[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
The Series | Credits | Shop
Home | Overview | Controversies | Timeline | Combatants | Biographies | Glossary | Learn More
The Controversies | Tangled Beginnings | Breaking the deadlock | Live and let live | Jihad | A Harbinger of horrors | Cracking the code | Over there | The end?
Jihad | Haji Wilhelm | Sarikamish | The Armenian trail of tears | Gallipoli | Kut-al-Amara | Palestine, Lawrence and the Arabs
At the start of the 20th century, Turkey was the ally that nobody wanted. A Muslim state that straddled East and West, it had once been a great power, but had lost a third of her territory in a string of disastrous wars and was now perceived to be in terminal decline.
This is how Germany's chief of the general staff, Helmuth von Moltke, described it: 'Turkey is militarily a non-entity. If Turkey was described before as a sick man, it must now be described as a dying man...'
However, while von Moltke was dismissive of Turkey's strategic potential, others in the Kaiser's circle believed that it had much to offer any great power who wanted to challenge the status quo.
In this Section:
Haji Wilhelm
Sarikamish
The Armenian trail of tears
Gallipoli
Kut-al-Amara
Palestine, Lawrence and the Arabs