The Ottoman Road to War in 1914

The Ottoman Empire and the First World War

Mustafa Aksakal author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:11th Dec '08

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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The Ottoman Road to War in 1914 cover

Revisionist account of the Ottoman Empire's fateful decision to enter the First World War in 1914.

Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Mustafa Aksakal's dramatic study demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond the war minister, Enver Pasha, and that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public.Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War in late October 1914, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Were its leaders 'simple-minded,' 'below-average' individuals, as the doyen of Turkish diplomatic history has argued? Or, as others have claimed, did the Ottomans enter the war because War Minister Enver Pasha, dictating Ottoman decisions, was in thrall to the Germans and to his own expansionist dreams? Based on previously untapped Ottoman and European sources, Mustafa Aksakal's dramatic study challenges this consensus. It demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond Enver, that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public, and that the Ottoman leadership sought the German alliance as the only way out of a web of international threats and domestic insecurities, opting for an escape whose catastrophic consequences for the empire and seismic impact on the Middle East are felt even today.

Review of the hardback: 'Overall, this work is an impressive and very valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between Germany and the Ottoman Empire, as well as their respective foreign policies, on the eve of the First World War.' H-Net
Review of the hardback: 'What Aksakal offers is a meticulous analysis of the factors that induced the political leaders of the Ottoman Empire to enter the war on the German side in October 1914.' Erik-Jan Zürcher, Diplomacy and Statecraft
Review of the hardback: 'In this new study, Mustafa Aksakal demonstrates with authority that the general apprehension of dissolution and partition that drove Ottoman officials in 1914 derived from the disastrous Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 … and was based on a plethora of very real threats and secret negotiations leading up to the Ottoman signing of the alliance with Germany on August 2, 1914.' Virginia Aksan, Insight Turkey

ISBN: 9780521880602

Dimensions: 235mm x 160mm x 16mm

Weight: 510g

232 pages