Alleged Russian reoccupation of Köprüköy

The British chronology of the war states under 22 November 1914 that Russian troops reoccupied Köprüköy, a village on the upper Aras on the road from the border to the fortress of Erzurum. The available studies, Russian, Turkish and English-language, do not confirm this. According to them the Russians did not return to Köprüköy until 1916.

After the Bergmann offensive

The Russians reached Köprüköy in the first week of November, but as early as 11 and 12 November a counter-attack by the Ottoman Third Army pushed them back to positions around the village of Azap, about 25 kilometres beyond the border. There the front came to a halt. Russian reinforcements, brought up from deep in the Caucasus, repulsed further Turkish attacks, and between 17 and 20 November an attempt to encircle the Russians in the mountains failed. On 21 November the commander of the Third Army, General Hasan İzzet Pasha, alarmed by exaggerated reports of Russian forces on his flank, broke off the attack and pulled his troops back some fifteen kilometres. That was the end of the Bergmann offensive.

The Turkish divisions retreated in a snowstorm. Hundreds of soldiers froze to death, and many units melted away, by some estimates by as much as half. The Russians, however, did not exploit the enemy’s retreat. According to the Russian military historian Nikolai Korsun, they made no further attempt to regain the positions at Köprüköy. At the beginning of December, when severe frosts set in, their Sarikamish detachment began settling into winter positions near the border.

Where the entry came from

It is not known exactly where the entry in the British chronology came from. It may be an echo of contemporary reports of the Turkish retreat from Azap, taken to mean the recapture of Köprüköy. The studies, however, record no fighting for the place at the end of November. The Russians took Köprüköy only in January 1916, at the start of the offensive that a month later brought them the capture of Erzurum.

At the end of November the Caucasus front on the Aras went quiet for several weeks. That did not mean calm, however. The success at Köprüköy emboldened the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, who concluded that the Russian army in the Caucasus was weak. In December he took personal command of the Third Army and led it on a winter march across the mountains against the Russian rear at Sarikamish.