Ottoman Empire War on Four Fronts November 1914

The Ottoman Empire triggered their entry into World War I with an attack on Russia’s Black Sea coast in November 1914. At the time, their armed forces had yet to recover from the heavy casualties, and blow to morale, inflicted by the 1912–13 Balkan War. In response to this debacle, the War Minister, Enver Pasha, had ordered a wholesale reorganization, with German advice, but this was still underway at the outbreak of war, and the military was still underequipped, lacking modern weaponry, munitions and a professional officer corps. The main military concentrations were in Ottoman Europe (two armies, in Thrace and Western Rumelia), the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and Palestine; additionally, the Empire had an array of garrisoned fortresses. Military mobilization and supply was hampered by a backward economy and primitive transport links, exacerbated by distances between its four fronts of a greater magnitude than any other combatant.