Saint Alpha
01-11-2005, 02:07
The Ottoman Empire was slowly yet surely collapsing, and this was very evidence in 1875 with the rebellion of Bosnia and Herzegonia which lead to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 which the Ottomans lost despite fighting viciously. This defeat nearly eliminated the Ottoman presence in the Balkans due that Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro were declared fully independant and Bosnia and Herzegonia went to Austria. Bulgaria was made an nearly independant principality.
It was also during this time that the Ottoman Empire went from absolute monarchy-to-constitutional monarchy having both a Constitution and a Parliament. This political instability gave rise the Young Turks movements and they began to grow in power more quickly then expected. Due to the restrictions Parliament placed on the Sultan, he quickly dismissed it and ruled without Parliament.
The Armenians, whom were dispised by Sultan Abd al-Hamid II were to be exterminated by the Sultan. However, word of this attempted genocide leaked out into the military who in turn leaked it to the Young Turks. In a surprising move, the Young Turks began to rally together the army to stop the Sultan from this disasterious move knowing it would cripple the respect of the Ottoman Empire in the eyes of the world. In a shocking move, the Young Turks used their influence in the military to get a loyal divison sent to Istanbul for the cities defense. When the Sultan finally gives the offical public order for a large amount of troops to be sent to Armenia--the Young Turks strike. In a quick, yet bloody coup the Sultan is killed and the Young Turks place Muhammad V on the throne. The Constitution which the former Sultan only recently suspended was fully installed and the Parliament reformed.
By 1900 the nation was experiancing a terrible political time as the Sultan was unable to raise taxes, control the military, or effectively administer areas outside of Turkey proper due to the nationalistic Parliament. The Constitutional Monarchy was struggling to hold together. The Young Turks, whom now had power, proved to not be as united as once thought as they began to splinter into Imperial and Nationalist factions. The Imperalists believed that Constitutional Monarchy should extend and think about the empire more than the provinces of Turkey, while the Nationalists believed only minor improvements were needed to the empire and most of the money should go into strengthening Turkey proper. This friction within the Young Turks bled over into the Parliament as it too began to form into fractions. This in turn led to the permitting of sporadic actions by the Sultan. One such being a disasterious economic plan in Iraq which led to a Sixty-Percent unemployment rate there and a crippled local economy, another being the fortification of the remaining Ottomans lands including Macedonia and other lands, draining the coffers of the empire's already low treasury.
Eventually the Young Turks completely broke apart with the Imperialist forming a new group known as the Wise Turks, while the nationalists retained the name of Young Turks. This causes a massive split in Parliament and further allowed the Sultan sporadic control. By 1903, threw strong arm tactics and influence the Young Turks has the Wise Turks on the ropes. The final major stronghold of the Wise Turks was their seats in Parliament and once the Young Turks forced them out threw rigged elections, the Wise Turks had but one man to turn to: Sultan Muhammad V. The Sultan at this point was still hesitant to support the declining Wise Turks, however when a large revolt occured in Iraq it forced the Sultan to accept the Wise Turks proposal. With that being done, the Wise Turks began a series of bombings and political propaganda which attempted to show how corrupt the Young Turks were. This propaganda had little power in Turkey proper, but gained heavy support in Iraq, Arabia, Palestine, and other areas of the Empire and these regions began to openly support the Wise Turks. The Young Turks by now knew the Sultan was against them, and made a move to completely eliminate the Sultan and replace him with a "President". An assassination attempt on the Sultan failed in 1904 and the Sultan had proof the Young Turks were behind it, this gave him a legimate reason to tempoarily disband the Young Turk controlled Parliament. With Parliament disbanded, the Young Turks began their own terror campaign against the Sultan and Wise Turks. The climax was at one of the Sultan's palaces in southwestern Turkey where Young Turks attempted to storm the palace and kill the Sultan, but where stopped by the palace guards.
