Postcard celebrating the 1908 military rebellion by the Young Turks that restored the constitution of 1876. Among the revolutionary leaders were Enver Bey, later Enver Pasha, and Nyazi Bey. Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed in 1909, replaced by his brother Mohammed V.
Vive S.M.I. le Sultan Abdoul Hamid Khan IIVive la Constitution! 11,/24 Juillet 1908.Nyazi Bey; Enver BeyLong live S.M.I. Sultan Abdul Hamid II KhanLong live the Constitution! 11/24 July 1908.Reverse:Carte PostalUnion Postale UniverselleCorrespondance : Adresse
"The fact was that the Allied breakthrough in Macedonia, and the German collapse coming in its wake, had undermined any possible negotiating leverage the Sublime Porte still had, whether on the Americans or anyone else. On October 12, 1918, Franchet d'Esperey's forces cut the Balkan rail link between Berlin and Constantinople, rendering a defense of the capital effectively impossible, even had the Young Turks wanted to fight to the bitter end. To be sure, there were still battle-hardened Ottoman divisions occupying the Transcaucasus, and in northern Syria, what remained of the Yildirim Army Group was waging a fighting retreat."
French General Louis Franchet d'Esperey commanded Allied forces — French, British, Italian, Greek, and Serbian — on the Balkan Front, where for over two years the Bulgarians had kept the Allied forces bottled up. In the two weeks between the opening of d'Esperey's offensive into Serbia on September 15, 1918 and the end of the month, the defenders collapsed, the Bulgarian home front rose up, and a new Bulgarian government signed an armistice. The rail link that connected Berlin and Constantinople was the Balkan Zug, passed through Bulgaria, Serbia, and Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary, and was broken by Franchet d'Esperey's advance in Serbia. In and beyond the Caucasus Mountains, Turkey had fought Russia before the latter left the war. Turkey continuing its adventure into Russian and Persia as the empire was being defeated in Syria and Mesopotamia. The 'Sublime Porte' is a reference to the gate leading to the government buildings in Constantinople and a metonym for the Turkish government. The Young Turks has seized power in 1908. In the ten years that followed, War Minister Enver Pasha's military incompetence had helped lead his country to ruin, and Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat had slaughtered a large part of the country's Armenian population as well as other ethnic groups.
The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923 by Sean McMeekin, page 404, copyright © 2015 by Sean McMeekin, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2015
1918-10-12, 1918, October, Turkey, Macedonia, Transcaucasus, Young Turks
