the Straits, they'd probably have a fighting chance of winning. The likelihood that the Russian Revolution gets averted by an Entente Turkey brings me to the second problem: you're looking at this from an OTL lens where the Bolshevik surrender ruptured Russia's alliance with Britain and France, but it was the surrender, more than the Bolshevism, that offended the West. Without either that or a communist takeover, the alliance would persist, and the British had already promised the Straits long before the war started. That brings us into problem number three: the 1878 war changed the British view of Turkey from a useful ally against Russia to either a human rights abuser who didn't deserve any consideration, if you were a Liberal, or deadweight who could easily be sacrificed on the altar of better relations with Russia (and France, since again, they also were happy to dismember the Ottomans to advance their own agenda in the Middle East), if you were a conservative. The 19th Century geopolitical calculations that people harp on about were obsolete by this point. And that leads into the final point: despite their mythology as Machiavellian chessmasters who played everyone else in Europe for saps for five hundred years, the British only ever betrayed their own allies immediately after a victory once: during the Seven Years' War, and the result left them friendless on the continent for a generation. They won't fight a costly war alongside a Franco-Russian alliance, only to immediately start trying to destroy it, any more than they followed up the Napoleonic wars by conspiring against Austria and Prussia. The problem here is that Russia wanted a chunk of the Ottomans, France wanted the Levant, Italy wanted whatever they could get, Serbia wanted whatever they could get, Greece wanted the Ionian Coast, and there's no reasonable way that the British could restrain all of them. Their only rational response would be to take whatever concessions they could get out of the impending dismemberment.

The notion that the Turks would be better off with an Entente victory, well, it's profoundly silly when you consider that every single member of the Entente, including Britain, had territorial claims on it. The idea that they'd betray each other to help out the one country that they all agree shouldn't exist is wishful thinking in the extreme.
 
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Restauration of pre annexion 1878 Bosnia as Ottoman province ( maybe autonomous entity)? ? Ok, that could lead to war with Serbia, and Italy might want to grab some more territory in the Balkans.

The Ottoman government might not even want Bosnia at this point - they didn't seem to express any interest in OTL. It would be distant, isolated, very difficult to govern, and with little to no real benefits.

If Russia still has the two revolutions, the Ottomans would be interested in Crimea and the southern Caucasus, and could acquire at least some of those. OTOH, even one Russian revolution is very unlikely in this scenario, and two revolutions is close to impossible.
 
A few problems with this. First, if history's an indication, the Turks can't beat even one of the big four Entente members in a war.
So wouldn't that mean that starting a war with all four is kind of...you know...a bad idea? Sure, sure, they're allied with German and Austria-Hungary. But Germany and Austria are a long way, relatively speaking, from the straits and have bigger problems of their own. Getting involve in the war on either side seems like a losing proposition for the Turks to me. Best stay out, let everyone else weaken themselves, and build up their fleet and army to deter the kind of adventurism you mention.
 
So wouldn't that mean that starting a war with all four is kind of...you know...a bad idea? Sure, sure, they're allied with German and Austria-Hungary. But Germany and Austria are a long way, relatively speaking, from the straits and have bigger problems of their own. Getting involve in the war on either side seems like a losing proposition for the Turks to me. Best stay out, let everyone else weaken themselves, and build up their fleet and army to deter the kind of adventurism you mention.

The idea is that one or all of those countries would come for them sooner or later, so better to at least confront them with allies. You're right that neutrality might be a better approach, but not if it means the difference between the Entente winning or losing. It wasn't enough IOTL, but as we all know, they came pretty close to winning anyways. In any case, the real point is that appeasing the alliance made up entirely of the Empire's worst enemies is insane.
 

Deleted member 94680

But how much of the dismemberment of the Ottomans came about due to the Ottomans taking part in the War?

Who in the British political mainstream was advocating supporting an Arab uprising and taking Transjordan for instance? The same for the French and what became Syria?

