Title: The Ottoman road to war in 1914
First published: 2008
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.
Subjects: History, History, Military, Military History, Tukey, Turkey, World War, 1914-1918, Turkey, history, ottoman empire, 1288-1918, World war, 1914-1918, turkey
Places: Turkey
Time periods: 20th century, Mehmed V, 1909-1918
LC classification: DR588 .A39 2008