Yet modern Turkey is a lot more stable than most of its Asian neighbours which left, or were taken from, the Ottoman Empire during and after the First World War. The story of the demolition of the Turkish Empire in Asia – which had lasted since before the capture of Constantinople in 1453, longer than the Roman Empire in the west, much longer than the British Empire – is soon told. The British made a protectorate of Transjordan in 1916: it became the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946. Syria and Lebanon were mandated to France by the League of Nations in 1922 although the French had moved in already in 1919 – their share of the Ottoman spoils. Both territories were wrested from Vichy government control during the Second World War and became independent in 1941 and 1943 respectively. What was left of the Arabian Peninsula (the world’s largest) after the territories round its edge (Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates) went their own way, had been the scene of a spectacular campaign by that mysterious, romanticised figure, Colonel T. E. Lawrence, who fostered a revolt in the desert against the Turks by Arab and Bedouin tribesmen. It was not until 1932 that Ibn Saud completed the unification of the four tribal provinces of Hejaz, Azir, Najd and Al-Hasa into the present-day kingdom of Saudi Arabia. An absolute monarchy, it observes the strictest form of Islam, Wahhabism, as it protects Islam’s holiest shrines of Mecca (the birthplace of the religion) and Medina, and rejoices in the world’s largest-known national oil reserve.
Mesopotamia was wrested from Turkish control by British troops after 1916 and was mandated to Britain in 1921 as the new state of Iraq, following a series of rows between the British and French over this, over control of Middle Eastern oil and over Syria. Under the Ottomans Mesopotamia, a geographical expression for the region between and adjacent to the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, had been divided into three very distinct provinces – Mosul in the north (where many Kurds live), Baghdad in the centre and Basra in the south. The new political entity was not a nation but a line on a map, rather like Nigeria or the London Borough of Croydon, drawn for administrative convenience. Arabs rose in revolt in Mosul and the Baghdad region in 1920 against British rule, destroying communications, laying siege to garrisons and killing British officials. The rebels were brutally suppressed by punitive expeditions while the infant RAF introduced a new stratagem, the airborne bombing and strafing of civilians as a means of crushing resistance. In March 1921 Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, decided to turn Iraq into a kingdom under the Hashemite Feisal, who had alongside Lawrence raised the banner of rebellion against Turkish rule in Arabia; his brother Abdullah was made king of Transjordan, still ruled as Jordan by his descendants. Churchill was handing out thrones like chocolate bars, rewards for the support given to Lawrence, whose lavish promises to the Arabs had not been honoured.
The Iraqi monarchy, granted independence in 1932, was overthrown in 1958 and a republic was declared. The emergence of Saddam Hussein from the ruling Ba’ath Party as dictatorial president in 1979 inaugurated a quarter of a century of ruinous war, against Iran, against the Kurdish population, against Kuwait, which was briefly occupied in 1991, against a US-led coalition which liberated Kuwait in that year and finally in 2003, when a second American-led invasion toppled Saddam, who was executed in 2007 after a ramshackle trial. The results of the invasion, openly aimed at regime-change but with underlying commercial motives, based on false or forged ‘intelligence’ and without an exit strategy, have been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Iraq. So far the cure has been worse than the disease and a stupefying quantity of blood and treasure has been wasted.
Turkey can hardly be blamed for what has become of the constituent parts of the Ottoman Empire since it was dispossessed of them in 1918. This applies above all perhaps to Palestine, which was mandated to Britain in
1920 – three years after the fateful Balfour Declaration promising a Jewish homeland. There had however been a considerable influx of Zionists into Palestine under the Ottomans in the 1880s. Balfour’s extraordinary document is a perfect illustration of the principle that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Arthur (later Earl) Balfour (1848–1930) was Conservative Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905 and was a member of the War Council from 1914, briefly succeeding Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty until serving as Foreign Secretary from 1916 to 1919. He was nicknamed Bloody Balfour for his enthusiastic suppression of Irish republicans; critics of his declaration regard this as an appropriate nickname for another reason. His notorious promise was contained in a short note to the second Baron Rothschild of the enormously influential, Anglo-German Jewish banking dynasty, the nub of which reads:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people … it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.
By 1923 it had been clarified as British official policy which included: encouragement of Jewish immigration to Palestine under the auspices of a special body created for the purpose; protection of the rights of non-Jews; equal status for Hebrew, Arabic and English. All this ignored the mathematical and logical principle that two into one won’t go. The Arabs complained that the Jews were being given preference at their expense and the rate of immigration threatened their interests; the Jews claimed that the British were dragging their feet in fulfilling their promise to the Jewish people. Tension mounted in Palestine between the wars as more and more Jews fled the Nazis after 1933; then came the unspeakable Holocaust of six million European Jews. This not only encouraged a new wave of migration to Israel by survivors but also left a legacy of guilt among the western powers, especially in Britain, which retained its mandate after 1945, and the United States, where millions of Jews lived thanks to earlier migrations from Europe and collectively wielded enormous political influence.
