The Ottoman road to war in 1914
Subtitle: the Ottoman Empire and the First World War
By: Mustafa Aksakal.
Series: Cambridge military histories
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9780521880602
Subjects: Turkey -- History -- Mehmed V, 1909-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey; Tukey -- History, Military -- 20th century
Description: "Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War in late October 1914, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Were its leaders "simple minded," "below-average" individuals, as the doyen of Turkish diplomatic history has argued? Or, as others have claimed, did the Ottomans enter the war because War Minister Enver Pasha, dictating Ottoman decisions, was in thrall to the Germans and to his own expansionist dreams?

Based on previously untapped Ottoman and European sources, Mustafa Aksakal's study challenges this consensus. It demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond Enver, that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public, and that the Ottoman leadership sought the German alliance as the only way out of a web of international threats and domestic insecurities, opting for an escape whose catastrophic consequences for the empire and seismic impact on the Middle East are felt even today."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: pursuing sovereignty in the age of imperialism; title: The intellectual and emotional climate after the Balkan Wars; title: 1914 : war with Greece?; title: The Ottomans within the international order; title: The great war as great opportunity : the Ottoman July crisis; title: Tug of war : Penelope's game; title: Salvation through war?; title: Conclusion : the decision for war remembered.