by Hew Strachan
For the moment, therefore, the Turks were in a strong bargaining position. German splits and German needs gave them the upper hand in negotiations. On 6 August Said Halim took the opportunity presented by Germany’s request that Turkey admit the Goeben and the Breslau to the straits to spell out to Wangenheim what he believed the implications of the treaty to be. Germany was to support the abolition of the capitulations, to aid Turkey in the recovery of its 1878 frontiers in the Caucasus, to reconsider Turkey’s Balkan frontier, to promote understandings with Bulgaria and Romania, and, if Greece joined the Entente, to help Turkey regain its Aegean islands. In addition, Germany was not to make peace while any Turkish territory remained in enemy occupation, and was to ensure that Turkey received a war indemnity. Prudently, Wangenheim made his acceptance of these terms conditional on Turkey’s belligerence and Germany’s ability to dictate the peace. But neither then, nor with the Goeben and the Breslau flying Turkish colours, did Turkey abandon its neutrality.
Bulgaria was the key to Turkey’s position. The Ottoman empire could not fight Russia with its back exposed to a potentially hostile Balkan neighbour. But on 9 August the Turkish cabinet’s Unionist members went even further: they proposed to await the outcome of negotiations with Greece and Romania as well. Thus they could benefit from the protection of the Central Powers while postponing the costs of fighting. Said Halim in particular effectively saw the Turko-German alliance as the means to create a four-power Balkan bloc. The negotiations surrounding such a configuration—the Bulgarians would not act without a guarantee from the Romanians, and by September the Greeks were embracing neutrality—became so protracted as to be a means by which those favouring neutrality could postpone entry into the war indefinitely.39
The ambivalence of the Turkish cabinet, while it represented a source of strength in negotiation with Germany, was an indication of the limitations on Enver’s power. Opinion in Constantinople was divided four ways. Around Enver were those convinced of German military prowess and of the need to hitch Turkey’s star to a Triple Alliance victory as quickly as possible. Opposed to him was the economic realism of those who argued that Turkey should be allied to the Entente, the potential victors because of their greater resources. The neutralists fell into two groups: those in favour of strict neutrality, and those who favoured armed neutrality and an alignment with Germany as a defence against Russia.40 The fact that policy lay in the hands of the Committee of Union and Progress as well as the cabinet, that the divisions were replicated there, and that its membership was unclear, doubled the uncertainties created by these splits. Britain’s abandonment of neutrality, the failure of Italy and Romania to honour their obligations to the Triple Alliance, and—in due course—the defeat on the Marne all progressively weakened the hands of the pro-German lobby. Each of the steps taken by Turkey in August prolonged the ambiguity. The simultaneous declaration of neutrality and of mobilization, approved by the cabinet on 3 August, appeased all parties: the warriors had put war preparations in train, the neutralists had approved those preparations so that Turkey could protect its neutrality. Even the acceptance of the Goeben and the Breslau, which seemed bound to force Turkey’s hand, was accomplished without a change of stance.
Vital to Turkey’s ability to resist German pressures was the support it received from the Entente powers in the maintenance of its neutrality. Turkey got away with the most flagrantly un-neutral behaviour in August because at that stage neither Russia nor Britain could afford to interpret Turkish behaviour in an adverse light. Moreover, Turkey’s own approaches to the Entente at first suggested that its commitment to the Central Powers was not as rigid as its actions increasingly implied.