After this incident the Young Turks fell into a rapid decline as the revoltution in Iraq got more dangerous after the Ottoman forces in the region were surronded and defeated. The Young Turks then began targeting disloyal Turkish civilians whom began to side with the Sultan and Wise Turks. This actions were the eventual downfall of the Young Turks as the secret headquarters on the northern coast of Turkey was raided and its leaders killed in the raid. With the Young Turks out of the way, the Wise Turks and Sultan began to rebuild a crippled Empire. This rebuilding first began by mobolizing the Army to put down the rebellion in Iraq. The Ottoman Army marched from southeastern Turkey into Iraq, and immiedately began to suffer. The Ottoman Army was undiciplined, untrained, and poorly equipt and went they engaged the Iraqi rebels they were defeated loosing three thousand men and being forced to route back into southeastern Turkey. This came a shock, and a large scale investigation was launched by top military officals. The primary reason for the defeat wasn't the soldier-by-soldier condition of the army, but the logistics. The logisitics were poor, and carvans hardly reached the main army and instead would get lost and eventually find themselves back in Turkey proper. This prompted for a massive reform in the logistics, increasing the logistics and attempting to increase the organization of it. This took two years to complete, and gave the Iraqi rebels valuble time to prepare defenses and even establish a formal government under Sultan Hakim and even declare formal independance--though due to the utter lack of telecommunications and isolationist policy the world never got word of Iraq's independance. The people of Iraq lived for a full year under Sultan Hakim before the Ottomans counter attacked. In 1907 the Ottoman Army, refit and determined, enter into Iraq and this time the logisitics were refit and proved to get more than enough supplies (in some cases a surplus was reported). The attack on Mosul inflicted heavy losses on the Iraqi rebels and forced their forces to Baghdad. The Ottoman Army assaulted Baghdad and only have a month of bitter street fighting did it manage to secure the city. Out of the fifteen-thousand man army sent into Iraq, only eight-thousand returned with most being killed in Baghdad.
It was clear the Ottoman Military needed reforms and badly. Yet the Empire turned a blind eye on them until 1909 as they rejoiced the end of the Iraqi rebellion and the restoration of order. In 1909, the Empire began looking to other foreign powers to copy their style of military. They found this in Britian. The Ottoman Military began to copy Britian's and quickly began to dicipline their soldiers. All Ottoman soldiers from Macedonia-to-Turkey Proper down to the Suez Canal were trained to peek effectivness, while those in Arabia were neglected. In 1911 the Italo-Ottoman War broke out when Italy declared war in September and attack Ottoman controlled Libya. The utter ineffectiveness of the Ottoman Navy was proven during this time as the Italians conquored Libya without major incident. This prompted the Ottomans to begin to focus on her Navy, thoug before any major reforms could begin the Balkan War broke out. Greece and Montenegro launched an offensive into Macedonia which was soon joined in by Bulgaria and Serbia. The Ottomans, however, during the rivalry between Young and Wise Turks had permitted the Sultan to poor gross amount of money into the foritication of Macedonia and Thrace.
The Ottomans held out, stopping the Bulgarians almost immiedately and effecitvely routing the Greeks. With only Serbia and Montegenro still in the war the Ottomans launched a massive counter-offensive. The offensive primarily focused on Bulgaria which was suppose to be apart of the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan declared Bulgaria a rebellious province and thus not worthy of autnomony. The Ottoman forces launched a massive offensive into Bulgaria first and quickly reached the capital of Sofia. Three days later on November 2, 1912 the Bulgarian government surrendered its right to full itself and the Ottoman Empire annexed the region. This two two things, it put Romania at the border of the Ottoman Empire and threatened another front in the war. Yet the Balkan Wars did not end, as the Ottomans launched another offensive into Albania and effectively crushed the independance movement there. When Ottoman forces began to rally at the Ottoman-Greek border, Romania stepped in and threatened war. Fearing loosing the war due to the inability to control Bulgaria and Albania while keeping Macedonia fortified against a Serbian and Montegenro and possibly Austrian assault while at the same time attempting to fight Romania and launch an offensive into Greece--the Sultan settled for peace. In the peace the Balkan States regonized Bulgaria as a province (not autonomous state) of the Ottoman Empire along with Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace. The Ottoman Empire's reforms and blunders had effecitvely saved itself from rapid decline.
