| The RUSSION ORIGINS of the First World War 34 Chapter4 Turkey'sTurn2 |
| Good intelligence in wartime is notoriously hard to come by, and so we
could easily discount this sort of talk as mere speculation. The curious
thing about Russian intelligence on Turkey in 1914, however, is that it
was almost uniformly good, and much better than that of any of the other
powers. While the British Admiralty had been caught napping as Souchon
chon raced toward Constantinople, never suspecting his destination or the
political importance of his mission until it was too late, the Russians
knew perfectly well where he was going and why. Lacking the British capacity
pacity to screen the Mediterranean with a surface fleet, Russia had no
control over whether or not the Goeben and Breslau reached Turkish territorial ritorial waters, but her admirals
and diplomats were under very clear instructions structions on how to proceed
if and once they did so. Had Said Halim Pasha not cooked up his clever
gambit of "buying" the ships from Germany, many, there is every
chance that Eberhart's aggressive maneuvers in the Bosphorus would have
drawn Turkey into the war by the second week of August. Likewise, Russia's ambassador remained exceptionally well-informed about Ottoman Cabinet politics as the diplomatic battle over possible Turkish belligerence heated up in September and October. Russian cryptographers tographers had broken the Austro-Hungarian codes, which meant that Girs could read much of the correspondence of MarkgrafJohann von Pallavicini, lavicini, the Habsburg ambassador known as the "Dean of the Diplomatic Corps" for having served longer than anyone else at the Porte. Reading his correspondence was nearly as good as reading the German traffic. The Romanians also frequently passed on intelligence gleaned from the Germans to the Russians. Sazonov had paid informants attending Ottoman man Cabinet meetings.25 It was from one of these many intelligence feeds (the ambassador did not reveal which one) that Girs was able to report to Sazonov on 2 October ber 1914 that Kaiser Wilhelm II had signed off on Admiral Souchon's acceptance ceptance into the Ottoman navy at the rank of vice-admiral, which meant the German commander could now carry out naval maneuvers in the Black Sea under the Turkish flag.26 In another telegram dispatched the same day, Girs reported that the grand vizier had told his (unnamed) source that "Turkey was ready to enter the war, but was not certain under what terms she would do so." In order to make the strongest possible impression pression on Bulgaria and Romania, Said Halim Pasha told Girs's informant, mant, "the goal of a [naval strike] will be to annihilate Russia's fleet, or at least, if it survives the battle, to establish Turkish dominance of the Black Sea (obez"pecheniem' turetskago gospodstva v Chernom More)." All that the Turks were waiting for, the grand vizier continued, was the "most favorable vorable moment."27 The full mining and complete closure of the Dardanelles by the Porte on 27 September 1914 effectively cut off Russia's only year-round warm water access to the world. Souchon was authorized to strike at the Turks' command. The countdown to war had begun. October 1914 saw a strange sort of phony war between Turkey and Russia, as the impending Turkish naval "sneak attack" unfolded by precise stages, each one closely anticipated pated and followed by the Russians. On 3 October, just a day after he had reported on Souchon's commission into the Ottoman navy, Girs reported to Sazonov that "Turkey is being flooded with German officers, enlisted men, guns, and shell": the country was an "armed camp." More important tant was the psychological transformation wrought by the acquisition of the two German warships, which had "completely gone to the Turks' heads" (sovershenno vskruzhilo golovu Turkam'). Combined with the influx flux of German arms and soldiers, the increasingly belligerent mood in Constantinople meant that a Russo-Turkish war was now "inevitable."28 Adding credence to his hunch, Girs reported on 4 October that Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the Ottoman naval minister rumored to harbor pro-Entente sympathies, had been won over to Enver's war party exactly one week before the famous "war council" held inside the German Embassy, bassy, which Djemal mentions in his own memoirs. (Attending this war council were Enver, Djemal, Interior Minister Talaat, and Halil Bey, president dent of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies; the only significant absentees were Djavid Bey and the grand vizier.)29 On 11 October 1914-the very day the Ottoman war council convened in the German Embassy-Girs wrote a long memorandum for the Russian sian Foreign Office that aimed to steel everyone's nerves for the coming clash. Knowing full well that Souchon had already received authorization to carry out a "sneak attack" in the Black Sea, Girs wanted Russians to rise to the challenge.30 The opportunistic closure of the Dardanelles in late September had proved that the Turks could not be trusted with the task of ensuring free passage. Nor could Balkan states like Bulgaria or Greece, whose loyalty was every bit as unreliable as promises from "slippery pery Ottoman Ministers." "We need a strong boss ruling over Constantinople," nople," Girs concluded, "and since we cannot let any other power assume this role, we must take her for ourselves." With Russian troops bogged down on the eastern front, defeating Turkey would be difficult; but war was now unavoidable. The time had come for Russia to "settle accounts" with her ancient enemy, so as to "liquidate the Straits question once and for all."31 |