Italy declares war on Turkey

On 21 August 1915 the Kingdom of Italy found itself at war with the Ottoman Empire. The declaration had been delivered a day earlier. At noon on Friday 20 August the Italian ambassador in Constantinople, the Marquis Camillo Garroni, handed the grand vizier, Said Halim Pasha, a note stating that from the following day Italy considered itself to be at war with Turkey. This is what Garroni’s own dispatches show, later published in the collection of Italian diplomatic documents. The British chronology and most studies give the date as 21 August, the day on which the state of war took effect.

Almost three months had passed since the declaration of war on Austria-Hungary. During that time Italy was formally at war with neither Germany nor Turkey, although both powers were enemies of its new allies.

The London commitment

In the Treaty of London, signed on 26 April 1915, Italy undertook to wage war together with France, Great Britain and Russia against all their enemies. In return it received, among other things, the promise of full possession of the Dodecanese, which it had occupied since 1912, and of a share in the region of Antalya should Asiatic Turkey be partitioned. The government of Antonio Salandra, however, long delayed fulfilling this part of its obligations.

The allies did not hide their impatience. Italian documents show that during the summer Lord Crewe and King George V in London, President Raymond Poincaré in Paris and, in Petrograd, the foreign minister Sergey Sazonov, who had to explain to the Duma why the new ally was not fighting the Turks, all asked about a declaration of war on Turkey. Opinion in Rome was divided. The foreign minister, Sidney Sonnino, favoured a quick break with Turkey. Salandra and some of the diplomats hesitated. There were fears that war with Turkey would rekindle the rising in Libya, endanger the many Italians living in the Ottoman Empire and induce Germany to send troops to the Italian front. It was also feared that the allies would demand Italian participation in the Dardanelles operation, which Italy could not afford.

Libya and a peace not kept

War with Turkey had its own history in Rome. In 1911–1912 Italy had fought it in the war for Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, ended on 18 October 1912 by the peace signed at Ouchy near Lausanne. Turkey withdrew from Libya, but the resistance of the local tribes continued. In the east of the country the struggle was led by the Senussi order, supported by the Turks. In the spring of 1915 the rising also spread to Tripolitania. At the end of April the Italian column of Colonel Antonio Miani suffered a heavy defeat at Gasr Bu Hadi, and according to some studies by early August the Italians held only a few towns on the Tripolitanian coast, including Tripoli, Homs and Misrata.

The Italian note therefore began with old scores. Ever since the peace was signed, the government in Rome wrote, Turkey had constantly broken its terms. It had not ceased hostilities in Libya and had not released Italian prisoners. Turkish soldiers who remained in the country kept their weapons, colours and commanders. Enver directed the fighting against the Italians until the end of November 1912, and his comrade Aziz Bey left Libya with 800 soldiers only in June 1913. Turkish officers were still arriving in Cyrenaica; according to the Italians there were more than a hundred of them there. In April 1915 thirty-five young Libyans whom Enver had taken to the military school in Constantinople in 1912 returned. According to the note, in 1914 Turkey had proclaimed a holy war against the Italians in Africa as well, and French warships had recently intercepted a Turkish mission carrying gifts for the Senussi leaders. According to the Italian consul in Cairo, about forty Turkish officers under the command of Nuri Bey were then in the Senussi camp near the Egyptian border.

Ultimatum over the Italians in Asia Minor

The immediate cause of the break, however, was the matter of Italian citizens. Since Italy’s entry into the war the Turkish authorities, citing military considerations, had not allowed them to leave the ports of Syria and Anatolia. The ban even extended to Italian consuls. The government in Rome judged that this was an argument public opinion would understand and support.

On 3 August Garroni handed the grand vizier a note in the form of an ultimatum with a 48-hour deadline. He demanded that Italians be allowed to leave Beirut freely, that the residents of Smyrna be able to sail from the nearby port of Sığacık, since the port at Urla was closed, that they be able to board ships at Mersin, Alexandretta, Haifa and Jaffa as well, and that the authorities in the interior not obstruct their way to the coast. On 5 August, before the deadline expired, the Porte accepted all the demands. The delivery of the declaration of war, already prepared, was held back, and the Italians sent two ships to Rhodes to take off their compatriots.

The promises soon proved empty. Orders to the local authorities were issued only on 7 August, and on 9 August the military authorities in Beirut and Mersin withdrew the permits. According to the Italian note, ships taking off citizens of neutral states were first to take on board Jews expelled from the Empire who were subjects of belligerent states, which in practice made departure impossible. The American steamer Caesar left Beirut taking only one Italian family, and the American cruisers Chester and Des Moines could not sail because of the same obstacles. The Italians in Smyrna, meanwhile, were required before leaving to pay taxes that Italy had never recognised. On 16 August Sonnino authorised Garroni to deliver the declaration.

The declaration

At Garroni’s request the order of the charges in the text, prepared back in June, was reversed. The note began with the ultimatum of 3 August and the obligations accepted and not kept, and only then listed the violations of the 1912 peace. The ambassador feared that if the Libyan matters came first, the ultimatum would look like a pretext. The latest charges were also added: according to the Italians, Enver had recently sent letters to the Senussi sheikh calling on him to be ready in case of war with Italy and promising supplies of ammunition. The government in Rome stated that the relations of peace and friendship it had hoped to restore in 1912 did not in reality exist, through Turkey’s fault. Since diplomatic protests achieved nothing and Turkey stubbornly violated the rights and freedom of Italian citizens, Italy had to look after the interests of the state and the defence of its colonies by other means.

Dispatches from Constantinople reached Rome with delays of many days, via Bucharest or Dedeagach, and Sonnino could not be sure when the declaration would be delivered. In a circular to Italian missions of 20 August he instructed them to inform the governments to which they were accredited only once they learned that the delivery had actually taken place. Garroni reported the delivery of the note to Rome in a cipher telegram on 20 August itself, but the message, as he supposed, was held up by the Turks. The embassy’s departure from Constantinople was set for Saturday 21 August. Rome entrusted the protection of Italian interests in the Ottoman Empire to the United States.

Echoes

In London the foreign secretary, Edward Grey, having read the text of the Italian circular, told the Italian ambassador that the decision was “extremely agreeable” to him. The Italian minister in Niš reported that the news had softened Serbian resentment of Italy, since the Serbs now expected Italian troops to take part in the fighting for Constantinople. In Athens the press, absorbed by a government crisis, commented sparingly on the war, but voices were heard saying that its first result would be the Italian annexation of the Greek-inhabited Dodecanese. The German press, followed by the Dutch, wrote that Italy had joined the war against Turkey only to take part in its partition.

The declaration of war changed little on the fronts. Italy did not send troops to the Dardanelles, and its main battlefield against Turkey and its allies remained Libya, where the rising went on for years. There was still no war with Germany, however. The government in Rome declared it only at the end of August 1916.