Wars harden attitudes and give free reign to adventurists. Pre-War, what was the Allies policy towards the Ottomans beside rinse them for all the concessions they could take?
 
But how much of the dismemberment of the Ottomans came about due to the Ottomans taking part in the War?

Who in the British political mainstream was advocating supporting an Arab uprising and taking Transjordan for instance? The same for the French and what became Syria?

Wars harden attitudes and give free reign to adventurists. Pre-War, what was the Allies policy towards the Ottomans beside rinse them for all the concessions they could take?

Nothing they hadn't wanted before the war, it simply provided a pretext. I'll grant that the British were probably not going to meddle with Arab nationalism without it, but the French definitely wanted the Levant for a long time beforehand. It all depends on whatever crisis the Empire would face next, I suppose, and that probably depends on Russian dispositions as much as anything. The point is that the Turks couldn't trust them not to reprise 1878, only without the British being interested in saving them again. Maybe Armenia or the like would be the flashpoint, but something would be sure to come up.
 

Deleted member 94680

Nothing they hadn't wanted before the war, it simply provided a pretext. I'll grant that the British were probably not going to meddle with Arab nationalism without it, but the French definitely wanted the Levant for a long time beforehand.

Come on man, you know the drill: what are your sources? Wanting 'the Levant', which IIRC in French context pretty much means modern Lebanon, is pretty different to carving up Syria and attempting to empire build.

It all depends on whatever crisis the Empire would face next, I suppose, and that probably depends on Russian dispositions as much as anything. The point is that the Turks couldn't trust them not to reprise 1878, only without the British being interested in saving them again. Maybe Armenia or the like would be the flashpoint, but something would be sure to come up.

Would Armenia 'come up' without the Ottoman war effort? They were attacked, deported and ethnically cleansed due to their alleged support for the Russians, weren't they? What were the pre-war Armenian policies of the CUP?


You can't criticise others for looking at things through an OTL lens and then do the selfsame thing yourself. I contend that the Ottomans taking part in the War on the CP side led to the WAllies' land grabs, not that their being part of the CP gave legitimacy to long-standing land grabs the nefarious WAllies had planned for a long time and merely waited for a chance to carry out.
 
A few problems with this. First, if history's an indication, the Turks can't beat even one of the big four Entente members in a war. If a surviving Tsarist regime decides that with Germany down for a generation, the time has come to make a run for the Dardanelles, the Turks have had it. If France decides the Levant is theirs for the taking, who's to stop them? Hell, if the Serbs teamed up with their Greek and Romanian allies for another run at the Straits, they'd probably have a fighting chance of winning. The likelihood that the Russian Revolution gets averted by an Entente Turkey brings me to the second problem: you're looking at this from an OTL lens where the Bolshevik surrender ruptured Russia's alliance with Britain and France, but it was the surrender, more than the Bolshevism, that offended the West. Without either that or a communist takeover, the alliance would persist, and the British had already promised the Straits long before the war started. That brings us into problem number three: the 1878 war changed the British view of Turkey from a useful ally against Russia to either a human rights abuser who didn't deserve any consideration, if you were a Liberal, or deadweight who could easily be sacrificed on the altar of better relations with Russia (and France, since again, they also were happy to dismember the Ottomans to advance their own agenda in the Middle East), if you were a conservative. The 19th Century geopolitical calculations that people harp on about were obsolete by this point. And that leads into the final point: despite their mythology as Machiavellian chessmasters who played everyone else in Europe for saps for five hundred years, the British only ever betrayed their own allies immediately after a victory once: during the Seven Years' War, and the result left them friendless on the continent for a generation. They won't fight a costly war alongside a Franco-Russian alliance, only to immediately start trying to destroy it, any more than they followed up the Napoleonic wars by conspiring against Austria and Prussia. The problem here is that Russia wanted a chunk of the Ottomans, France wanted the Levant, Italy wanted whatever they could get, Serbia wanted whatever they could get, Greece wanted the Ionian Coast, and there's no reasonable way that the British could restrain all of them. Their only rational response would be to take whatever concessions they could get out of the impending dismemberment.