With the Balkan War over and the Balkan League dissolved due to internal conflict the Ottoman Empire again focused on internal issues. In 1913, the Sultan began the Naval reforms he'd wanted and rapidly built the Ottoman Navy up and began to modernize it while basing its officer organization around that of Britians. The Ottoman Navy was prehaps one of the weakest in the Medetarrian, but it surely wanted not below that of Greece or Austria. While continueing naval build-up and reforms, the Sultan then began an new economic program bent on reforming the Empire's economy. These reforms led to a massive economic growth and a steady increase in trade as the Ottoman Empire stuck oil in Iraq and in 1919 Kuwait. This oil and the large amount of it quickly brought the empire into economic wealth as it began to sell this oil to poorer states and to European states a low costs. While the Ottoman Empire did not sell large amounts of oil, oil was one of its minor markets. The Sultan's reforms, however, focused around trade and induralization of the Ottomans' Balkan provinces. The Balkan provinces provided more natural resources while the Middle East provinces and the Ottoman Empire exploited these resources and heavily industralization the area.
During the 1920s the economic situtation continued to increase as the political instability of the empire was rapidly dissolving. The Wise Turks still had a large amount of influence but so long as the Sultan kept his attention on all the Empire, and did not needlessly focus on one part of it, they were happy. It was also during the 1920s that the Ottomans began to realize the new for air planes. Using their new found wealth (however small it may have been) began to aeroplane design and build-up. The air planes produced by the Ottoman Empire proved weak and very uncapable of survival in the deserts of the Ottoman Empire, despite this an air wing was constructed in the Balkans for protection there, while the Empire focused on Anti-Air weaponary in the Middle East.
During 1929 the Stock Market Crash proved to effect the Empire, though not as heavily as the European powers. The Ottoman Empire's Balkan provinces suffered the most with their industralization products seeing less demand, while trade remained basically the same for the Middle Eastern provinces, whom sold more primitive and inelastic products. By 1931 the Ottoman Empire was back up and running at full capacity. It was also in 1931 that the Ottoman Empire discovered how effective the tank would be in the Desert Empire when an Ottoman-citizen from Germany build a prototype tank out of similar tanks he'd seen in France and Germany and the Ottoman Military immiedately took the tank with open arms. During the 1930s the tank was redesigned and made to work better in desert warfare as new stratgies and logositic-doctrines were developed to include the tank and eventually the useage of mechanized infantry.
It was in 1938 that Ottoman intelligance picked up a critical bit of information. It learned that a secret alliance had been forme between Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Montegenro. An organized alliance not seen since the defunct Balkan League. This alliance aimed at pushing the Ottomans out of Bulgaria, Albania, and Macedonia. This gave the Ottoman Empire a chance to pre-emptively attack the Balkan States. The Ottoman tank divisons spearheaded the invasion into Greece as the first country the Ottoman Empire attacked. Startled and shocked Serbia and Montegenro quickly began to moblize, but only for defensive purposes. Romania, however believed they would be capable of fending off the Ottoman forces in Bulgaria and would be able to relieve the Greek enough so they could counter-attack. However just as the Romanian army began to mass at their border with the Ottoman Empire, the German Reich launched a massive assault on them from Eastern Hungary and quickly smashed the disoriented Romanian Army and annexed the land. This was both a blessing and a curse, it permitted the Ottomans to focus solely upon Greece and managed to defeat them with little losses, but at the same time it meant that Germany (who in 1938 proved they were major Imperalists) now had a border with the Ottoman Empire and immiedately Ottoman-German relations begin to sour. By 1939 Greece was formally annexed back into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, fearing a major border with Austro-Hungary and Germany signed a peace agreement with Serbia and Montegenro.
