Italo-Turkish war breaks out

At 3 p.m. on 29 September 1911 the Kingdom of Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire. At stake were the Sultan’s last African provinces, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, today’s Libya. The Italo-Turkish War, also called the Tripolitanian War, lasted more than a year and never threatened peace between the great powers. It did, however, show the whole of Europe how weak the Ottoman state was, and it emboldened its Balkan neighbours.

The ultimatum

Italian nationalists had for years demanded a colony on the far side of the Mediterranean. The government of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti hesitated for a long time, but in the summer of 1911, during the second Moroccan crisis, it became clear that France would get Morocco. Giolitti and the Foreign Minister, the Marquis Antonino di San Giuliano, decided that this was the last chance to reach for Tripolitania. According to some accounts, in mid-September they resolved to act before their allies in Vienna and Berlin learned of it. The pretext was complaints of wrongs done in Tripoli to Italian citizens and businesses.

28 September was fixed as the first day of mobilisation for the expeditionary corps. According to the American naval officer William Beehler, who described the war a year later, at 2.30 p.m. that same day the Italian chargé d’affaires handed an ultimatum to the Ottoman government in Constantinople: within 24 hours Turkey was to consent to the military occupation of both provinces. Other works date the ultimatum to 26 or 27 September. The Young Turk government of the Committee of Union and Progress gave an evasive answer, offering concessions without giving up the Sultan’s sovereignty. Rome took this as a refusal.

The declaration of war

The next day at 3 p.m. Italy announced a state of war and a blockade of the coast of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In a declaration handed, among others, to the government of the United States, the government of Victor Emmanuel III wrote that it had been placed “under the painful necessity of resorting to the force of arms”, and that its object coincided “with the interests of civilization”. In Constantinople the government of the Grand Vizier İbrahim Hakkı Pasha, a former ambassador in Rome, soon resigned.

According to Beehler, defence was hopeless: the forts were obsolete, sea communications with Turkey were easily cut, and the land route through British-occupied Egypt was useless in practice. The two provinces were held by a single division, which at the outbreak of war had some 5,000 trained infantry, 400 cavalry and a few thousand recruits. Benghazi had 400 soldiers, Tobruk 30.

The first shots were fired that same day, but not in Africa. At 4 p.m., an hour after the declaration of war, Italian destroyers under the Duke of the Abruzzi intercepted two Turkish torpedo boats in the Ionian Sea. One, hit fifteen times, was run ashore near Preveza, where it burned out; its commander and eight sailors were killed. The next day the destroyers sank two more in Preveza. Austria-Hungary, Italy’s ally, did not want fighting off the Albanian coast, however. Rome repeated its ban on landing on the Turkish coast in Europe and, at Vienna’s request, recalled its ships from there.

More than a year of war

On 3 and 4 October the fleet shelled the forts of Tripoli (PL), already abandoned by most of the garrison, and the city was taken by a landing party of sailors. Soon the expeditionary corps began to land, some 40,000 men strong according to Beehler. The war did not end quickly, however. The Arab tribes, later joined by the Senussi order, fought alongside the Turks and were led by Turkish officers, among them Enver and Mustafa Kemal. The Italians were stuck in the coastal towns. On 1 November Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti (PL) dropped grenades from an aeroplane on Turkish positions, which is regarded as the first aerial bombing in history. On 5 November a royal decree proclaimed the annexation of both provinces. In May 1912 the Italians took Rhodes (PL) and other islands of the Dodecanese. After a year of fighting they had, according to Beehler, some 4,000 killed and 6,000 wounded.

Peace was signed on 18 October 1912 at Ouchy near Lausanne. The Sultan granted both provinces autonomy and kept there only his representative and religious judges, while Italy promised to return the islands but kept them as a pledge until Turkey fulfilled the peace terms. Turkey was in a hurry to make peace because ten days earlier war had broken out in the Balkans. According to the Carnegie Endowment’s commission, it was precisely the outbreak of the Tripolitanian war that convinced Bulgaria that the time had come for an alliance with Serbia. The talks held from the autumn of 1911 grew into the Balkan League.