Still, the italians did manage to defeat the Ottoman empire, acquiring Lybia, Rhodes and the dodecanese in less than an year, while the rest of the entente took four years to beat the ottomans. Choosing the right time IS important, you know...
Mind you the italian army wasn't the best for sure, but wasn't either the rag tag most of you think. Maybe some reading should be in order...
I've read some material and I disagree with stereotype, but timing isn't the question here, logistics is. It was impossible for the Ottomans to re-enforce and resupply Libya or Rhodes, and given that they did a pretty astounding job of holding onto Libya as it was. So the Italians were, at a much greater cost in blood and treaure than anyone had estimated, able to occupy two targets that were basically lost causes anyway and have
one of them formally ceded. Big deal. "Less than a year" is hardly an impressive timeframe for such an undertaking.
Whereas the Entente went up against the Ottomans in their logistically-continuous heartland, with predictable results.
See the point above and please stop from spurting racist idiocy, thank you.
Quite.
Going back to the thread, it would have been very stupid to try to take Istanbul by surprise. A part from the huge problem of the Dardanelles, the main argument is that, military speaking, taking a place is the easy part, keeping it is the hard one (see for example the problems US and allies have today in Afghanistan and Iraq). And Italy, or for the matter any other european power of the time, could have never kept the whole ottoman empire alone.
We say that much in the Turkish War of Independence, and that was against an exhausted and battered
third of the empire as it was in 1911.
Besides trying such a move would have provoked a reaction among the other powers. The ottoman empire was the sick man of Europe because the major powers had not decided yet how to break it and divide the spoils among themselves.
*Dons fez*
Let's get serious.
The Great Powers had no desire to break the Ottoman Empire and divide the spoils in 1911, which was why the criticised the Balkan League for being irresponsible, which of course they were. Only Russia actually had anything to gain from this. Austria would oppose it with all its strength, which meant Germany would too. Britain and France had nothing to gain from its demise. At this point not even Russia was interested.
Anyway, after 1908, the Ottomans weren't the sick anything.
Go figure if they would have let Italy to do it.
That much is true.
Even trying to provoke rebellions among the ethnic groups (Arabs, Armenians, you choose...) would have met with resistance.
Hoo, boy.
I could write you an essay about why the Italians were in no position to do either of those things, why the former was pretty well impossible, and why the latter was not any serious threat to the Ottoman state.
I could disembowel you and display your head as a warning to the enemies of the Padishah.
But I won't. Instead, I'm going to invite you to revise your opinions on the stability of the Ottomans in 1911.
So the whole idea is quite impossible. Italy could have gained more land during the 1911 war, but it would have been a rather improbable evenience.
I disagree. Any Italian attacks on places where the Ottomans had functioning logistics would have been costly failures, even without the inevitable Great Power intervention.
Well, if I've understood it correctly, the Ottoman Army was a good bit less good in 1911 than it was in 1914- most armies are less good when they are in the middle of a major re-organisation. But, of course, the Italians had that going for them in OTL's 1911, when they didn't try to conquer the entire Ottoman realm, and were far from succeeding, in any case, so...
So, yeah. Any anyway I'm kind of saying that the quality of armed forces isn't the only factor: "circumstances" refers to the
other factors against any invader, like the excellent geo-strategic defenses.