Now in 1945, the Ottoman Empire looks north where their enemies lay. The Germans whom seem to be bent on controlling Eastern Europe, the Austrians whom may be looking for expansion into the Balkans, and the Serbians and Montegernoians who seek vengence for their defeat to the Ottomans in both Balkan Wars. Yet the Ottoman Empire stands no more as the 'Sick Man of Europe', but as a very health man.
It was also during this time that the Ottoman Empire went from absolute monarchy-to-constitutional monarchy having both a Constitution and a Parliament. This political instability gave rise the Young Turks movements and they began to grow in power more quickly then expected. Due to the restrictions Parliament placed on the Sultan, he quickly dismissed it and ruled without Parliament.
The Armenians, whom were dispised by Sultan Abd al-Hamid II were to be exterminated by the Sultan. However, word of this attempted genocide leaked out into the military who in turn leaked it to the Young Turks. In a surprising move, the Young Turks began to rally together the army to stop the Sultan from this disasterious move knowing it would cripple the respect of the Ottoman Empire in the eyes of the world. In a shocking move, the Young Turks used their influence in the military to get a loyal divison sent to Istanbul for the cities defense. When the Sultan finally gives the offical public order for a large amount of troops to be sent to Armenia--the Young Turks strike. In a quick, yet bloody coup the Sultan is killed and the Young Turks place Muhammad V on the throne. The Constitution which the former Sultan only recently suspended was fully installed and the Parliament reformed.
By 1900 the nation was experiancing a terrible political time as the Sultan was unable to raise taxes, control the military, or effectively administer areas outside of Turkey proper due to the nationalistic Parliament. The Constitutional Monarchy was struggling to hold together. The Young Turks, whom now had power, proved to not be as united as once thought as they began to splinter into Imperial and Nationalist factions. The Imperalists believed that Constitutional Monarchy should extend and think about the empire more than the provinces of Turkey, while the Nationalists believed only minor improvements were needed to the empire and most of the money should go into strengthening Turkey proper. This friction within the Young Turks bled over into the Parliament as it too began to form into fractions. This in turn led to the permitting of sporadic actions by the Sultan. One such being a disasterious economic plan in Iraq which led to a Sixty-Percent unemployment rate there and a crippled local economy, another being the fortification of the remaining Ottomans lands including Macedonia and other lands, draining the coffers of the empire's already low treasury.
Eventually the Young Turks completely broke apart with the Imperialist forming a new group known as the Wise Turks, while the nationalists retained the name of Young Turks. This causes a massive split in Parliament and further allowed the Sultan sporadic control. By 1903, threw strong arm tactics and influence the Young Turks has the Wise Turks on the ropes. The final major stronghold of the Wise Turks was their seats in Parliament and once the Young Turks forced them out threw rigged elections, the Wise Turks had but one man to turn to: Sultan Muhammad V. The Sultan at this point was still hesitant to support the declining Wise Turks, however when a large revolt occured in Iraq it forced the Sultan to accept the Wise Turks proposal. With that being done, the Wise Turks began a series of bombings and political propaganda which attempted to show how corrupt the Young Turks were. This propaganda had little power in Turkey proper, but gained heavy support in Iraq, Arabia, Palestine, and other areas of the Empire and these regions began to openly support the Wise Turks. The Young Turks by now knew the Sultan was against them, and made a move to completely eliminate the Sultan and replace him with a "President". An assassination attempt on the Sultan failed in 1904 and the Sultan had proof the Young Turks were behind it, this gave him a legimate reason to tempoarily disband the Young Turk controlled Parliament. With Parliament disbanded, the Young Turks began their own terror campaign against the Sultan and Wise Turks. The climax was at one of the Sultan's palaces in southwestern Turkey where Young Turks attempted to storm the palace and kill the Sultan, but where stopped by the palace guards.
