the beginnings of ottoman-german partnership - Bilkent University

accepted by Berlin”. He argues that this proposal, learnt by the English, might have
made England to requisition the ships. 208
The telegrams by Von Jagow to the German ambassador to Sofia, dated
August 4 and 5 revealed that an Ottoman attempt to secure an alliance with Bulgaria
was initiated by Germany. 209 After lengthy negotiations by Talat Paşa and Halil Bey
with the Bulgarians from the sixth to nineteenth of August, a secret mutual defense
pact was signed. Bulgaria, however, did not agree to collaborate with the Ottomans in
war since Rumania had not yet officially declared its neutrality. The resulting
Ottoman-Bulgarian treaty was thus no more than a non-aggression pact in which both
parties agreed not to attack any other Balkan state without consulting each other, and
to avoid confrontation with Rumania. 210
In the meantime, after an adventurous escape from the British fleet, on
August 10 Goeben and Breslau passed through the Dardanelles as a result of an order
issued by Enver Paşa, though the Grand Vizier opposed the passage due to
uncertainty about Bulgarian and Rumanian involvement in the war. 211 On the issue of
arrival of the ships, Gottlieb argued that without the cruisers the Ottomans would
have delayed their entry into the war for some time, which might well have caused
Russia to go ahead and occupy the Straits. “But just the expected downfall prompted
London and Paris to seek a means of preventing Petrograd from achieving her aims.”
He concluded that that was why Britain allowed the German ships to reach İstanbul,
208 Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire: 1914-1918, pp. 23-24 “On the same day that Said
Halim told Wangenheim he feared British would seize the Sultan Osman, the British did in fact seize
both it and the Reshadiye without any Ottoman provocation. However in fact there was provocation,
for on 1 August 1914, Enver and Talat had offered to send the Sultan Osman to a German North Sea
port, and Germans had accepted the offer.”
209 Jackh, p. 23.
210 Erickson, p. 31, Trumpener, ‘Liman von Sanders and the German-Ottoman Alliance’, p. 185.
211 See Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire: 1914-1918, pp. 25-37 for the details.
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