For long the 'sick man of Europe' , Turkey had been powerless to prevent the piecemeal dismantling of her European possessions in the years before 1914. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was one reaction to her decline; another was the growth of German influence, exemplified by the army reorganisation carried out by General Liman von Sanders. Yet, despite these remedies, Turkey's entry into the war in 1914 seems little more than a desperate throw by a small group of energetic and ambitious men to recoup her losses. She was handicapped by her poverty, technical backwardness and the inefficiency of her system of communications which placed her outlying provinces, Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia, in extreme jeopardy. Yet by the summer of 1914 German influence in Turkish affairs was irresistible, and Turkey's entry on the side of the Central Powers seemed inevitable.

This article is located in the History of the First World War Volume 1 (REF D522 .H58 1969 V.1).