page_title: First Balkan War
section_title: Ottoman Navy
hierarchical_section_title: First Balkan War / Order of battle and plans / Ottoman Empire / Ottoman Navy
caption_attribution_description: English: The Ottoman battleship Barbaros Hayreddin. Türkçe: Barbaros Hayreddin Zırhlısı.
context_page_description: The First Balkan War lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and involved actions of the Balkan League against the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan states' combined armies overcame the initially numerically inferior and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies and achieved rapid success.
  The war was a comprehensive and unmitigated disaster for the Ottomans, who lost 83% of their European territories and 69% of their European population. As a result of the war, the League captured and partitioned almost all of the Ottoman Empire's remaining territories in Europe. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albania, which angered the Serbs. However, Bulgaria was dissatisfied over the division of the spoils in Macedonia, which provoked the start of the Second Balkan War.
context_section_description: The Ottoman fleet had performed abysmally in the 1897 Greco-Turkish War, forcing the Ottoman government to begin a drastic overhaul. Older ships were retired and newer ones acquired, chiefly from France and Germany. In addition, in 1908, the Ottomans called in a British naval mission to update their training and doctrine. In the event, the British mission, headed by Admiral Sir Douglas Gamble, would find its task almost impossible. To a large extent, the political upheaval in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution prevented it. Between 1908 and 1911, the office of Navy Minister changed hands nine times. Interdepartmental infighting and the entrenched interests of the bloated and averaged officer corps, many of whom occupied their positions as a quasi-sinecure, further obstructed drastic reform. In addition, British attempts to control the navy's construction programme were met with suspicion by the Ottoman ministers, and funds for Gamble's ambitious plans for new ships were unavailable.
  To counter the Greek acquisition of the Georgios Averof, the Ottomans initially tried to buy the new German armoured cruiser SMS Blücher or the battlecruiser SMS Moltke. Not able to afford the ships' high cost, the Ottomans acquired two old Brandenburg-class pre-dreadnought battleships, which became Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis. Along with the cruisers Hamidiye and Mecidiye, both ships were to form the relatively modern core of the Ottoman battlefleet. By the summer of 1912, however, they were already in poor condition because of chronic neglect: the rangefinders and ammunition hoists had been removed, the telephones were not working, the pumps were corroded and most of the watertight doors could no longer be closed.
caption: Ottoman flagship Barbaros Hayreddin (photo) and her sister Turgut Reis were more heavily armed and armoured than Georgios Averof, but five knots slower.
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