But, as many a Palestinian Arab has remarked in recent years: ‘Why are we being punished for Auschwitz?’ The hapless British were demonised for their efforts to control the Jewish influx, which included several public-relations disasters; Jewish groups in Palestine formed terrorist gangs which perpetrated atrocities; and in 1947 the United Nations, successor-organisation to the League of Nations, supported the establishment of two states in Palestine, one Jewish, one Arab. Britain, which had just given up the core of its empire in the Indian sub-continent, could not wait to be relieved of its mandate, and when a date could not be agreed at the UN, gave unilateral notice of its intention to leave in 1948. The Arabs rejected the two-state solution, so David Ben-Gurion promulgated the state of Israel on 14 May 1948. Challenges from the neighbouring Arab states were beaten off, and Israel became the local superpower in a series of further wars with the Arabs (1956, 1958, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2007, not to mention aerial bombings of neighbouring states), acquiring nuclear weapons along the way and confining the Palestinians to the teeming Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the River Jordan.
Many millions of Palestinian refugees live miserable lives in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. Tragically, the Arabs will not absorb them, understandably if cruelly, because that would imply acceptance of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Ironically, 60 years after the Arabs rejected the idea of two states on the soil of Palestine, Israel’s all-powerful protector, the United States, tried to revive the seriously neglected ‘peace process’ on the basis of a ‘two-state solution’. The Palestinians have seen their fragile hopes crumble as the Israelis built a wall across Palestine against Arab suicide bombers and allowed scores of illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank. The fact that a once-persecuted people has itself turned persecutor is surely one of the bitterest ironies in history.
If Turkey is responsible for none of the foregoing, why mention it? The twin roots of the endless crises that have engulfed the former Ottoman lands since 1918 are first, that Turkey should have remained neutral in 1914 (as it wisely did in 1939) rather than joining the Central Powers, and second, that the
Royal Navy squandered the chance to correct this mistake by its great failure at the Dardanelles to mount a combined operation. While this might be dismissed as mere hindsight, it is fair to point out that most of the Turkish Cabinet favoured neutrality in 1914; and that overwhelming contemporary opinion in British ruling, naval and military circles had always been that only a combined operation could hope to force the Dardanelles.
To the combined effect of two huge, failed gambles, Enver’s in Constantinople and Churchill’s in London, must be added Souchon’s successful one in delivering the instrument, itself the beneficiary of another blunder by the Royal Navy, to activate the Turco-German alliance that doomed Russia. As Barbara Tuchman wrote in August 1914: Thereafter the red edges of war spread over another half of the world. Turkey’s neighbours, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy and Greece, were eventually drawn in. Thereafter, with her exit to the Mediterranean closed, Russia was left dependent on Archangel, icebound half the year, and on Vladivostok, 8,000 miles from the battlefront. With the Black Sea closed, her exports dropped ninety-eight per cent and her imports by ninety-five per cent. The cutting off of Russia with all its consequences, the vain and sanguinary tragedy of Gallipoli, the diversion of Allied strength in the campaigns of Mesopotamia, Suez and Palestine, the ultimate break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the subsequent history of the Middle East, followed from the voyage of the Goeben.
Not only post hoc, but also propter hoc.
Epilogue
The Tale of Two Ships
After the Russian Revolution there was very little for the Turkish fleet to do. Many of the sailors on the two German ships were farm boys, and they were given some land near their anchorage of Stenia (Istinye) where they could grow maize and rear pigs. Eventually this little enterprise turned a profit in a Constantinople which was close to starvation. From 4 September 1917 their flag officer was Vice-Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz, Souchon’s replacement. The Black Sea was quiet after three years of sometimes desperate actions with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, now confined to port. When intelligence indicated in December 1917 that two British divisions were about to be moved from Salonica to reinforce Allenby in Palestine, Paschwitz was reminded that there was another enemy afloat at the other end of the straits with whom the Turco-German fleet had never fought an action. He suggested to Enver that his ships stage a raid on Salonica, 120 miles from the entrance to the Dardanelles, to disrupt the troop movements and raise Turkish morale.
Even Enver could see that this was an extremely risky, not to say crazy, proposition, but preparations for a sortie out of the Dardanelles went ahead. To avoid confusion the two German ships are referred to here by their original names. Enemy naval forces were well known: the last two British pre-dreadnoughts, Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, which with a combined total of eight 12-inch guns outgunned the Goeben; one French heavy and one British light cruiser, both elderly; two monitors (floating gun platforms for coastal bombardment), HMMs Raglan and M28; a small flotilla of destroyers and miscellaneous vessels.
