100 years ago, on December 9 (22), 1914, the Sarikamysh battle began. The Turkish commander-in-chief Enver Pasha, a student of the German military school and a big fan of German doctrine, planned to conduct a deep roundabout maneuver and destroy the Russian Caucasian army with one powerful blow. "Turkish Napoleon" Enver Pasha dreamed of arranging a second "Tannenberg" of the Russian army, which would allow him to seize the whole of Transcaucasia, and then hoped to raise an uprising of all Muslims of Russia, spread the fire of war to the North Caucasus and Turkestan (Central Asia). A military catastrophe in the Caucasus would have forced the Russian command to transfer additional forces from the Eastern Front to the Caucasian Front, which would ease the position of Germany and Austria-Hungary. After the victory in the war with Russia, the Turkish rulers hoped to annex all the Turkic and Muslim peoples to the Ottoman Empire - in the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea region, Turkestan, the Volga region and even Western Siberia.
However, the Russian Caucasian troops gave a cruel lesson to the Ottomans - almost the entire 90-thous. The 3rd Turkish Army, the most powerful Turkish army, was destroyed. She was left with pitiful pieces. The threat of a Turkish invasion of the Caucasus was eliminated. The Russian Caucasian army opened its way into the depths of Anatolia.
Background
In the first three months of the war, the Ottoman Empire formally maintained neutrality. However, Istanbul, even before the start of the war, entered into close military-political relations with the German Empire. Part of the Turkish leadership, which insisted on an alliance with the Entente, lost, as France and Russia showed indifference to Turkey, believing that its business is neutrality. As a result, the pro-German group took over dominant positions.
On August 2, 1914, the Ottoman government concluded a secret military alliance with the German Empire. While the question of Turkey's participation in the war remained open, the Young Turkish government took advantage of the situation to strengthen its position within the country by lifting the surrender regime. This was the name of the regime in which foreigners were removed from the local jurisdiction and submitted to the jurisdiction of their countries. In mid-October 1914, decrees were issued to abolish capitulation privileges.
A military alliance with Germany obliged Turkey to side with the Germans in the outbreak of the war. The Turkish fleet was brought under the control of the German naval mission led by Admiral Souchon. The Turkish army - the only real force in the country and the mainstay of the Young Turkish regime - was in the hands of German advisers led by General Liman von Sanders. The chief of the Turkish General Staff was Colonel Bronsar von Schellendorff. The German cruisers Goeben and Breslau entered the straits. Germany provided the Porte with large loans, finally tying it to itself. On August 2, Turkey began mobilization. The army was brought to an enormous size - 900 thousand soldiers. The mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people, transport and draft animals, endless extortions for the needs of the army - all this crippled the Turkish economy, which was already in crisis.
When the German blitzkrieg plan collapsed, and the first setbacks were outlined on the Western and Eastern Fronts, Germany increased pressure on the Young Turkish triumvirate (the Young Turkish leaders Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha and Dzhemal Pasha). To accelerate events, the Turkish "hawks" led by Enver Pasha, with the full understanding of the Germans, organized an attack by the German-Turkish naval forces on Sevastopol and other Russian ports. This led to the fact that Russia on November 2, 1914 declared war on the Ottoman Empire. On November 11, 1914, Turkey declared war on Great Britain and France. As a result, a new regional hotbed of war appeared, which led to the emergence of several fronts - the Caucasian, Persian, Mesopotamian, Arabian, Suez, etc.
England and France had their own interest in this confrontation. They used the issue of the Straits and Constantinople as "bait" for Russia (and for Greece) using its resources. At the same time, the West in reality was not going to give Russia the straits and Constantinople; it tried in every possible way to drag out the war with Turkey
They gave the war a protracted and indecisive character, hindered the Russian army in the implementation of its strategic tasks. It was more profitable for Russia to crush Turkey with one decisive blow, which could be assisted by the allies. However, the British in every possible way avoided interaction with the Russian Caucasian army. At the same time, the British demanded help. Petersburg went to meet the allies, as well as on the Eastern Front. Russian troops, exposing themselves to the devastating effects of the local climate, in 1916 rushed to the aid of the British troops surrounded by the Turks south of Baghdad. And the British, in order to disrupt the Russian landing operation in the Bosphorus zone, first deliberately let the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau into the Dardanelles, turning the Turkish fleet into a real combat unit, and then in 1915 undertook a fruitless Dardanelles operation. This operation was undertaken by the Entente primarily out of fear that the Russians would be able to seize Constantinople and the straits on their own. As a result, due to the contradictions of the great powers, which deepened as the war developed, the coordination of actions of the allied armies in the Middle East was never achieved. This allowed the German military specialists, who headed the Turkish armed forces, to fend off the scattered attempts of the Anglo-French forces to occupy the Asian possessions of the Port for a long time and restrain the pressure from Russia.
