page_title: Ottoman entry into World War I
section_title: Military preparedness
hierarchical_section_title: Ottoman entry into World War I / Military preparedness
caption_attribution_description: English: Ottoman Empire Declaration of War during WWI Français&#160;: Le 1er novembre 1914, pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, les autorités turques (Empire ottoman) déclarent officiellement la guerre à la Triple-Entente (France, Royaume-Uni et Russie). (La date de déclaration provient de Pierre Miquel, La Grande Guerre, Fayard, 1983, p.284.) Türkçe: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Şeyhülislamı İtilaf Devletleri'ne karşı cihat ilan ediyor. Kasım, 1914.
context_page_description: The Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I began when two recently purchased ships of its navy, still manned by their German crews and commanded by their German admiral, carried out the Black Sea Raid, a surprise attack against Russian ports, on 29 October 1914. Russia replied by declaring war on 1 November 1914 and Russia's allies, Britain and France, then declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 5 November 1914. The reasons for the Ottoman action were not immediately clear. The Ottoman government had declared neutrality in the recently started war, and negotiations with both sides were underway.
  This decision would ultimately lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ottomans, the Armenian Genocide, the dissolution of the empire, and the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate.
context_section_description: A new military conscription law had been prepared after the Young Turk Revolution by the Ministry of War in October 1908 (see Conscription in the Ottoman Empire). According to the draft law, all subjects between the ages of 20 and 45 were to fulfill mandatory military service.
  On 13 November 1914 at a ceremony in the Sultan Mehmed V's presence and with the relics of the Prophet, 'holy war' was proclaimed. Five juridical opinions legitimised the call, for the first time called for all Muslims—particularly those in territories ruled by the colonial powers of Britain, France and Russia—to rise against the infidel. There was some enthusiasm for this appeal to the Muslim community at large among Arab clerics, but the Sharif of Mecca's support was critical, and Sharif Husayn, refused to associate himself by stating that it may provoke a blockade, and possibly bombardment, of the ports of the Hijaz by the British (which controlled the Red Sea and Egypt). The reaction from the wider Islamic world was muted. In Egypt and India, for instance, juridical opinions asserted that it was obligatory to obey the British.
  The main burden of providing combat manpower fell on the Turkish peasantry of Anatolia, which accounted for some 40 per cent of total Ottoman population at the outset of the war.
caption: The Şeyhülislam declaring a Holy War against the Entente Powers
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