Caucasus campaign
| Caucasus Campaign | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Middle Eastern theatre | |||||
 The limit of the Russian advance into Anatolia | |||||
| |||||
| Belligerents | |||||
| Ottoman Empire | Russian Empire, First Republic of Armenia | ||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||
| Enver Pasha, Vehip Pasha, Kerim Pasha, Mustafa Kemal | Nikolai Yudenich | ||||
The Caucasus Campaign was fought from 1914 until 1918 in the Caucasus during World War I between the Russian Empire a member of the Allied Powers and the Ottoman Empire a member of the Central Powers. The Russians had the best of it in the Caucasus but the Russian Revolution forced them to halt their military operations. The collapse of the Russian government and the start of the Civil War in 1918 allowed the Turks to recapture all the territory they had lost and more.
1915
The chief war aim of the Ottoman government was the recovery of their former lands in Eastern Anatolia which they had lost due to the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78. The war minister Enver Pasha, ignoring advice from their German allies, within a month of declaring war launched an attack on this territory. Placing himself in personal command of the 3rd Army he ordered it into battle against the Russian troops. Enver Pasha's army was very large (estimates range from 100,000 to 190,000 men) but poorly equipped especially for the winter conditions they would soon face.
The Russian army was initially strong with some 100,000 men under the nominal command of the Governor General of the Caucusus Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov. The real commander was his chief of staff, General Nikolai Yudenich, Russia's best general of the First World War. Due to the defeats at the Battle of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, the Russians redeployed almost half their forces to the Prussian front, leaving behind just 60,000 troops to face the Ottoman army.
Governor General Vorontsov planned to withdraw his forces closer to Kars in the face of the 3rd Army's advance. But Yudenich ignored Vorontsov's wishes to withdraw and instead stayed to defend Sarikamis. The Battle of Sarikamis was joined on December 29 1914 and lasted till January 4 1915. The result was a stunning defeat for the Turks. Their army retreated all the way back to their starting position with losses of between 60,000 and 175,000 troops. Enver Pasha gave up command of the army and publicly blamed the Armenians for his defeat. As War Minister he ordered that all Armenian recruits in the Ottoman forces be disarmed, demobilized and assigned to labor camps, where nearly all died. This was a key step on the path which lead to the Armenian Genocide.
At the same time as Enver's army advanced towards Kars, a small Ottoman force from Van advanced into Persia. This force, meeting little opposition, briefly occupied Tabriz. Both the Russians and the British sent forces into northern Persia to expel the Ottoman units and, given the disaster at Sarikamis, the Ottomans withdrew back to their frontiers.
General Yudenich was praised for his victory and promoted to command over all Russian troops in the Caucusus. He then began an offensive into Turkish territory, heading towards Lake Van in Ottoman Armenia. This was an area with many Christian Armenians and the Russians hoped for some local support for their army. With Russian forces approaching, a revolt occurred in Van on April 20, against the Turks and in favor of the Russians. The Russians captured Van in May of 1915. In August the Russian army left and the Turks re-occupied Van. At this time, Grand Duke Nicholas, having been removed from the position as Supreme Commander of the Russian army, was put in charge of all Russian forces in Armenia and Persia. This resulted in no significant changes as the Grand Duke left the actual conduct of the war to General Yudenich. In September the Russians forced the Turks out of Van for the 2nd time.
Forced Deportation of Armenians
During the middle of the Russian offensive into Armenia, Talat Pasha (the interior minister of the Ottoman Empire) ordered the forced deportation of all Armenians out of the region and to the south. For more details see the entry on the Armenian Genocide.
This front was quiet from October till the end of the year.
1916
ps:~1916
The winter is not normally a time for military activity in this part of the world. The bitter cold and terrible roads contributed greatly to the anihilation of Enver Pasha's 3rd Army in the previous year; but the Russian General Yudenich viewed this as an opportunity to take the Ottomans by surprise. In early January of 1916 his army secretly left its winter quarters and marched towards the major Ottoman fort at Erzurum. The Russians achieved total surprise and destroyed an Ottoman division that was in winter quarters at Battle of Koprukoy (January 16 - January 18).
While the Russian army and its heavy guns continued to march towards Erzurum, a second Ottoman division was destroyed at the town of Tafta (February 14) by another Russian force that attacked unexpectedly from the north. The Ottoman commander, Kerim Pasha, was either unprepared for a siege or, more likely, lost his nerve because instead of holding the fort, his army retreated on the 15th. The Russians marched into Erzurum unopposed on February 16.
General Yudenich's Caucasus army moved in two directions from Erzurum, part went north and captured the ancient port city of Trebizond in April. Another part went south and captured Mush and Bitlis, driving the demoralized Ottoman army before it.
The Ottoman army, under a new leader, Vehip Pasha, was ordered to re-take Trebizond. A military force was gathered and sent marching along the coast in June of 1916 but the Russians held up its advance - by this point the Russian navy dominated the Black Sea. General Yudenich then countered the Ottoman attack with an offensive of his own towards Erzican (see the Battle of Erzincan). On July 2 Erzican was captured; the Ottoman offensive against Trebizond was halted as they tried to stabilize their front lines.
The only bright spot for the Ottomans was General Mustafa Kemal's reconquest of Mush and Bitlis in August of 1916. However the Russians drove Kemal's troops out of these towns at the end of the fall. Fighting around the east side of Lake Van continued throughout the summer but was inconclusive.
1917
The Russians made plans for a renewed attack on the Turkish positions in 1917 but the chaos caused by the Russian Revolution put a stop to all Russian military operations. The new government removed the Grand Duke from his command and reassigned General Yudenich to a meaningless position in central Asia (he then retired from the army). The Turks, under great pressure from the British in Palestine and Mesopotamia, withdrew the majority of their forces and sent them south. During the rest of 1917, the Russian army slowly disintergrated until there was no effective military force.
1918
In the early months of 1918, the Russian army in the Caucasus was nothing more than a few thousand volunteers and some two hundred officers. A year ealier there had been 500,000 soldiers, now they were gone and Russia's vast southern territories were effectively unguarded. After a year of inactivity, the Turks finally went on the offensive. The Turkish army launched its campaign in late January of 1918. The Bolshevik government of Russia signed all this land away in the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk on March 3 1918).
Armenian Republic
The only resistance they faced came from the semi-organized militia of the Armenian Republic. In quick succession the Turks captured Trebizond, Erzurum, Kars, Van, and Batumi (February - April 1918).
The Ottoman Activities against the Armenian Republic is ended through Armistice of Mudros
After the armistice, the peace treaty was signed between the Allied and Associated Powers and Ottoman Empire at Sevres on August 10, 1920.
Treaty of Serves made all parties signing the treaty to recognize Armenia.
Results
Enver Pasha had bigger goals than just reconquest of land lost 40 years ago. With the sudden success of his forces (against no real opposition) he revived his dream of Turkish domination over Central Asia and ordered the creation of something called the Army of Islam. This army, numbering between 14,000 and 25,000 strong, was composed entirely of Moslems, and most spoke Turkish. In July, he ordered the Army of Islam into Russian Armenia, with the goal of taking Baku on the Caspian Sea. This new offensive was strongly opposed by the Germans. Germany regarded all of southern Russia as theirs by right of conquest. The German army had inflicted defeats on the Russians while the Ottomans had been repeatedly defeated. With the alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire breaking down, Germany deployed military forces to occupy Georgia (almost certainly under the command of General Kress von Kressenstein). The Army of Islam avoided Georgia and marched through Azerbaijan. They got as far as Baku on the Caspian Sea, which they threw the British out of in September of 1918. By the end of the war, the Turks, although they had lost Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia, had re-captured all the territory which they lost to the Russians in Eastern Anatolia.
Oddly, considering the Turks lost the war to the Allies, the new Turkish government headed by Mustafa Kemal managed to retain much of this territory based on the peace treaty he signed with the Soviet Union in 1921 called the Treaty of Kars.
The Armenians paid the most terrible price for the Russian defeat - losing their land, their property and their lives.
Sources
The first year -
- Strachan, Hew (2003). The First World War, pp 109-112. Viking (Published by the Penguin Group)
The 1916 fighting -
- Pollard, A. F. (1920). A Short History of the Great War (chapter 10).
The war in 1918 -
- Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to End All Peace, pp. 351-355. Avon Books.
- Harutyunian, The 1918 Turkish aggression in Transcaucasus, Yerevan, 1985.