The Ottoman Empire was in a state of deepest socio-economic and political crisis. The economy and finances were under the control of foreigners, the country was de facto a semi-colony. The industry was in its infancy. Before the outbreak of the First World War, Turkey lost two wars. After losing the Tripolitanian War to Italy, Turkey lost Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern Libya). The defeat in the First Balkan War led to the loss of almost all European possessions, except for Istanbul and its surroundings. The national liberation movement, combined with the poverty of the overwhelming majority of the population (peasantry), undermined the country from the inside. The Young Turks, who seized power in 1908, compensated for the failures in foreign and domestic policy with the ideology of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism. Victory in the war was supposed to give the Ottoman Empire a new impetus to life, according to their plan, to turn it into a world power.
All the forces of the Russian Empire were distracted by the hard struggle in the European theater. The defense of the Caucasus was seriously weakened. Enver Pasha and his supporters no longer hesitated, they believed that Turkey had a "finest hour" - now or never. The Ottoman Empire could return everything it lost from the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi world of 1774 and even more. And the die was cast, the Ottoman Empire attacked Russia, signing its own death warrant.
Read more about Turkey's position on the eve of the war in the articles:
100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire started a war against Russia
How Turkish national liberals led the Ottoman Empire to collapse
Plans for the construction of the Great Turan and the domination of the "superior race"
Turkey's first strikes: "Sevastopol wake-up call", battles at Bayazet and Keprikei
The first strikes of Turkey: "Sevastopol wake-up call", battles at Bayazet and Keprikei. Part 2
The plans and forces of the parties
Taking into account the fact that at the beginning of the war, Turkey observed neutrality, 2 army corps and 5 Cossack divisions (two-thirds of all forces) were sent from the Caucasus to the front. Therefore, after the Ottoman Empire entered the war, the Russian group in the Caucasus was seriously weakened. The troops remaining in the Caucasus were tasked with providing two main communications that connected the Transcaucasia with European Russia: the Baku-Vladikavkaz railway and the Tiflis-Vladikavkaz highway (the so-called Georgian Military Highway). At the same time, Russian troops had to defend an important industrial center - Baku. For this, it was supposed to conduct an active defense, invade Turkish Armenia, defeat the advanced troops of the Turkish army, gain a foothold on the occupied border mountain borders, thereby preventing the invasion of the Ottomans into the territory of the Russian Caucasus.
The Russian command planned to deliver the main blow in the Erzurum direction, providing it with the simultaneous movement of separate detachments in the Olta and Kagyzman directions. The most vulnerable sector of the Caucasian Front was considered the seaside (Black Sea coast) and the Azerbaijani direction, since on the eve of the war, Russian troops occupied Persian Azerbaijan. Therefore, to support the flanks, separate groups of troops were allocated.
With the outbreak of war in Transcaucasia, only one 1st Caucasian Corps remained under the command of General Georgy Berkhman (20th and 39th Infantry Divisions), reinforced by the only secondary division of the Caucasian District - 66th Infantry. The 2nd Caucasian Rifle Brigade was stationed in Persia. These forces were reinforced by separate formations - 2 brigades of plastuns, 3 1/2 cavalry divisions and border units. In September, the weak 2nd Turkestan corps (4th and 5th Turkestan rifle brigades) was transferred to the Caucasus, the headquarters of which had already been transferred to the Southwestern Front. The official commander-in-chief of the Russian army was the Caucasian governor, Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov. However, he was already old and asked to retire. In fact, his military adviser, General Alexander Myshlaevsky, was in charge of everything. The Chief of Staff of the Caucasian Army was Combat General Nikolai Yudenich, who would eventually lead the Russian troops and achieve brilliant successes on the Caucasian Front.