After this incident the Young Turks fell into a rapid decline as the revoltution in Iraq got more dangerous after the Ottoman forces in the region were surronded and defeated. The Young Turks then began targeting disloyal Turkish civilians whom began to side with the Sultan and Wise Turks. This actions were the eventual downfall of the Young Turks as the secret headquarters on the northern coast of Turkey was raided and its leaders killed in the raid. With the Young Turks out of the way, the Wise Turks and Sultan began to rebuild a crippled Empire. This rebuilding first began by mobolizing the Army to put down the rebellion in Iraq. The Ottoman Army marched from southeastern Turkey into Iraq, and immiedately began to suffer. The Ottoman Army was undiciplined, untrained, and poorly equipt and went they engaged the Iraqi rebels they were defeated loosing three thousand men and being forced to route back into southeastern Turkey. This came a shock, and a large scale investigation was launched by top military officals. The primary reason for the defeat wasn't the soldier-by-soldier condition of the army, but the logistics. The logisitics were poor, and carvans hardly reached the main army and instead would get lost and eventually find themselves back in Turkey proper. This prompted for a massive reform in the logistics, increasing the logistics and attempting to increase the organization of it. This took two years to complete, and gave the Iraqi rebels valuble time to prepare defenses and even establish a formal government under Sultan Hakim and even declare formal independance--though due to the utter lack of telecommunications and isolationist policy the world never got word of Iraq's independance. The people of Iraq lived for a full year under Sultan Hakim before the Ottomans counter attacked. In 1907 the Ottoman Army, refit and determined, enter into Iraq and this time the logisitics were refit and proved to get more than enough supplies (in some cases a surplus was reported). The attack on Mosul inflicted heavy losses on the Iraqi rebels and forced their forces to Baghdad. The Ottoman Army assaulted Baghdad and only have a month of bitter street fighting did it manage to secure the city. Out of the fifteen-thousand man army sent into Iraq, only eight-thousand returned with most being killed in Baghdad.
It was clear the Ottoman Military needed reforms and badly. Yet the Empire turned a blind eye on them until 1909 as they rejoiced the end of the Iraqi rebellion and the restoration of order. In 1909, the Empire began looking to other foreign powers to copy their style of military. They found this in Britian. The Ottoman Military began to copy Britian's and quickly began to dicipline their soldiers. All Ottoman soldiers from Macedonia-to-Turkey Proper down to the Suez Canal were trained to peek effectivness, while those in Arabia were neglected. In 1911 the Italo-Ottoman War broke out when Italy declared war in September and attack Ottoman controlled Libya. The utter ineffectiveness of the Ottoman Navy was proven during this time as the Italians conquored Libya without major incident. This prompted the Ottomans to begin to focus on her Navy, thoug before any major reforms could begin the Balkan War broke out. Greece and Montenegro launched an offensive into Macedonia which was soon joined in by Bulgaria and Serbia. The Ottomans, however, during the rivalry between Young and Wise Turks had permitted the Sultan to poor gross amount of money into the foritication of Macedonia and Thrace.
The Ottomans held out, stopping the Bulgarians almost immiedately and effecitvely routing the Greeks. With only Serbia and Montegenro still in the war the Ottomans launched a massive counter-offensive. The offensive primarily focused on Bulgaria which was suppose to be apart of the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan declared Bulgaria a rebellious province and thus not worthy of autnomony. The Ottoman forces launched a massive offensive into Bulgaria first and quickly reached the capital of Sofia. Three days later on November 2, 1912 the Bulgarian government surrendered its right to full itself and the Ottoman Empire annexed the region. This two two things, it put Romania at the border of the Ottoman Empire and threatened another front in the war. Yet the Balkan Wars did not end, as the Ottomans launched another offensive into Albania and effectively crushed the independance movement there. When Ottoman forces began to rally at the Ottoman-Greek border, Romania stepped in and threatened war. Fearing loosing the war due to the inability to control Bulgaria and Albania while keeping Macedonia fortified against a Serbian and Montegenro and possibly Austrian assault while at the same time attempting to fight Romania and launch an offensive into Greece--the Sultan settled for peace. In the peace the Balkan States regonized Bulgaria as a province (not autonomous state) of the Ottoman Empire along with Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace. The Ottoman Empire's reforms and blunders had effecitvely saved itself from rapid decline.
