Abstract
The demographic and economic core areas of the late Ottoman Empire were its Turkey-in-Europe provinces in the Balkans and the provinces of the Anatolian heartland, both of which were strategically essential for the continued preservation of the Ottoman state. Unfortunately, after the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–78, in the core areas the Ottoman military faced renewed conventional threats from external enemies as well as new unconventional threats from the internal Macedonian and Armenians revolutionary committees. In response to these threats, the retention of core areas became a strategic imperative that drove the reorganization and redeployment of the Ottoman Army into a military posture with which it could handle the situation. As a result, in the period from 1878 through the First Balkan War of 1912, the Ottoman army evolved a variety of effective counterinsurgency practices in order to deal with the new operational and tactical problems created by the emergence of the revolutionary committees. However, this institutional focus on counterinsurgency came at a price and led to the creation of a generation of Ottoman officers who were highly specialized in low-intensity conflict at the expense of professional skills in conventional war.
The immediate aim of the revolutionists has been to incite disorder, bring about inhuman reprisals, and so provoke the intervention of the Powers in the name of humanity.
—Sir Phillip Currie, British Embassy, Constantinople, March 28, 18941
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Notes
Sir Phillip Currie to the Earl of Kimberley, Constantinople, March 28, 1894, Inclosure 226, FO 424/178,, Pp 1, No. 64, reproduced in Bilâl N. Șimşir, British Documents on the Armenians, Volume III (1891–1895) (Ankara: The Turkish Historical Society, 1989), 332.
Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, From Osman to Atatürk (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009), 213.
Naci Çakın and Nafız Orhon, Türk SilahlıKuvvetleri Tarihi, IIIncüCilt 5nci Kısım (1793–1908) (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1978), Map 8.
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World, Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 10–11.
Stanford J. and Ezel K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Volume II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 156. See also Table 3.5, “Changes in Ottoman Departmental Budgets between 1880 and 1907,” on p. 225, which show that the army budget increased from 547 million kuruşin 1880 to 898 million kuruşin 1907.
Edward J. Erickson, Defeat in Detail, the Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 15–33.
Selahattin Karatamu, Türk SilahlıKuvvetleri Tarihi, IIIncüCilt 6nci Kısım (1908–1920) (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1971), 147–75.
Şadi Sükan, Türk SilahlıKuvvetleri Tarihi, OsmanlıDevri, Balkan Harbi (1912–1913), II Cilt 3ncüKısım Edirne Kalesi Etrafındaki Muharebeler (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1993), 2–3. By 1912, e.g., the Edirne fortress contained 247 permanent artillery pieces fixed in 18 forts and 11 artillery battalion positions (see Erickson, Defeat in Detail, 140–43 for details about the Edirne fortress).
See Jonathan Grant, “The Sword of the Sultan: Ottoman Arms Imports, 1854–1914,” in The Journal of Military History (January 2002), 66: 1, 9–36, for an excellent summation of the Ottoman budget during these years and the decisions to purchase German weapons.
Reşat Kasaba (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, Volume 4, Turkey in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 57, 84–86, and 92–93.
Justin McCarthy, Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Taşkıran, and Ömer Turan, The Armenian Rebellion at Van (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2006), 44.
H. Erdogan Cengiz (ed.), Enver, Enver Paşa’nın Anıları (Constantinople: İletişim Yayınları, 1991), 48–51.
Pertev Demirhan, Generalfeldmarschall Colmar von der Goltz: Das Lebensbild eines grossen Soldaten (Göttingen, 1960), 74–77.
See also Feroz Yasamee, “Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz and the Boer War,” Keith Wilson (ed.), The International Impact of the Russo-Japanese War (London: 2001), 193–210.
Yavuz Abadan, Mustafa Kemal ve Ceteçilik (Constantinople: Varlık Yayınevi, 1972), 53–56;
Asim Gündüz, Hatıralarım (Constantinople: Kervan Yayınları 1973), 29–32; and Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, 221–22.
Mesut Uyar and A. Kadir Varoğlu, “In Search of Modernity and Rationality, The Evolution of Turkish Military Academy Curricula in a Historical Perspective,” Armed Forces & Society, vol. 35, no. 1 (October 2009), 185–89. See also Erickson, Defeat in Detail, 56–57, for a discussion of the war college curriculum.
Nadine Lange-Akhund, The Macedonian Question, 1893–1908 From Western Sources (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 124–25.
Duncan M. Perry, The Politics of Terror, The Macedonian Liberation Movements 1893–1903 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988), 140.
Bayram Kodaman, “The Hamidiye Light Cavalry Regiments: Abdülhamid II and the Eastern Anatolian Tribes,” M. Hakan Yavuz with Peter Slugglett (eds.), War and Diplomacy, The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011), 388.
Raymond H. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, A Complete History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011).
Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire, Kurdish Tribal Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 1–19.
Nurer Uğurlu (ed.), Resneli Niyazi, Hürriyet KahramanıResneli Niyazi Hatıratı (Constantinople: Örgün Yayınevi, 2003), 148–52.
Enver, Enver Paşa’nın Anıları, 52–57; Faruk Özerengin (ed.), Kazım Karabekir, Hayatım (Constantinople: Emre Yayınları, 1995), 379–83, 407–11, 468–75, and 503–18;
Rahmi Apak, Yetmişlik Bir Subayın Anıları (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1988), 16–23.
Military schools (especially the Military Academy) were the real cauldrons of dissidence and dissemination of ideologies and thoughts. See Halil Kut, Ittihat ve Terakki’den Cumhuriyete Bitmeyen Savas (Constantinople: 7 Gün Yayınları, 1971), 9–17; Karabekir, Hayatım, 247–349.
Enver, Enver Paşa’nın Anıları, 57–69 and 75–76; Niyazi, Hurriyet KahramanıResneli Niyazi Hatıratı, 162–63; Kudret Emiroğu (ed.), H Cemal, Arnavutluk’tan Sakarya’ya Komitacılık: YuzbasıCemal’in Anıları(Ankara: Kebikeç Yayınları, 1996), 9–13.
Enver, Enver Paşa’nın Anıları, 77 and 90–121; Bekir Fikri, Balkanlarda Tedhiş ve Gerilla: Grebene (Constantinople: Belge Yayınları, 1978), 17–28.
See also M. Şü krüHanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 217–30.
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© 2013 Edward J. Erickson
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Erickson, E.J. (2013). Counterinsurgency in the Empire’s Core. In: Ottomans and Armenians. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362216_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362216_3
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