Jerusalem-Mecca-Medina; How did we lose our holy cities?

The idea of driving the Turks to Asia and eradicating them from the Christian Lands, which started with the Crusades, almost achieved this great plan in World War I. With this war, we will read the short story of how we lost Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina, Baghdad and Damascus. 

Against the Entente states of England (United Kingdom), France and Russia, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I alongside the German Empire-Austria-Hungary alliance. In Ahmet İzzet Pasha's words: "The perseverance and conviction of Enver, whose imagination was as glib as the most notorious lunatics, dragged this miserable nation into war again".

The first thing to do was to declare holy jihad. As a result of the agreement with Germany, almost all our armies participated in the war under the command of German generals. In 1882, Britain had seized Egypt by a fait accompli. Thus, she also dominated the road to India and Australia. The 4th Army was tasked with occupying the Suez Canal. With this decision taken by the German General Staff, it was aimed to cut Britain's connections to India and Australia if it could be occupied and to prevent the troops and equipment coming from its colonies, and if it could not be occupied, to prevent the help of France by keeping a large British military force in Egypt. It was also hoped that if the Canal could be crossed, Egyptian patriots would rise up against Great Britain alongside the Ottoman army.

At midnight between 14 January and 15 January 1915, the Ottoman expeditionary force of 25,000 men under the command of Cemal Pasha, the Minister of Navy, began to march forward from the Gaza-Berusssebi (Beersheba is now in Israel) line, which was the assembly area.

Yavuz Sultan Selim had easily crossed the Sinai desert in 1517, defeated the Mamelukes and conquered Egypt. In 1914, Cemal Pasha's forces could not cross the Sinai desert with the same ease. On the night of 2-3 February, they attacked the canal from the area between Lake Alligator and Bitter Lake. However, the British forces had laid a railway system from one end of the shore to the other end of the shore, and they fought back with a fierce fire from the Gatling guns on this railway system. The Ottoman forces retreated the next day with great failure and took up positions on the Gaza-Birusebi line on 15 February 1915.

In the Battle of Gallipoli, which started on 3 November 1914, the fiercest battles took place on 18 March. The Allied forces, which started land operations on 25 April, were forced to evacuate Gallipoli on 9 January 1916. The British forces evacuated from here were stationed in Egypt.

In June of the same year, Sharif Hussein, who rebelled with the encouragement of Britain, took control of Hejaz, which had been evacuated by the Ottomans.

On 29 April 1916, Halil Kut Pasha, Enver Pasha's uncle who was one year younger than him, captured the town of Kut, 160 km south of Baghdad, from the British. Thirteen generals, including Major General Townshend, 481 officers and 13 thousand 300 soldiers were surrendered. The British forces that came to rescue the captured army returned with 30 thousand casualties, but this great victory could not be permanent. In February 1917, Kûtül'amâre and Baghdad fell to the British in March. 

II. Canal Operation

It took place on 27 July 1916 with a force of 10,000 men under the command of the German Kress von Kressenstein of the 4th Army. However, the Ottoman forces, who suffered a heavy defeat as in the first one, had to retreat to El Arish in Palestine on 3 August. Kress had participated in the First Canal Campaign as a planner and implementer and in the Second Canal Campaign as a commander in person. He attributed these two defeats to illiterate officers, untrained soldiers, many of whom did not even have shoes and clothes, and lack of equipment, including water and weapons. He even writes that when Enver Pasha came for inspection, he placed the privates without shoes in the front row, Enver Pasha got angry saying "instead of distributing salaries, you should have bought shoes for the privates", whereas they had not received their salaries for six months, and that the privates' shoes prepared for the desert were sent to the Caucasian front and they were able to bring some of them from there with a thousand difficulties.

After these two defeats, the British launched a counter-attack and even set out to occupy the whole of Syria. They built a railway from the Sinai desert to Jerusalem for the transport of troops and equipment, as well as a canal of purified water from the Nile to the front lines. They suffered heavy defeats in the 1st Battle of Gaza on 26 March 1917 and the 2nd Battle of Gaza on 17-19 April 19172. Appointing General Allenby to command, they received extraordinary help in manpower, ammunition and supplies in the 3rd Battle of Gaza from 31 October to 7 November 1917. They managed to defeat the Turks who tried to resist at the end of 1917 and entered Jerusalem on 9 December 1917 after General Fevzi Çakmak evacuated the city in Nablus. 

The British occupied Aleppo on 26 October. Cevat Abbas Gürer, Mustafa Kemal Pasha's aide Cevat Abbas Gürer, writes in his memoirs that "19 days after he took office on 1 September 1918, the enemy attack started; the Seventh Army started a tremendous retreat with 7,000 men, and despite the rumours of the enemy agencies that "Mustafa Kemal Pasha was also captured", they gathered the rubbish of other armies and came to Kisve after 10 days with 12,000 men" (p.201).

No such captivity is mentioned in the memoirs of any of the British, German or Turkish generals, nor in any official document of these states.

In addition to Jerusalem, we lost Mecca, Medina, Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo as a result of the Canal Operations carried out for German interests.

Jerusalem was taken by the crusaders on 15 July 1099 in the First Crusade, and 89 years later, on 2 October 1187, it was taken back by Saladin Ayyubi.

On 9 December 1917, Jerusalem was captured. Wishing to end the massacres of children, women, old and sick, I quote F. Rıfkı Atay's story "Have you seen my Ahmet?" in his book "Zeytindağı", which is actually the Ahmet of all of us, the Jerusalem of all of us:

"A woman stopped at the station, to all comers and passers-by:

- "Have you seen my Ahmed?

Which Ahmed? Which of a hundred thousand Ahmeds?

Pulling his arm out from under his torn t-shirt, he asks, "Which Ahmed?

the opposite side of the road, the road to Istanbul:

- He went this way, he says.

That way? To Aden, Medina, the Canal, Sankamish? Baghdad?

I don't know if you want your Ahmed on ice, sand or water. did he get lice? If he got rid of them all, you should see his Ahmed, you'll ask him too:

- Have you seen my Ahmed?

No... None of us have seen your Ahmed.

he's seen everything. If we could just tell him what we wasted Ahmed on.

If only we could explain to a mother what we have gained".

References:

Kressenstein Baron Kress Von, Together with the Turks to the Suez Canal, Trans. Mazhar Besim Özalpsan, Istanbul, Askeri Matbaa, 1943.

Turkish War in the First World War, Sinai-Palestine Front, PUBLICATIONS OF THE GENERAL NAVAL MILITARY ASKERÎTİ HISTORY AND STRATEGIC ETÜT PRESIDENCY

TURKISH ARMY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR Volume III IRAK-IRAN FRONT 1914-1918 

TURKISH WAR IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR IRAQ-IRAN FRONT 1914-1918 Volume 3 Part 2

YILDIRIM HÜSEYİN HÜSNÜ EMİR (ERKİLET) ANKARA GENERAL STAFF PRINTING 2002 HOUSE

Ahmet İzzet Paşa, Feryadım, Timaş Publications, Istanbul, 2017.

M. F. Çakmak, diaries, memoirs of Liman von Sanders, Gen Falkenhein, Gen Allenby

Cevat Abbas Gürer Memories