The notion that the Turks would be better off with an Entente victory, well, it's profoundly silly when you consider that every single member of the Entente, including Britain, had territorial claims on it. The idea that they'd betray each other to help out the one country that they all agree shouldn't exist is wishful thinking in the extreme.

I'm around 10,000 kilometers from my copy of the Climax of French Imperialism: 1914-1924, which makes it hard to check for precise details in some sections, but the French were profoundly unhappy about the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. To the French, from their perspective, losing their influence across the Ottoman Empire as a whole - and getting in return Syria - wasn't desirable. The Comité de l'Asie Française for example, saw de Caix, their main ideologist, saw the following: "If means still exist to save the Ottoman Empire, we must seize them . . . we prefer to make our contributions to the cultivation of the great Ottoman garden rather than to have our small plot in Syria to ourselves". Delcassé and Bonpard (the French ambassador to Constantinople before the war), were both opposed to a partition. Most French high diplomats seemed to have shared a general view, this being the intent of the Quai d'Orsay. To take some quotes, unfortunately the Climax of French Imperialism doesn't generally mention exactly who said them...

"Our moral and beneficent influence would be severely limited, perhaps ruined, by a partition of the Empire."

"Everything torn away from Turkey is also lost to the French language . . . We can scarcely hope to find in the Orient, outside of the Turkish empire, Turkish or Arab authors who choose our language in which to write and who sometimes use it with such genuine talent . . . If Turkey were to be disassembled then the loss to our cultural domain would quickly become irreparable."

"[the official policy of the Comité de l'Asia Française was to preserve the Ottomans intact as]One of the most favored areas for our economy activity and-more important still-for our culture."

Only the diplomats in Syria and those who were concerned that the British intended to steal the region from them (quite a correct concern) dissented - and the latter were mostly invigorated when the war began. The French seizure of Syria and Lebanon is the French making sure they got their pound of flesh as their second-best option, rather than necessarily being the over-riding goal for them in the region.

I doubt therefor that the French would be likely to support a partition of the Ottoman Empire, and certainly wouldn't proceed therefor on their own. If the French can, they'll prefer for the Ottomans to stick around. Russian relations with the Ottomans had been quite good a few decades before, and it isn't impossible that they might return to this. French diplomatic pressure on the Russians would help in this regard; the French will still hold those massive loans in Russia and serve as a source of Russian financing, giving them outsized political influence there (and on a similar note, their massive loans and influence inside the Ottoman Empire, of which some might be relinquished by the Ottomans joining just like Siam saw some reprieves from Franco-British imperialism but which much would remain intact, give a very good concrete reason to support keeping the Ottomans together). I don't know what the British relations to the Ottomans were like, but I doubt that the British are going to invade the Ottomans. Greece, Serbia, and Romania attacking the Ottomans seems bizarre... what do the Serbians post First Balkan War, much less the Romanians, get out of it? The Serbs happen to have both Bulgaria and Greece between them and the Ottomans, and no Serbian minorities in Ottoman territory. Greece on its own, has little hope of invading the Ottomans.

Italy meanwhile, while fully capable of biting off disconnected Ottoman territories in Libya and a few islands, seems like a... doubtful, candidate to mount an invasion of the only Ottoman territory of significance remaining, the mainland.

This being said, the French did have that second option of partition, and it existed for a reason. I think the best quote to sum up what French policy is, is one from Raymond Poincaré:

"We must maintain the status quo in Asia Minor as long as possible. But there will come a day when partition takes place . . . and we must make advance preparation in order not to miss out on it."

If the Ottomans look strong, then France will back them; if not, then the buzzards will circle.
 
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Hell, if the Serbs teamed up with their Greek and Romanian allies for another run at the Straits, they'd probably have a fighting chance of winning.

...