On 5 August Enver, of all people, reassured Giers, the Russian ambassador, as to the purposes of Turkish mobilization. He said it was not directed against the Russians, and that indeed the Turkish army could be employed in the Balkans against Austria-Hungary. The conditions that Turkey would set for such an alliance would be frontier ratifications in western Thrace and the return of the Aegean islands. From the great-power perspective Turkey’s offer was rank duplicity; from the Turkish perspective Turkey’s Balkan and Aegean objectives remained totally consistent. The attractions to Russia were obvious. The straits question would be settled on sufficiently favourable terms, at least for the time being, and the Russian army in the Caucasus could be switched to the European theatre. But the consequence would be a Turkish-led Balkan grouping, reactivating European Turkey. This caused Sazonov to pause, since he preferred the idea of Russia as the orchestrator of Balkan affairs. More importantly, it led both Britain and France, with their pro-Greek sympathies, to favour Turkish neutrality rather than Turkish belligerence. Thus the Entente reply, delivered on 18 August, offered Turkey territorial integrity in exchange for Turkish neutrality. If Turkey accepted the Entente’s terms, the German military mission and the German cruisers would have to depart. The capitulations and the territorial grievances would continue. Russia would grow militarily stronger through Dardanelles-directed imports. On one interpretation the Entente offer betokened not even the maintenance of the status quo, but a further reduction in Ottoman power.41
The failure of these negotiations, together with the arrival of the Goeben and Breslau, increasingly convinced Sir Edward Grey of the eventual outcome. Turko-British relations had received a major blow on 29 July 1914, when Britain had impounded the two Turkish Dreadnoughts under construction in British yards. According to the terms of the contract Britain acted within its rights. Moreover, although this was not known to the British, on 1 August Enver and Talaat did offer the first vessel to the Germans. The decision was therefore fully justified in terms of the naval balance in the North Sea. It also protected a potential ally, Greece, from attack in the Aegean, and calmed Russian worries about the balance in the Black Sea. But it was a gift to Young Turk propaganda. The ships had been funded by popular subscription, deliberately engineered to heighten Turkish national awareness, and were the symbol of Turkish resolve over the question of the Aegean islands. The howls of the Turks were not without effect. They popularized the German alliance, justifying the arrival and purchase of the Goeben and the Breslau as substitutes for the forfeited battleships, and contributing to the Entente’s acceptance that the sale of the cruisers did not infringe Turkish neutrality. On 20 August Kitchener persuaded the cabinet to reject Venizelos’s offer of a Greek alliance for fear that further inflammation of Turkish sentiment would threaten Egypt. Just over a month later, a date by which the Foreign Office in London—if not Mallet, the ambassador—was convinced that Turkey would soon side with the Central Powers, Britain even offered to return the two battleships: the offer was not taken up.42
The explanation for the confusion in British policy is largely personal. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty and therefore primarily responsible for the appropriation of the battleships, had been much impressed in 1911 both with the Young Turk leadership and with Turkey’s ability to cause mayhem as Germany’s proxy in southern and central Asia.43 His attitude, compounded by frustration at the escape of the Goeben and the Breslau, and then by his reading of intercepted signals traffic between Germany and Turkey, was correspondingly firmer. By the beginning of September he was initiating plans for storming the straits; on 27 August and again on 8 September he told Troubridge ‘to sink the Goeben and Breslau, under whatever flag, if they come out of the Dardanelles’;44 and on 25 September he authorized Vice-Admiral S. H. Carden, who had succeeded Troubridge, to attack any Turkish vessel. On 2 October, the Turks having closed the straits to foreign shipping on 26 September, the British blockade of Turkey began.
Limpus, the head of Britain’s naval mission in Constantinople, sent reports to the Admiralty emphasizing Germany’s increasing hold on Turkey; Mallet, writing from the same city to the Foreign Office, stressed the strength of Turkish neutralism. The ambassador was absent from the capital at the beginning of August, and his appreciation of what followed was correspondingly weakene
d. It was he who argued that the presence of the Goeben and Breslau was in British interests, since they protected the straits against Russia;45 and it was he who, at the end of September, advised British ships to back off from the Dardanelles rather than risk a clash with the Turks. But in October even Mallet began to accept that war looked probable. His aim now was to prolong Turkish neutrality for as long as possible.
