Turkey declares war on Romania

On 30 August 1916 at six in the evening the American chargé d’affaires in Constantinople, Hoffman Philip, sent a short dispatch to Washington. He reported that the day before the Ottoman Council of Ministers had adopted a resolution, then confirmed by decree of the Sultan, under which Turkey, together with Germany and Bulgaria, was declaring war on Romania. The government was headed by the Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha, and the decree was signed by Sultan Mehmed V. Three days had passed since Romania’s declaration of war on Austria-Hungary, and two since the German declaration.

That same day the Ottoman minister in Bucharest asked his American colleague, Charles Vopicka, for the United States to take over the protection of Turkish interests in Romania, as the German minister had done three days earlier. The Romanians did not wait for formalities. As early as 28 August notices were posted in the streets of the capital ordering all men aged 16 and over who were subjects of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria to report for designated trains and leave for an internment camp in the Ialomița district, near Călărași. Vopicka estimated that about 50,000 people ended up there. When the diplomats of the Central Powers left Bucharest on a special train, only two men remained in the Ottoman legation building: a clerk and a doorkeeper.

The dispute over the date

The British chronology of the war records the Turkish declaration under 30 August, and some Romanian works give that date. Other sources give 29 August, the day of the Council of Ministers’ meeting, or 1 September, as does Langensiepen and Güleryüz’s history of the Ottoman navy. According to Philip’s dispatch the decision was taken on 29 August and the Sultan confirmed it without delay. Romania itself still used the Julian calendar, in which 30 August was 17 August. Philip’s dispatch of 30 August is the earliest certain evidence that Turkey considered itself at war.

Former overlords

The Turks and the Romanians had known each other for centuries. Wallachia and Moldavia, from which Romania was formed in the 19th century, had been vassal principalities of the Ottoman Empire for several hundred years. Romania broke its last ties during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877. It then proclaimed its independence, and its troops under Prince Carol fought alongside the Russians at Plevna. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 recognised Romania’s independence and gave it the northern part of Dobruja, until then an Ottoman province, in exchange for southern Bessarabia, which Russia took.

Dobruja retained a large Muslim population from Turkish times, Turks and Tatars, and there were mosques in its small towns. In 1913, during the Second Balkan War, the Romanians and the Turks had in fact found themselves on the same side, against Bulgaria. Romanian troops then advanced to the outskirts of Sofia, and the Turks retook Adrianople. The Treaty of Bucharest gave Romania southern Dobruja. Three years later Turkey was fighting shoulder to shoulder with Bulgaria, with which it had come to terms in September 1915 when Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, while Romania had sided with Russia, the Turks’ age-old enemy.

Ammunition for the Dardanelles

In the first year of the war the Turks had one main problem with Romania. Through its territory, and then through still-neutral Bulgaria, ran the only railway route from Germany and Austria-Hungary to Constantinople that avoided hostile Serbia. The Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu described how Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu closed this route to military transports. About three weeks after the outbreak of war in Europe a train carrying 257 German soldiers in civilian clothes passed through Romania. Officially they were to work on building the Baghdad Railway; in reality they were going to strengthen the defences of the Dardanelles. After protests by supporters of the Entente, the Romanian government allowed only groups of at most 20 people to pass, and then banned the transport of arms and ammunition altogether.

When in 1915 the British and French were assaulting the Dardanelles, the Germans concluded that the fate of the Straits depended on supplying Turkey. Berlin and Vienna promised Bucharest a loan and concessions in Bukovina in return for free transit, but Brătianu refused. So the Germans tried to smuggle through Romania at least shells, weapon parts and aircraft engines, hidden in wagons with double walls or in barrels of lard and sugar. Romanian customs officers and railwaymen tracked down these consignments. Only when Bulgaria entered the war in the autumn of 1915 and the armies of the Central Powers conquered Serbia did a direct railway line from Germany to Turkey open.

Enver and the war in Europe

The Turkish declaration was not just a gesture of solidarity. In 1916 the commander-in-chief and Minister of War, Enver Pasha, was eager to offer his allies soldiers for the European fronts. On 10 July 1916 Turkish headquarters ordered XV Corps, made up of two divisions, including the 19th Division, which a year earlier had defended the Gallipoli peninsula, to be sent to Galicia. More than 30,000 soldiers travelled by rail through four countries, and on 22 August the corps took up positions on the Złota Lipa in General Felix von Bothmer’s South Army. The Austrian official history writes that the Turks sent it despite the difficult situation on their own fronts, “in exemplary fulfilment of their obligations as allies”.

Enver had also committed himself in advance in case of war with Romania. On 28 July at Pless the chiefs of staff of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria agreed that if Romania joined the Entente, it would face “joint energetic action” by the four states. An army was to be formed in northern Bulgaria, to which the Turks were to contribute two infantry divisions. On 3 August, during a meeting with Generals Erich von Falkenhayn and Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf in Budapest, Enver acceded to this agreement. According to the Austrian official history, it was his repeated suggestions, along with the need to keep Bulgaria in the alliance, that Falkenhayn used at the end of August as an argument for creating a joint supreme command of the Central Powers under Emperor Wilhelm II. The Turkish scholar Altay Atlı, author of a study of Turkey’s part in the war, stresses that Enver had units prepared for the Romanian front even before Romania declared war.

The Turks also had reasons of their own for alarm. In 1915 Britain and France had agreed to give Russia Constantinople and the Straits after a victorious war. Romania’s entry into the war opened the Russians’ way into the Balkans from the north. General Andrei Zayonchkovsky, whose corps was just entering Dobruja, later wrote that the alliance with Romania offered a chance to knock out first Bulgaria and then Turkey with a joint blow from Salonika and Dobruja. According to the Austrian official history, which cites the Romanian general Radu Dabija, the Russians were to take Varna as a base for a further expedition via Burgas to Constantinople. The defeat of Bulgaria would also have cut Turkey’s only railway link with Germany, along which arms and ammunition reached it.

The Turks in Dobruja

Enver sent to the Romanian front General Mustafa Hilmi Pasha’s VI Corps with the 15th and 25th Divisions. The soldiers assembled at Adrianople and at Bakırköy near Constantinople, from where trains took them to Varna and Provadia in northern Bulgaria. The poor state of the Bulgarian railways delayed the journey. The first Turkish regiment reached Provadia only on 4 September, when the Bulgarians, who had declared war on Romania on 1 September, were already fighting in Dobruja. According to the Austrian official history, after its first victories the Bulgarian Third Army set off in pursuit of the Romanians and Russians only on 12 September, partly because it was waiting for the approaching Turkish units. The delay displeased Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who commanded the forces of the Central Powers on this front.

The Turks went into action at the end of September, and in October they took part in breaking the front in Dobruja, after which the Central Powers took Constanța. In the autumn Enver sent the 26th Division as well, which crossed the Danube at Svishtov and marched on Bucharest. According to Atlı, about 39,000 Turkish soldiers fought in Romania in all. By March 1917 the three divisions had lost about 18,000 men. Atlı believes that these experienced units would have been more useful in Mesopotamia and Palestine, where the Turks suffered heavy defeats in 1917.

Significance

The Turkish declaration closed the circle. Within a few days of Romania’s move against Austria-Hungary, all four Central Powers were at war with it. The Romanian war plan envisaged an offensive in Transylvania and defence in the south. Instead, on the Danube and in Dobruja the Romanians faced Mackensen’s multinational forces: Bulgarians, Germans and Turks, who for the first time in nearly forty years were fighting on land once ruled by the sultans.