By the start of the war, Russian troops were scattered across a 720-kilometer front from the Black Sea to Persia. In total, 5 groups were formed: 1) the Primorsky detachment of General Yelshin was given the task of covering Batum; 2) General Istomin's Oltinsky detachment covered the flank of the main forces in the Kara direction; 3) The main forces of the Russian army (Sarykamysh detachment) under the command of General Berkhman (1st Caucasian corps) were located in the Sarykamysh-Erzerum direction; 4) The Erivan detachment of General Oganovsky stood in the Bayazet direction; 5) The Azerbaijani detachment of General Chernozubov was stationed in Northern Persia. The army reserve included the 2nd Turkestan corps and the Kars garrison (the 3rd Caucasian Rifle Brigade was being formed). By the beginning of hostilities, the total number of the Russian army in the Caucasus reached 153 battalions, 175 hundreds, 17 sapper companies, 350 field guns and 6 battalions of fortress artillery.
At the beginning of the war, the Russian command made a number of mistakes, which affected the results of the first serious battle. So, the Russian command dispersed its troops in separate detachments on a wide mountain front, allocating excess forces to the secondary Erivan-Azerbaijani direction and placing an army reserve at a great distance from the front. As a result, the Ottomans had an advantage in the main Erzurum direction, concentrating 50% of all forces, and the Russians opposed them with 33% of their forces.
The Turkish war plan was based on the instructions of the German officers. According to the plan of the German-Turkish command, the Turkish armed forces were to: 1) fetter the Russian Caucasian army, not allowing large formations to be transferred from its composition to the European theater; 2) prevent the British from occupying Iraq; 3) to interrupt navigation on the Suez Canal, for which it was necessary to seize the adjacent area; 4) to hold the straits and Constantinople; 5) try to neutralize the Black Sea Fleet; 6) when Romania entered the war on the side of the Germans, the Turks had to support the Romanian army in the invasion of Little Russia.
With the beginning of the war, Turkey deployed seven armies: 1) the 1st, 2nd and 5th armies defended Constantinople and the straits; 2) the 3rd army, the most powerful, was deployed against Russia and was supposed to cover the Persian direction; 3) the 4th Army defended the Mediterranean coast, Palestine and Syria, and received the task of occupying Suez; 4) 6th Army defended Iraq; 5) the Arabian army was solving the problem of protecting the northern coast of the Red Sea.
The 3rd Army under the command of Gassan-Izeta Pasha, whose chief of staff was the German Major Guze, received the task of defeating the Russian troops at Sarykamish, and then, setting up a barrier at Kars, capture Ardahan and Batum. Batum was supposed to become an operational base for a further offensive in the Caucasus. At the same time, the Ottomans planned to raise a wide uprising of the local Muslim population against the "Russian occupiers". In the event that the Russian army was the first to go on the offensive, the Turkish 3rd Army was supposed to prevent a deep Russian invasion of Anatolia, to launch a counteroffensive. With the offensive of the Russian troops in the Erzurum direction, the enemy troops planned to encircle and destroy the fortress of Erzurum east of the fortress, which made it possible to implement broad plans for the occupation of the Caucasus.
The Turkish 3rd Army consisted of the 9th (17th, 28th and 29th Infantry Divisions), 10th (30th, 31st and 32nd Divisions) and 11th (18th I, 33rd and 34th divisions) army corps, 1 cavalry and several Kurdish divisions, border and gendarme troops. In addition, the 37th Infantry Division of the 13th Corps was transferred from Mesopotamia to reinforce the army. By the beginning of hostilities, the forces of the 3rd army reached 100 battalions, 165 squadrons and Kurdish hundreds, 244 guns.
Each Turkish division had three infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, a sapper company, a cavalry squadron and one reserve depot. The regiments included three battalions and a machine-gun company (4 machine guns). Artillery regiments in their composition had 2-3 field or mountain divisions of 2-3 four-gun batteries (up to 24 guns). In the Turkish division there were about 8 thousand fighters and they were approximately equal to our brigade. The Turkish corps had three divisions, 3 artillery regiments, 1 cavalry regiment, a howitzers division and a sapper battalion. In total, there were about 25 thousand soldiers in the corps with 84 guns.
The main forces of the 3rd Turkish army (9th and 11th corps) were concentrated in the Erzurum area. The 10th Corps was originally located near Samsun. It was planned to use it as an amphibious assault, for landing in Novorossiya, if the German-Turkish fleet achieves domination at sea or repel the expected landing of Russian troops. It was not possible to achieve supremacy at sea, and the landing of the Russian landing turned out to be disinformation, with which the Russian General Staff skillfully deceived the enemy. Therefore, the 10th corps also began to be transferred to the Erzurum area.