Such conduct was unsustainable. By the beginning of October British policy towards Turkey was no more genuinely neutral than was Turkey’s own. Grey’s diplomacy from August onwards concentrated on the formation of a Balkan confederation, under Venizelos’s leadership, with Turkey as its implicit foe.46 But the immediate pressure was imperial, not European. The proximity of Arabia and Mesopotamia to India, their position on the route to the subcontinent, and the fear that the collapse of Turkish power in the southern half of the Ottoman empire could destabilize British imperial authority prompted forward action, albeit for conservative reasons. The preservation of the status quo in the Gulf would be undermined if Arab rebellions were successful and Britain had become too closely associated with Ottoman rule. Hardinge, the viceroy of India, feared that if, as a result, Persia extended into southern Mespotamia, Russia would not be far behind. On 25 September Sir Edward Barrow, the military secretary at the India Office, suggested that the 6th Poona division should be dispatched to Shatt-el-Arab, at the head of the Persian Gulf. Ostensibly its task would be to defend the Admiralty’s oil supplies; in reality it was to signal support to the Arabs, to block the spread of a holy war to the east, and to ‘steady’ Turkey.47 On 24 September Kitchener, reflecting parallel concerns to those of India but from an Egyptian perspective, instructed that secret negotiations should be opened with the Hejaz Arabs. Hardinge reported himself confident that the Muslim population of the subcontinent would remain loyal in the event of a holy war. But he remained anxious not to provoke Turkey without call. In deference to these concerns, the 6th Poona division, or Indian Expeditionary Force D as it became on 16 October, was diverted from the oilfields at Abadan and halted at Bahrain on 23 October.48
Such self-imposed restraint, major at a local level, was nonsensical against the broader background. Turkey’s declaration on 6 October that the Shatt-el-Arab constituted Turkish territorial waters forced Britain to a decision—either to abandon its Gulf interests or to reassert them. On the Egyptian frontier minor clashes occurred between the Turks and the British. Russian agitation amongst the Armenian population in Persian Azerbaijan threatened the stability of the Caucasus front. The Turks responded by appealing to the Kurds, and both sides involved troops in support of their propaganda by October.49 In fomenting Arab nationalism, in exploiting the aspirations of the Balkan powers, and in their primary alliance with Russia, the British were abetting Turkey’s partition as surely as they had already commenced hostilities, albeit of a low intensity.
Thus Britain, for all its apparent desire to restrict the war and to ensure Turkey’s continued neutrality, made, in the furtherance of that policy, not a single concession of any real significance to Turkey. The contradiction implicit in British policy since 1908, and even before, was forced into the open. Support for a liberalized, reformed Ottoman empire was incompatible with continued stability in the Middle East.50 In Constantinople Germany’s credit gained from the comparison.
The most significant convert to the German cause was Talaat. He had hoped that the Entente powers would offer terms sufficiently attractive to enable him to isolate Enver and his policies. But their collective failure to end the capitulations, and Britain’s and France’s inability to provide Turkey with any long-term guarantees against Russia, swung him round in favour of intervention. Talaat remained more cautious than Enver, in particular wanting Bulgaria as an active participant in any war with Russia. But the opponents of intervention, Said Halim and Djavid, were now losing influence. As minister of war, Enver had enhanced his domestic authority by mobilization and the imposition of martial law. As minister of finance, Djavid countered by offering the war minister only a quarter of what he deemed necessary to fund the army.51
Mobilization had deepened Turkey’s economic plight; so too had the outbreak of war in Europe. Business in Constantinople collapsed as shipping and insurance were unobtainable. Panic on the markets generated a run on the banks. On 3 August the Ottoman treasury had only £Turkish 92,000 in cash.52 On the following day a moratorium was declared. Foreign loans dried up. But the effects, although adverse, included an enforced economic independence. On 5 September Enver proposed that Turkey default on its repayments to the Ottoman public debt and to the Banque Perrier. Djavid was outraged. Instead, on 8 September Turkey abrogated the capitulations and on 1 October, as evidence of its freedom from great-power control, raised customs duties by 4 per cent and closed foreign post offices. This was one decision in which the whole cabinet, not just a Young Turk clique, was involved. The assertion of national sovereignty unleashed a wave of popular enthusiasm, both spontaneous and orchestrated. Flags appeared on shops and houses, a national festival was announced, and the rhetoric of Turkism declaimed.53
