Turks retake Tabriz

The British chronology of the war records under 14 June 1918 that Turkish troops had again occupied Tabriz, the capital of Persian Azerbaijan and the country’s second-largest city. The Turks and Kurds had first entered the city in January 1915 and held it for a mere three weeks. The same date, 14 June, is given by the British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign. That day a communiqué was also issued in Constantinople which, according to dispatches from London reprinted on 18 June by The New York Times, explained the occupation of both shores of Lake Urmia and of Tabriz by the need “to cover the flank of our army on the Caucasus front”. Some studies based on Turkish sources state that units of the Ottoman IV Corps had already entered Tabriz on 8 June, and that the communiqué merely confirmed the situation.

The vacuum left by the Russians

The Russians, who had retaken Tabriz at the end of January 1915, kept a garrison there throughout the war. After the revolution their forces disintegrated and at the beginning of 1918 left Persia, and a vacuum opened in the north-west of the country. The neutral government in Tehran did not have the strength to defend it. The Turks, who after the peace of Brest-Litovsk had recovered their eastern provinces and pushed deep into Transcaucasia, regarded Persian Azerbaijan as a natural extension of their offensive. According to the British official history, Nuri Pasha and his staff appeared in Tabriz for a few days as early as the beginning of May, announcing that he was on his way to the Muslim lands of the Caucasus. The main Turkish forces, however, advanced slowly, and at Urmia they were held up by the stubborn resistance of the Assyrian Jilu tribe, supported by Armenians.

The Turkish garrison

The British estimated the Turkish garrison at about 2,000 soldiers with two guns, and roughly a week later reported that the Turks had occupied the Shibli Pass, about 30 kilometres south-east of Tabriz. According to Armenian accounts, at the end of June Ali İhsan Pasha arrived in the city as commander of the Ottoman forces in Persian Azerbaijan. The historians W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, on the other hand, state that Tabriz was occupied in July by the Turkish 11th Caucasian Division, which may indicate the arrival of the main forces. At the same time the Turks were fighting further north against the troops of the Armenian general Andranik Ozanian at Salmas and Khoy.

For the British this was worrying news. From Tabriz a road led through Mianeh and Zanjan to Qazvin, where General Dunsterville was just setting up the headquarters of his mission, which was preparing to march to the Caspian Sea. Dunsterville sent a small observation detachment to Mianeh and asked for reinforcements, but the commander in Mesopotamia, General William Marshall, replied, as he reported to London on 18 June, that he could not count on them, since he could barely supply even the forces he already had. Fortunately for the British, the Turks remained passive. Dunsterville later wrote that the indecision of the Turkish commander delayed the march from Tabriz to Qazvin until September. By then, however, the fate of the war in the Middle East was being decided elsewhere.