Ottoman offensive in western Persia

The British chronology of the war records under 5 June 1916, with the caveat that the date is approximate, the start of the Turkish offensive in western Persia, and adds that the Russian troops evacuated Khanaqin. This second part is wrong. The Russians never took Khanaqin at that time: in mid-May General Nikolai Baratov’s corps halted before the town, and its attack of 3 June was repulsed. The start of the Turkish counter-offensive itself, however, does fall in the first days of June. Within a few days of the failed Russian attack the whole Ottoman XIII Corps had assembled at Khanaqin, and Baratov began to withdraw deeper into Persia.

A repulsed attack and a retreat

According to W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, authors of a history of the Caucasian wars, on 3 June some 3,000 Russian infantry and 3,000 horsemen under General Prince Beloselsky attacked about 7,000 Turks of the 6th Division, entrenched in a strong position. In the centre advanced a frontier guard regiment with twelve guns, and on the left wing dragoons and Cossacks outflanked the enemy and briefly cut the road from Baghdad, scattering supply columns. The infantry, however, failed to break through the defences. According to these authors the Turks lost about 400 men. General Yevgeny Maslovsky, a staff officer of the Russian Caucasus Army who gives dates according to the Julian calendar, writes that the troops, exhausted by sickness and by lack of water and fodder, returned the next day, 22 May (4 June), to Qasr-e Shirin. Allen and Muratoff state that the retreat from Qasr-e Shirin towards the mountains began on 6 June. The British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign says briefly that Baratov, repulsed at Khanaqin, had to fall back to Kerend.

The Russians would have had to leave anyway. The Mesopotamian summer was decimating their corps. Maslovsky calculated that the May march alone from Kermanshah towards Khanaqin had cost 460 killed and wounded, but also 2,430 sick with malaria, cholera and sunstroke, which amounted to about half the infantry. Baratov nevertheless wanted to strike the Turks a blow before retreating, because he feared the effect a retreat would have on the tribes along his supply line, which ran about 1,300 kilometres from the Caspian Sea. Allen and Muratoff write that he did not know how serious the intentions of the Turkish command in Baghdad were.

Enver’s design

The decision was taken in May. Enver Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Ottoman army, arrived in Baghdad at the turn of April and May, just after the surrender of Kut, together with the German general Otto von Lossow. The British official history writes that Enver, brushing aside all objections, demanded that the whole XIII Corps be sent to the Persian frontier, not only to push Baratov back but to recover Kermanshah and to take up again the Turco-German plans in Persia and further east. Allen and Muratoff write that in Enver the dreamer once more got the better of the strategist. The war against the British in southern Iraq seemed to him harder and less promising than the conquest of Persia, where he hoped to raise a Persian national army. The Ottoman Sixth Army, commanded by Halil Pasha, was divided into two corps. XVIII Corps remained on the Tigris facing the British, while the XIII Corps of Colonel Ali Ihsan Bey, in many sources already called pasha, with the 2nd and 6th Divisions and a cavalry brigade, went into Persia.

Maslovsky states that on 23 May by the Julian calendar, that is 5 June, units of the 2nd Division from Kut and up to 2,000 irregular Kurdish horsemen from the Mosul area reached Khanaqin. In his view the Turkish forces facing the Russians thus grew to 21,000 men. Allen and Muratoff write of about 25,000, counting the Kurdish horse, auxiliary units and Persian volunteers from among the nationalists who had fled from the Russians to Baghdad in the spring. The Germans promised to provide artillery, but did not keep their promise. Even so, the corps was much stronger than anything Baratov could set against it.

The Turks enter Persia

According to Maslovsky, on 26 May (8 June) XIII Corps went over to a determined offensive and crossed into Persia from Khanaqin and Mandali. At the same time a composite Turkish division from Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan moved on Senneh, today’s Sanandaj. Allen and Muratoff likewise write that Ali Ihsan concentrated his corps and crossed the frontier two days after the Russian retreat began. The date of 5 June in the British chronology thus corresponds roughly to the day on which all the Turkish forces had gathered at Khanaqin, while the offensive itself developed over the following days.

The British on the Tigris could not help the Russians. General Percy Lake, commander in Mesopotamia, reported on 13 June that his corps, which in April and May had lost more than 22,000 men in battle and to disease, would not be fit to attack for a long time yet. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, William Robertson, agreed that there should be no attack for the time being. The British official history also notes that many German and Turkish officers later regarded the Persian expedition as an unjustified dispersal of forces which ultimately cost the Turks the loss of Baghdad. In June 1916, however, nobody foresaw this. Within a few weeks Ali Ihsan’s offensive was to take Kerend and Kermanshah from the Russians.