Paths were quietly cleared in the defensive minefields beyond the Narrows and German aircraft plotted the positions of Allied mines off the entrance on a chart as Paschwitz scaled down his plans to a hit-and-run raid on the Allied guard force which, in one form or another, had been in place off the Dardanelles since August 1914. He hoped to make a surprise attack and get his ships back inside the Narrows long before the pair of battleships could get to the scene from Mudros. The admiral assembled the strongest and most viable squadron available to him: the Goeben and Breslau, four of the best Turkish destroyers and the German submarine UC23, which was detailed to lay mines off Mudros under cover of the raid and lie in wait for torpedo targets.
Hearing of the plan at the last minute, General Liman von Sanders helpfully gave the admiral a British Admiralty chart, seized from a British steamer grounded off Gallipoli, which bore markings interpreted (wrongly) as Allied mine positions. The two charts proved irreconcilable, suggesting that there were no gaps at all between or within the opposed minefields, but Paschwitz metaphorically shut his eyes and pressed on. At 5.10 a.m. on 20 January 1918, after his ships had crept through the Turkish minefields during the night, the Goeben at the head of the column struck a British mine. Damage was minor and soon brought under control, so Goeben sailed on after a few minutes.
Breslau turned north-west out of the entrance and targeted the monitors at anchor in Kusu Bay, Imbros. The Goeben caught up and both ships started shelling the eastern coast of the island. Raglan blew up and sank at her moorings, shortly followed to the bottom by M28, whose magazine exploded. Remarkably, both monitors had managed to return fire, though only briefly and to no avail: only 132 men out of the two crews totalling 310 survived the double blast.
At 5.20 a.m. the tiny destroyer HMS Lizard, which had been on night-patrol duty off the Dardanelles, sent out the signal the guard force had been waiting for these past three and a half years: ‘GOBLO … GOBLO …’ – Goeben and Breslau out. She had challenged the unfamiliar light cruiser ahead of her and got no reply; then she sighted a battlecruiser one mile behind. None the less the 780-tonne destroyer (Lieutenant O. A. G. Ohlenschlager, RN) opened fire on the cruiser even as she was shelling the monitors, breaking off to organise help for their crews. Breslau opened fire on her as she zigzagged violently, her guns hopelessly outranged. Her patrol partner and sister-ship HMS Tigress was the only Allied warship to come to her aid. British naval aircraft based on Imbros heard the GOBLO alert, took off and harassed the Germans as best they could, prompting them too to zigzag as they fired machine-guns in the air. The German pair turned north up the coast of Imbros, looking for new targets, damaging ships and buildings, the pair of destroyers following, even though the Breslau had resumed firing on them.
At 7.31 a.m. the Breslau, sailing half a mile behind the Goeben, pulled out of line to take up station ahead of her – and ran into a British minefield. One blew up under her stern and wrecked her rudder. The Goeben turned to help and set off a mine aft. Five minutes later the Breslau succumbed to two more mines under her damaged stern, and yet another exploded on her port bow. She went dead in the water, listing to port. A fifth mine went off amidships and Captain Georg von Hippel gave the order to abandon ship. More then 500 men jumped overboard, and their captain led three cheers from the bitterly cold water for their dying ship. The two British destroyers had turned to beat off an attack by the four Turkish ones before it started, driving them back into the Dardanelles and turning back again to rescue more than 150 Germans, including von Hippel, despite the mines all around. Goeben took a further mine amidships and began to list, a development which was corrected by yet another mine on the other side as she zigzagged at half speed back into the Dardanelles. With her pumps working flat out she evaded the Turkish minefield inside the Narrows – only to run aground on a sandbank near Nagara Point on the Asian shore. British aircraft circling overhead were met by German aircraft and dogfights developed as Captain Stoelzel, in command for just 16 days, struggled to refloat the Goeben. She was a sitting target, open to air and submarine attack and within range of the big guns of the British battleships, listing at an angle that prevented her from using her own main armament. She had never been closer to destruction.
But, as ever, there was a British admiral on hand to ensure that a golden opportunity was missed. Rear-Admiral Arthur Hayes-Sadler had hoisted his flag just eight days before the last foray of the Mediterranean Division. When he found his yacht was out of service and needing to confer with army headquarters at Salonica, he took the Lord Nelson, thus ensuring that there were not enough big guns on hand to outshoot the Goeben, the very reason why the two pre-dreadnoughts were there together in the first place. The rest of the guard force was scattered, leaving just the pair of little destroyers on watch, a fact which may partly explain why Hayes-Sadler used a battleship as a taxi, but not why his ships were so dispersed. The commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Gough-Calthorpe, was furious and
slammed another stable door by ordering that the pair of battleships should stay together in future …
The Dandarnelles Disaster Page 27