Editing The World Wars (section)

====Ottoman Empire==== 
When the guns of August started blasting, the Ottoman Empire was in the final stages of collapse. A series of military defeats throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had led to the Tanzimat period of the 19th century, which had bought the empire some time thanks to extensive reforms that had taken place, but there was increasing unrest in the Balkans and elsewhere. Though the Turks suppressed several nationalist uprisings, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 forced them to grant independence to Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, while Austria-Hungary walked in and took Bosnia-Herzegovina and Britain gained ''de facto'' control of Cyprus and Egypt. The empire's last throw of the dice came with the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, a ''coup d'etat'' that attempted to reform the empire into a democratic state by restoring its constitution and establishing an electoral system. The Italo-Turkish War in 1911 cost the Empire its North African territories and the Dodecanese, while the First Balkan War the following year cost it almost all its territories in the Balkans. 

When the war broke out, the Ottomans officially declared neutrality at first, though they talked to both sides to see what they might get out of joining either one. They ultimately came down on the German side after being offered territorial concessions and a guarantee of defense against Russia, along with the Germans essentially forcing the issue by sending a battlecruiser and light cruiser through the Dardanelles strait to Constantinople. Turkey bought the ships and officially commissioned them into their navy, only for the Germans to run off and start bombarding Russia's Black Sea ports without formal authorization from the Turkish government, however it is acknowledged that Germanonphile members of the government likely gave unofficial approval.

Turkey's most well-known contribution to World War I was its defense of the Dardanelles, the strait which allows passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. They had closed the strait to all Allied shipping not long after entering the war. This inflicted a crippling blow to Russia's economy, which depended on grain exports from the Crimea and elsewhere on the Black Sea coast. The British made several attempts to capture the strait, which would let them put ships into the Black Sea, threaten Constantinople directly, and reopen Russia's lifeline. Several purely naval efforts to smash the forts and gun positions defending the strait failed, after which Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a landing at the Gallipoli peninsula. A protracted and bloody campaign ensued which saw Australian and New Zealander troops (the famed ANZACs) being fed into the grinder while the Turks more than held their own (no thanks to high command, big thanks to then Colonel Mustafa Kemal). The British ultimately conceded defeat and withdrew their troops, and the Dardanelles remained closed for the rest of the war. The campaign became an emotional flashpoint for Australia and New Zealand, who (not inaccurately) viewed it as a senseless sacrifice of their best young men by their colonial overlords, and was part of the reason they began pushing for greater autonomy and eventually independence after the war. The failure also got Churchill fired from the Admiralty, which most people at the time figured was the end of his career. Perhaps the biggest consequence of this was the shattering of the notion of colonial invincibility, which officially ignited the spark of anti-colonialism across the globe.

Another major front for the Ottomans was the Mesopotamian campaign, which saw them fighting the British in the Middle East. Though the empire did well for the first two years, the Arab Revolt of 1916-1917, led by T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and Faisal bin Al-Hussein, saw Arabic irregulars waging a guerrilla war against the Ottomans that tied down great numbers of troops and ultimately led to their defeat in the theater. Britain fucked up here as well; to secure Arabic support for the revolt, they had promised to back the creation of a unified Arab state, which they would recognize after the war. They promptly reneged on that deal once the war was over, instead signing the Sykes-Picot Agreement with France. The agreement haphazardly carved the Middle East into a bunch of mandate territories, all of whom had and still have beef with each other for various reasons. It is still the cause of widespread resentment in the region to this day.

After the war had really gotten rolling, the Ottomans also decided they might as well do some war crimes while they were at it and promptly committed genocides against the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians. [[/pol/|Turkey claimed at the time, and still insists today, that the Armenian genocide in particular was not a genocide, that the Armenians were resettled for totally legitimate military reasons, and that the Armenians were actually the ones doing the genociding, so they totally had it coming, etc etc]]. Bringing this up around anyone from Turkey is a ''really'' good way to start a fight; Turkey's founding myths rest on the notion that the genocide never happened, so the modern Turkish government is quick to banhammer any kind of pop culture that even mentions it. The average citizen either doesn't care or if educated sees any and all actions taken as desperate survival measures against colonization (not an unfair concern if one looks at Africa or India). The indisputable Turkish hero of the war and founder of the modern nation state, Mustafa Kemal, fighting at Gallipoli while the whole mess that was Anatolia at the time was taking place while Enver Pasha was in the lap of luxury pretending to be a soldier also makes sure that the modern republic is fiercely held as being wholly separate so even modernists won't agree with Western historians on this matter.