the beginnings of ottoman-german partnership - Bilkent University

hundred square miles of European territories (Albania, Macedonia and Eastern
Rumelia) were lost. İstanbul was filled with refugees who brought epidemics with
them. The Ottoman Empire lost whatever prestige it still had in European public
opinion, and the Ottoman people fell into real despair.
For the Ottoman public, however, despite the losses of population and
territory and the devastation inflicted on the army and the Ottoman public overall,
“the recapture of Edirne stimulated a mass Ottoman exaltation so intense that the
CUP’s right to rule unopposed was accepted and confirmed without further
discussion or opposition”. 125 The fact that the CUP had been able to abandon the
Treaty of London and retake Edirne solidified its hold on to government, which
enabled it to start new efforts at reform as well as to support the new German
military mission.
After several months of negotiations, the agreement for the new German
military mission was concluded on November 9, 1913. The German government
appointed Von Sanders as the head of a commission of forty-two officers, which was
given substantial duties and responsibilities to reorganize and modernize the
Ottoman army. 126
The government was later criticized for the agreement, which equipped the
new mission with vast authority in the Ottoman army. However, given the diplomatic
situation, the Ottoman government desperately needed German support in order to
save the Empire from further losses, particularly since Britain was supporting the
Russian efforts to introduce reforms into Eastern Anatolia which it was planning to
use to secure an autonomous Armenia under its control, thus inflicting substantial
125 Shaw, p. 298.
126 For the conditions of the agreement and the scheme of the mission see Appendix, Cemal Akbay,
Birinci Dünya Harbi’nde Türk Harbi, I. Cilt: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun Siyasi ve Askeri
Hazırlıkları ve Harbe Girişi, (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1970), pp. 272-278.
59