Germany was as uncomfortable about Turkey’s economic policy as were the other powers. But, since the capitulations were only enforceable through great-power collaboration, Germany and Austria-Hungary made no economic sacrifice when they prudently supported the Ottoman decision. Moreover, with trade at a virtual standstill the abrogation of the capitulations was of political rather than financial significance. Turkey’s need for cash was not thereby averted. Britain’s blockade made further temporizing hard to sustain. Turkey had to choose between demobilization or bankruptcy, but the former was as incompatible with robust neutrality as it was with active belligerence. On 30 September Enver asked the Germans for a loan of £T 5 million in gold. Bethmann Hollweg and Zimmerman wanted to make the loan conditional on Turkey’s entry into the war. Both sides had strong hands to play. The Turks needed the money whatever their foreign policy; the Germans knew that the Turks could not fight without their financial aid, given the Entente’s effective control of the Imperial Ottoman Bank. Wangenheim was still uncertain of the wisdom of securing as an ally a power ostensibly prostrated by wars in Libya and the Balkans. The foreign ministry, therefore, extracted Richard von Kühlmann from its Stockholm embassy and sent him to Constantinople, his birthplace, specifically to get Turkey into the war.54 At a meeting at the German embassy on 11 October Enver, Talaat, Djemal, and Halil agreed that they would authorize Admiral Souchon to attack the Russians in the Black Sea when the Germans had deposited a first instalment of £T 2 million in Constantinople. The balance would follow when Turkey was in the war.55 Germany’s stake in Ottoman public finance thus began to grow at the Entente’s expense. At the same time the hesitations of those Turks convinced of Entente economic and maritime superiority, especially Djemal, began to be undermined.
The idea that a foray by the Goeben and the Breslau into the Black Sea would mark the initiation of Turkish belligerence is the clearest indication of the significance of the two cruisers’ escape for the development of the war. By the end of October the defence of Constantinople and the straits, the pivot of Turkey’s communications, its naval base, and its economic and administrative centre, had been secured. Germany had sent both sailors and mines to upgrade the Dardanelles’ defences. A defensive agreement with Bulgaria, settled on 18 August, although it had not included any alliance for offensive purposes in the Balkans and had done nothing, therefore, to alleviate the military position of Austria-Hungary, had reassured the Turks with regard to the landward approaches to the straits on the European side. But, three months after mobilization had begun the Turkish army was still not fit for offensive operations. Hafiz Hakki Bey, the deputy chief of staff, said that another six months were required, and argued that with winter approaching war was now impossible; on 4 October Enver even ordered token steps towards demobilization.56 The fleet was no readier. Souchon was convinced that the British naval mission had deliberatel
y undermined the fitness of the Turkish navy57—although the experience of the Germans with the army would suggest that the fault lay with the Turks themselves. The German cruisers therefore provided the most battleworthy means by which hostilities could be precipitated.
The frustrations of the German officers, stranded in Turkey while their colleagues fought in Europe, had mounted with their inactivity. Liman, isolated from Turko-German negotiations, had requested his return to Germany, albeit without success. Souchon similarly chafed at the incarceration of his cruisers. An early plan that he should be reinforced by the Austro-Hungarian fleet from Pola had come to nought on technical grounds. Berchtold’s and Conrad’s enthusiasm for a naval presence to help persuade Romania and Bulgaria into support for the Central Powers was countered by the lack of appropriate bases and fuel problems.58 On 14 September Enver secretly authorized Souchon to enter the Black Sea, but on the 19th the government realized what was afoot. Souchon protested at this denial of his duties as a German officer, in other words, to engage the enemy. So on 24 September he became a Turkish officer with instructions not to undertake warlike acts without Turkish orders. Thus, when Souchon finally was allowed into the Black Sea the responsibility for what he did lay with Turkey and not Germany. Cruises of limited range by isolated vessels of the Turkish fleet were conducted without incident, largely because the Russians stayed in harbour in their anxiety to avoid provocation. But on 25 October Enver gave Souchon specific instructions to ‘gain command of the Black Sea’, and to seek out and attack the Russian fleet. The support of the Turkish cabinet for war was still far from certain, and what Enver had in mind may have been a manufactured incident on the high seas.59 Souchon’s own orders went further. On 29 October the Turkish fleet raided Sevastopol and Odessa, and bombarded Theodosia and Novorossisk. The damage inflicted on either side was minimal; certainly the opportunity to inflict a pre-emptive and disabling blow on the Russian Black Sea fleet had gone begging. But the political purport of the act was unequivocal.