At the beginning of the war, the main grouping of the 3rd Army was concentrated in the Erzerum direction. In the event of an offensive by Russian troops, this group was to meet them in the area of Gassan-Kala and Keprikey (Kepri-Kei). Parts of the forces were to counterattack from the front, while the other part was to make a roundabout maneuver from the north and south. In the Azerbaijani direction, the Turkish command deployed border units, gendarmes and Kurdish units. Kurdish troops were also stationed at the Bayazet, Alashkert front.
Caucasian theater of military operations
The beginning of hostilities. Caprica battle
From the first day the war assumed a maneuverable character. Russian troops located on the Erzurum, Olta and Erivan directions invaded Turkey on October 19 (November 1). The 39th Infantry Division of Berkhman's corps moved into the Passinskaya Valley and, continuing the offensive in the Erzerum direction, on October 25 (November 7) captured the Kepri-Keisk position. It was a well fortified position, but there were few Turkish troops. However, further one and a half of our divisions of the 1st Caucasian corps clashed with six Turkish divisions of the 9th and 11th corps. A hard battle ensued.
Meanwhile, the Erivan detachment successfully overturned the Turkish-Kurdish border units and captured Bayazet and Karakilissa. Russian troops occupied the Alashkert valley, securing the left flank of the Sarykamysh group of Berkhman and pulling in the arriving forces of the 13th Turkish corps. The Erivan detachment was transformed into the 4th Caucasian Corps. The Azerbaijani detachment also operated successfully. A detachment of General Chernozubov as part of the 4th Caucasian Cossack Division and the 2nd Caucasian Rifle Brigade subdued the surrounding tribes, defeated and drove out the Turkish-Kurdish forces that entered the western regions of Persia. Russian troops occupied the regions of Northern Persia, Tabriz and Urmia, began to threaten the Ottoman Empire from the southeast direction. However, for the development of the first, the success of the troops was not enough.
The commander of the 3rd Turkish army, Gassan-Izet Pasha, threw his troops into a counteroffensive. Meanwhile, in the Caucasus, an early mountain winter began, it got colder, and a storm began. On October 26 (November 8), superior forces of the Turkish troops emerged from the blizzard, overturned the Russian vanguards and struck the main forces of the Russian corps. In a fierce four-day battle at Kepri-Kei, the Russian corps was forced to retreat to the Araks valley. The Russian command hastily transferred units of the 2nd Turkestan corps to help Berkhman. In addition, the 2nd Plastun brigade was transferred to the main direction. Reinforcements counterattacked the enemy. Plastuns on the left flank defeated and forced the 33rd Turkish Infantry Division to retreat, then on the night of November 7 (20) crossed the frozen Araks River in water and raided the enemy rear. Soon the Turkish offensive was halted and the front stabilized. Both sides began to prepare troops for the winter.
At the same time, there were battles in the seaside direction. The Primorsky Detachment - the 264th Georgievsky Infantry Regiment, several hundred border guards and a battalion of Plastuns, were scattered on a huge front in the wilderness. He had to calm down the rebellious Muslim population of the Chorokh region and hold back the offensive of the 3rd Turkish Infantry Division, which had been transferred from Constantinople, supported by irregular troops. The Primorsky detachment was reinforced with the 19th Turkestan regiment sent to Batum.
The plans of the "Turkish Napoleon"
After the Battle of Keprikei, both sides went on the defensive and hoped for a calm winter. It was extremely difficult to fight in the mountains in winter, and in some cases it was impossible. However, at the end of November, Enver Pasha and the chief of the Turkish General Staff, Colonel von Schellendorf, arrived in Erzurum. "Turkish Napoleon" (energetic actions and success of Enver during the 1908 revolution made him extremely popular in Turkey, he was even compared with Napoleon) decided not to withdraw troops to winter quarters, but using the first success and superiority in forces to go on a decisive offensive, surround and destroy the weak Caucasian army.
As a result, Turkey could occupy the Transcaucasia and develop an offensive in the North Caucasus. A resounding victory could lead to a large-scale uprising of the Muslim population in the Caucasus and Turkestan. Enver Pasha dreamed that victory in the war with Russia would lead to the creation of the great "Turanian kingdom" - a great empire from Suez to Samarkand and Kazan. Enver himself saw himself as the ruler of the renewed Ottoman Empire. It was the cherished dream of his life. He began to carry out his adventure with great decisiveness, not being embarrassed by objective problems, such as the onset of winter, when a lull usually set in in the Caucasus. The commander of the 3rd Army, Ghassan-Izet, protested against this adventure and resigned. Enver himself led the army.
Enver Pasha accompanied by a German officer
