The CUP pushed the Ottomans into the war with the expectation that "jihad" would spell the collapse of the colonial empires of the Entente, and that the Muslim Turkic peoples of Central Asia would assist the Ottomans with an invasion of the Caucasus and Central Asia. For the most part "jihad" did not create significant uprisings against the Allied powers. In fact, World War I began badly for the Ottomans. British troops seized Basra and began to advance up the Tigris river, Cemal Pasha's invasion of British Egypt failed, and Enver Pasha's Third Army was annihilated by the Russians in the Battle of Sarikamish. These defeats greatly depressed the committee and ended their pan-Turanist dreams. However, Allied attempts to force the Bosphorus in a naval breakthrough failed on 18 March, improving the confidence of the Unionists. The March 18 started the machinations for plans of a purge of Armenians from Ottoman politics and the economy and ethnic engineering in eastern Anatolia that would be executed in April. The goal of these plans was to realize "Türk Yurdu": the Turkification of Anatolia and transforming the Ottoman Empire into a homogeneous Turkish nation state.