THE Ottoman Empire had entered the Great War quite willingly, even if it did so at a push from Germany. For the empire the main enemy was always Russia, a country which had been a constant and repeated enemy for centuries. Russia had gradually chopped off parts of the empire, either by annexations or by encouraging provinces to grasp at independence. The other Ottoman enemies in this war, Britain and France, became so because they were allied with Russia. At the same time, both of these countries had also sliced off choice Ottoman morsels in the past, notably in Britain's case by taking Egypt. For the Ottoman Empire there were plenty of reasons to be fighting all three states.

By 1914, after recent losses in the Balkans and in Africa, the empire comprised two main national groups, Turks and Arabs, along with several smaller groups, such as Armenians and Kurds. The Committee of Union and Progress, popularly referred to as the ‘Young Turks’, who had seized power in a series of coups between 1908 and 1913, had instigated a fairly chaotic policy of Turkification. This had alienated most of the rest of the empire, in particular the Arabs, and the Armenians had been driven into alliance with the invading Russians as a result. The Turkish government had replied with massacre and expulsion so that when the Russian armies finally invaded the region in 1916 there were few Armenians left. As Muslims – the Armenians were Christians – the Arabs were not treated as harshly as that, but as Arabs they were subjected to discrimination.