A map of the Russian-Turkish front from Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918, a 1930s German history of the war illustrated with hand-pasted cigarette cards, showing the Turkish Empire in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas and the Persian Gulf. To the west is Egypt, a British dominion; to the east Persia. Erzerum in Turkey and Kars in Russia were the great fortresses on the frontier.
Mittelmeer: Mediterranean SeaSchwarzes M: Black SeaKasp. M.: Caspian SeaKleinasien: Asia MinorTürkei: TurkeyRussland: RussiaMesopot.: MesopotamiaPersien: PersiaAgypten: EgyptKairo: CairoStellungen der: Positions of theTürken Jan. 1915. . .August 1916Russen Mai 1915 . . . Frühjahr 1916Engländer: November 1914 . . . Ende 1917Herbst 1918Positions of theTurks Jan. 1915 . . . August 1916Russians May 1915 . . . spring 1916English: November 1914 . . . the end of 1917autumn 1918
". . . the situation deadlocked on all three fronts, and the early onset of winter — it snowed for the first time on 26 September — translated standoff into impasses, leaving the Turks with very little to show for a six-or-more-week campaign which had cost them at least 30,000 killed and wounded out of a total strength which had probably never exceeded a hundred thousand. By any standard, this was a disaster; not quite the catastrophe which had befallen Vehip's Third Army, perhaps, but nonetheless a calamity, and one which effectively spelled the end of Turkish offensive campaigning in the Caucasus. The final blow to Turkish morale fell before September's end, when Kemal ordered his 8th Division to pull back from Muş, and the Russians retook the city as easily as they had given it up."
Since the Battle of Sarikamish in January, 1915, the Russians had steadily advanced into eastern Turkey, territory with a large Christian population, much of it Armenian until the the Turkish government's genocidal attacks on that people. In September, 1916 Russia was reaching the limits of its advance in the Caucasus Mountains and eastern Turkey, but had also moving into Persia, an independent but weak country on which the Turks also had designs. Even as the situation in the Caucasus deteriorated, Turkish War Minister Enver Pasha sent troops to support the invasion of Romania. Turkish General Mustafa Kemal had been a hero in the defense of the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915.
Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford, page 178, copyright © Roger Ford 2010, publisher: Pegasus Books, publication date: 2010
1916-09-26, 1916, September, Caucasus, Caucasus Mountains, Kemal, Mustafa Kemal, Mustapha Kemal
