Global InformationMiddle Eastern theatre of World War I information
| Middle Eastern threat of World War I | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of World War I | |||||||||
 From left to right: The Ottoman Shaykh al-Islām who declared Jihad against the Allied Powers; Burning oil tanks in the port of Novorossiysk after the Ottoman Empire's strike on Russian ports; Fifth Army during the Gallipoli Campaign; Third Army on the Caucasus campaign; The heliograph team of the Ottoman army in the Sinai and Palestine campaign; Ottoman soldiers during the Siege of Kut in Baghdad vilayet. | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
Allied Powers: United Kingdom and its territories:
 Russia[a]
 France
 Italy (from 1915) Hejaz (from 1916) Armenia (from 1918) |
Central Powers: Ottoman Empire Germany Austria-Hungary[1][2] Jabal Shammar Azerbaijan (from 1918) Georgia (from 1918) | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Julian Byng Archibald Murray Edmund Allenby Ian Hamilton John Nixon Percy Lake Stanley Maude † Lionel Dunsterville T. E. Lawrence I. Vorontsov-Dashkov Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolai Yudenich Nikolai Baratov Henri Gouraud (WIA) Maurice Bailloud Hovhannes Hakhverdyan Tovmas Nazarbekian Andranik Ozanian Hussein bin Ali Faisal bin Hussein |
Enver Pasha Mustafa Kemal Pasha Djemal Pasha Cevat Pasha Wehib Pasha Nuri Pasha Ahmed Izzet Pasha Fevzi Pasha Abdul Kerim Pasha Halil Pasha Nureddin Pasha Mehmet Esat Pasha Fakhri Pasha F. B. von Schellendorf Otto Liman von Sanders Colmar von der Goltz † Erich von Falkenhayn F. K. von Kressenstein Saud bin Abdulaziz Fatali Khan Khoyski Noe Zhordania | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
2,550,000[3] 1,000,000[4] Several 100,000's[4] Several 100,000's[4] 70,000[3] 30,000 (1916)[5] 50,000+ (1918)[6] Total: 4,000,000+ |
3,059,205[7] 800,000 (peak)[7][8] 323,000 (during Armistice)[9] 6,500 (1916)20,000 (1918)[7] ~6,000 (1918)[10] 9,000 (1918)[11]Total: 3,100,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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United Kingdom 105,000 dead 204,000 wounded 16,800 captured 700,000 non-combat/sick Russia34,000 dead 50,000 wounded 15,700 captured France 9,000 dead 18,000 wounded 20,000 evacuated sick Italy5,600 killed
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2,000,000 Persian civilians dead from famine exacerbated by Russian, British, and Ottoman occupation Total dead: 7,000,000+ | |||||||||
The Middle Eastern theatre of World War I saw action between 30 October 1914 and 30 October 1918. The combatants were, on one side, the Ottoman Empire (including the majority of Kurdish tribes, a relative majority of Arabs, and some Iranian peoples), with some assistance from the other Central Powers; and on the other side, the British (with the help of a small number of Jews, Greeks, Assyrians, some Kurdish tribes and Arab states, along with Hindu, Sikh and Muslim colonial troops from India) as well as troops from the British Dominions of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the Russians (with the help of Armenians, Assyrians, and occasionally some Kurdish tribes), and the French (with its North African and West African Muslim, Christian and other colonial troops) from among the Allied Powers. There were five main campaigns: the Sinai and Palestine, Mesopotamian, Caucasus, Persian, and Gallipoli campaigns.
Both sides used local asymmetrical forces in the region. On the Allied side were Arabs who participated in the Arab Revolt and the Armenian militia who participated in the Armenian resistance during the Armenian genocide; along with Armenian volunteer units, the Armenian militia formed the Armenian Corps of the First Republic of Armenia in 1918. In addition, the Assyrians joined the Allies and saw action in Southeastern Turkey, northern Mesopotamia (Iraq), northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria following the Assyrian genocide, instigating the Assyrian war of independence.[14] The theatre covered the largest territory of all theatres in the war.
Russian participation in the theatre ended as a result of the Armistice of Erzincan (5 December 1917), after which the revolutionary Russian government withdrew from the war under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918). The Armenians attended the Trebizond Peace Conference (14 March 1918) which resulted in the Treaty of Batum on 4 June 1918. The Ottomans accepted the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies on 30 October 1918, and signed the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920 and later the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
- ^ Austro-Hungarian Army in the Ottoman Empire 1914–1918 Archived 18 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Jung, Peter (2003). Austro-Hungarian Forces in World War I. Oxford: Osprey. p. 47. ISBN 1841765945.
- ^ a b Fleet, Kate; Faroqhi, Suraiya; Kasaba, Reşat (2006). The Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World. Cambridge University Press. p. 94. ISBN 0521620961.
- ^ a b c Erickson, Edward J. (2007). Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: a comparative study. Taylor & Francis. p. 154. ISBN 978-0-415-77099-6.
- ^ Murphy, p. 26.
- ^ Mehmet Bahadir Dördüncü, Mecca-Medina: the Yıldız albums of Sultan Abdülhamid II, Tughra Books, 2006, ISBN 1-59784-054-8, p. 29. Number refers only to those laying siege to Medina by the time it surrendered and does not account for Arab insurgents elsewhere.
- ^ a b c Broadberry, S. N.; Harrison, Mark (2005). The Economics Of World War I. Cambridge University Press. p. 117. ISBN 0521852129.
- ^ Gerd Krumeich: Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg, UTB, 2008, ISBN 3825283968, p. 761 (in German).
- ^ A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, M. Sükrü Hanioglu, page 181, 2010
- ^ "MK/QİO ilə işğalçı qoşunların say tərkibi, silah və hərbi texnikasına BAXIŞ (FOTOLAR) - I Yazı".
- ^ Kostiner, Joseph (1993). The Making of Saudi Arabia, 1916–1936: From Chieftaincy to Monarchical State. Oxford University Press. p. 28. ISBN 0195360702.
- ^ Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Edward J. Erickson. p. 211.
- ^ Erickson, Edward J. 2001. p. 211
- ^ Naayem, Shall This Nation Die?, p. 281
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