With the Balkan War over and the Balkan League dissolved due to internal conflict the Ottoman Empire again focused on internal issues. In 1913, the Sultan began the Naval reforms he'd wanted and rapidly built the Ottoman Navy up and began to modernize it while basing its officer organization around that of Britians. The Ottoman Navy was prehaps one of the weakest in the Medetarrian, but it surely wanted not below that of Greece or Austria. While continueing naval build-up and reforms, the Sultan then began an new economic program bent on reforming the Empire's economy. These reforms led to a massive economic growth and a steady increase in trade as the Ottoman Empire stuck oil in Iraq and in 1919 Kuwait. This oil and the large amount of it quickly brought the empire into economic wealth as it began to sell this oil to poorer states and to European states a low costs. While the Ottoman Empire did not sell large amounts of oil, oil was one of its minor markets. The Sultan's reforms, however, focused around trade and induralization of the Ottomans' Balkan provinces. The Balkan provinces provided more natural resources while the Middle East provinces and the Ottoman Empire exploited these resources and heavily industralization the area.
During the 1920s the economic situtation continued to increase as the political instability of the empire was rapidly dissolving. The Wise Turks still had a large amount of influence but so long as the Sultan kept his attention on all the Empire, and did not needlessly focus on one part of it, they were happy. It was also during the 1920s that the Ottomans began to realize the new for air planes. Using their new found wealth (however small it may have been) began to aeroplane design and build-up. The air planes produced by the Ottoman Empire proved weak and very uncapable of survival in the deserts of the Ottoman Empire, despite this an air wing was constructed in the Balkans for protection there, while the Empire focused on Anti-Air weaponary in the Middle East.
During 1929 the Stock Market Crash proved to effect the Empire, though not as heavily as the European powers. The Ottoman Empire's Balkan provinces suffered the most with their industralization products seeing less demand, while trade remained basically the same for the Middle Eastern provinces, whom sold more primitive and inelastic products. By 1931 the Ottoman Empire was back up and running at full capacity. It was also in 1931 that the Ottoman Empire discovered how effective the tank would be in the Desert Empire when an Ottoman-citizen from Germany build a prototype tank out of similar tanks he'd seen in France and Germany and the Ottoman Military immiedately took the tank with open arms. During the 1930s the tank was redesigned and made to work better in desert warfare as new stratgies and logositic-doctrines were developed to include the tank and eventually the useage of mechanized infantry.
It was in 1938 that Ottoman intelligance picked up a critical bit of information. It learned that a secret alliance had been forme between Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Montegenro. An organized alliance not seen since the defunct Balkan League. This alliance aimed at pushing the Ottomans out of Bulgaria, Albania, and Macedonia. This gave the Ottoman Empire a chance to pre-emptively attack the Balkan States. The Ottoman tank divisons spearheaded the invasion into Greece as the first country the Ottoman Empire attacked. Startled and shocked Serbia and Montegenro quickly began to moblize, but only for defensive purposes. Romania, however believed they would be capable of fending off the Ottoman forces in Bulgaria and would be able to relieve the Greek enough so they could counter-attack. However just as the Romanian army began to mass at their border with the Ottoman Empire, the German Reich launched a massive assault on them from Eastern Hungary and quickly smashed the disoriented Romanian Army and annexed the land. This was both a blessing and a curse, it permitted the Ottomans to focus solely upon Greece and managed to defeat them with little losses, but at the same time it meant that Germany (who in 1938 proved they were major Imperalists) now had a border with the Ottoman Empire and immiedately Ottoman-German relations begin to sour. By 1939 Greece was formally annexed back into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, fearing a major border with Austro-Hungary and Germany signed a peace agreement with Serbia and Montegenro.
Now in 1945, the Ottoman Empire looks north where their enemies lay. The Germans whom seem to be bent on controlling Eastern Europe, the Austrians whom may be looking for expansion into the Balkans, and the Serbians and Montegernoians who seek vengence for their defeat to the Ottomans in both Balkan Wars. Yet the Ottoman Empire stands no more as the 'Sick Man of Europe', but as a very health man.