The problem here is that Russia wanted a chunk of the Ottomans, France wanted the Levant, Italy wanted whatever they could get, Serbia wanted whatever they could get, Greece wanted the Ionian Coast, and there's no reasonable way that the British could restrain all of them. Their only rational response would be to take whatever concessions they could get out of the impending dismemberment.

Greece's possession of the Aegean islands and potential claims on Asia Minor was the most pressing concern for the Ottomans in 1914. Only, it's worth noting that Germany was a firm and major supporter of Greek claims, both in the Aegean and in Albania. In fact, Germany's position on these questions was less Ottoman-friendly then, say, Russia's, and it caused quite a strain on relations between Berlin and Constantinople.

Austria had also taken its own pound of Ottoman flesh not too long ago. And Berlin was lucky that Kaiser Wilhelm's initiatives for the partition of the Ottoman Empire (during the 1890s humanitarian crisis) were never leaked to the public; if they were, the whole Ottoman-German friendship thing might have never kicked off to begin with.

So the whole issue wasn't nearly as black-and-white.

Now, a Russian or French attack after WWI is certainly not inevitable. It's - arguably - not even likely, as Bad@logic noted. Still, it's not an unreasonable idea.
But the idea that the Serbs (and apparently the Romanians) had territorial ambitions against the Ottoman Empire in 1914 is extremely weird. Why on earth would Serbia and/or Romania - who no longer have a common border with the Ottoman Empire, let alone any territorial claims against it - be marching on the Straits?

(Unlike them, Bulgaria does share a border with the Ottomans, has potential territorial claims on them, and is close enough to threaten the Empire's key areas. But it was not exactly in the Entente camp at this point. In fact, the Ottomans could plausibly view one or more of the Entente members as a natural counterweight to Bulgaria.)
 
A few problems with this. First, if history's an indication, the Turks can't beat even one of the big four Entente members in a war.

So you would think war with all four is a good idea? Ony diplomacy can save the ottomans. they need as many Great powers as possible.

If a surviving Tsarist regime decides that with Germany down for a generation, the time has come to make a run for the Dardanelles, the Turks have had it.

If the Turks fight alone, sure they're toast. But then I remember something called the Crimean war where France and Britain allied with the Turks to fight the Russians With the Germans beaten, this alliance could easily re emerge. Why would Britain, France or Italy want the Rusians to have the straits and entrance into the Mediterranean

It is not the Russian surrender or the Revolution that brings an end to the Entente. Its the defeat of Germany and the end of t he common interest in preserving France and stopping Germany France and Britain, Italy and France and Briain and Italy all have falling outs after the war. Britain may have thought of the Turks as human rights abusers but even in 1896 at the height of the Armenian massacres, Salisbury was standing by the Turks and rejecting the idea of a settlement with Russia

THere is every reason to t hink t he Turks can go back to paying the Russians and the British off against each other. Its really their only hope. The Germans, having defeated France, Britain, russia and Italy and having reduced Austria to vassal, would be unstoppable. Trusting in the tender mercies of the Kaiser seems like a bad plan
 
What? Where would the motivation be for a War of aggression against an ally? Just that western imperialist nations are inherently evil and grasping? They are both democracies, you know, and need to generate popular enthusiasm for a War - look at the OTL 1922 crisis.

Because it is pretty much traditional to take land from the Turks whether they win a war, lose a war, are your allies or are your enemies. The Europeans had been playing this game since the Napoleonic wars.

The rules for playing with the Ottomans were not the same as the rules for playing with civilized Christian Europeans.

fasquardon
 
The biggest, and most obvious, gain for the Ottomans would be not being dismembered by the Allies at the end of the War.

Their debt wouldn't be written off (IMO) but there's a fair chance they'd get better terms on the repayments and maybe further loans for post-War rebuilding. Once Russia goes Soviet (I don't see an Entente Ottoman Empire preventing that) a monarchical 'democratic' state the size of the OE on the USSR's border is an obvious target for any anti-Bolshevik plans and plots the WAllies might have.

I don't think going Soviet would be an option since Russia could easily receive supplies.
 
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