Constantinople in the First World War

Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire on the Bosporus, was during the war the seat of the Sultan, of the Young Turk government and of the German missions that directed the army and the navy. Here the decision on the alliance with Germany was taken, here the arrests of Armenians began in April 1915, and here in 1918 the government looked for a way out of the war. The city was also the Entente’s chief objective in the Middle East: Russia extracted from its allies a promise that it would get it, and the whole operation at the Dardanelles was meant to open the fleet’s way to its quays. The victors arrived only after the armistice, in November 1918, and stayed until 1923.

The road to war (1914)

On 2 August 1914 in Constantinople the ambassador Hans von Wangenheim and the Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha signed the secret alliance. Only a few leaders knew of it, among them the War Minister Enver Pasha and the Interior Minister Talat. A few days later the German warships Goeben and Breslau entered the Dardanelles, and on 16 August they hoisted the Turkish flag. The British naval mission left Turkey, and on 9 September the government announced the abolition of the capitulations, the privileges of foreigners.

On 29 October the fleet under German command shelled Russian ports, and the Entente ambassadors left the capital at the turn of October and November. On 14 November, in front of the Fatih Mosque, the Sultan’s call was read out for jihad. The procession then stopped at the German embassy, and according to witnesses it ended with the looting of several Christian shops and houses. In December Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz set out for Constantinople, where he became the Sultan’s adjutant general.

The Entente’s goal (1915)

On 4 March 1915 Russia demanded that its allies agree to the annexation of Constantinople and the Straits after the war. London agreed on 12 March, and Paris on 10 April. Meanwhile the British and French fleet was shelling the Dardanelles forts. The American ambassador Henry Morgenthau wrote that at the beginning of March an exodus from the capital began: women and children were being moved into the interior, the banks sent their gold to Asia Minor, and the archives of the Sublime Porte were carried off to Eskişehir. According to the Turkish historian Cezmi Eraslan, the Sultan was to move there too, and treasures were sent to Konya. The fleet’s defeat on 18 March put an end to these preparations.

On the evening of 24 April, on Talat’s orders, between about 240 and 270 Armenian politicians, writers, doctors and clergy were arrested in Constantinople. Most of them were murdered, and in the summer the deportations covered almost all the Armenian communities of the empire. Armenians commemorate the genocide on the anniversary of these arrests. According to a tally cited by the historian Raymond Kévorkian, about 150,000 Armenians were living in Constantinople at the end of 1919.

The war also reached the capital under water. On 25 May the British submarine E11 torpedoed a transport at the arsenal quay, and in July E7 entered the harbour. Submarines sank ships in the Sea of Marmara and cut the transport of troops to Gallipoli, which, according to Eraslan, dispirited the inhabitants.

The capital at war (1916–1918)

On 15 January 1916, after the conquest of Serbia, the first Balkan Train to Constantinople left Berlin. In April the city celebrated the surrender of Kut. From March 1916 British aircraft appeared over the city, and in April machines from Mudros bombed the powder factory at Zeytinburnu. The raids went on until the end of the war, and the heaviest, on 18 October 1918, killed fifty people according to Eraslan.

The closed Straits made it hard to bring in food, and special commissions had to see to the supply of bread, flour, sugar and oil. On 4 February 1917 Talat became Grand Vizier. In October that year Emperor Wilhelm II was a guest in the capital, and in May 1918 Emperor Karl. On 3 July 1918 Sultan Mehmed V died, and his brother took the throne as Mehmed VI.

Defeat and occupation (1918–1923)

After Bulgaria’s capitulation Talat’s government resigned, and on 14 October Ahmed İzzet Pasha became Grand Vizier. His delegation signed the Mudros armistice on 30 October. On the night of 1–2 November Talat, Enver and Djemal fled the capital on a German ship. On 12 November the first French soldiers entered the city, and on 13 November the Allied fleet dropped anchor off Constantinople and the British went ashore. That day Mustafa Kemal arrived here from Adana.

The Allies divided the city into zones: the French took the old city, the British Galata and Pera, and the Italians Üsküdar. On 8 February 1919 General Louis Franchet d’Espérey entered the city. Constantinople was the only capital of the Central Powers that the victors occupied for several years. The last Allied troops left it on 4 October 1923, after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne.