On 19 February 1915 the guns of the
massed Anglo-French fleet off Cape Helles opened fire on targets on the
European and Asiatic shores of the Ottoman
Empire. The Dardanelles campaign had begun.
There is, however, little in-depth analysis
of the way in which the campaign came about.
Turkey’s pre-war alignment with Germany
culminated with the signatures of the German
Ambassador and Turkish Grand Vizier on the
formal Treaty of Alliance on the afternoon
of Sunday, 2 August 1914, but for months the
treaty remained no more than a scrap of
paper. The Turks mobilized only as fast as
their moribund economy allowed while at the
same time continuing to give the outward
appearance of an anxious, if hardly
disinterested, neutral.
The menacing days of August passed; the
Turks prevaricated, neither in the War nor
immune from it. Unable to contain himself
any longer, the First Lord of the Admiralty,
Winston Churchill, actively sought Greek
co-operation for a planned major offensive
against the Turks at the Dardanelles. His
plea for assistance reached the British
Officer at the head of the Greek Navy,
Rear-Admiral Mark Kerr, who set impossible
conditions which he knew would result in the
proposal being rejected in London. With his
plans having thus gone awry, Churchill
turned his gaze away from the plain of Troy
— temporarily.
By October, 1914 the patience of the Germans
had also snapped. With the connivance of the
Turkish Minister of War, but against the
wishes of the majority of the Turkish
Cabinet, the German Admiral at the head of
the Turkish Navy single-handedly forced the
issue. At the helm of the magnificent battle
cruiser Goeben, which had escaped from the
pursuing British Squadron in the first days
of the war and had sought refuge at
Constantinople, Admiral Souchon steamed into
the Black Sea and deliberately shelled
Russian ships, ports and shore
installations. The Turks, reluctant to the
last, were finally propelled into the war.
Yet, would this outcome have eventuated
without the presence of Souchon and Goeben?
The Turkish fleet by itself was too weak to
risk a sortie in the Black Sea. Without
Goeben could the issue have been forced? Now
that the Turks had become involuntarily
embroiled in the War, Churchill’s eyes once
more turned eastward.
STRAITS takes the opening bombardment at the
Dardanelles not as the starting point but as
its culmination in an endeavour to explain
how it was that Turkey was aligned with
Germany — a ruinous alliance which was by no
means preordained. British diplomatic policy
towards the Ottoman Empire failed
comprehensively when the result could have
been so different. Why, for example, was
every Turkish appeal for an alliance with
Britain rebuffed? The Young Turk revolution
of 1908 presented the British Foreign Office
with a quandary — to support the new régime,
which had successfully restored the
constitution, or continue to remain aloof,
as had been the policy during the reign of
Abdul the Damned. Support was grudgingly
provided but the improved British position
at the Sublime Porte was jeopardized by two
events: the new Ambassador, who was deeply
antagonistic to the new régime, and the
Anglo-Russian convention which meant that
the British Foreign Secretary had to try
somehow to support the Turks without
alienating the Russians.
The common thread running through the book
is the struggle to control the Straits of
the Dardanelles and Bosphorus from the
period when the British Squadron at Malta
commanded the Mediterranean Sea unopposed at
the turn of the century through to the
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire first
as a result of the Turco-Italian and Balkan
Wars and then following Turkey’s forced, and
ultimately disastrous, entry into World War
I. This struggle encompassed Russian
aspirations, Greek ambition, French colonial
ardour and British Imperial and oil
considerations — all underpinned by the
constant desire of the Turks themselves to
prevent the collapse of their Empire.
British diplomatic policy towards the
Ottoman Empire failed comprehensively when
the result could have been so different. |