Italo-Turkish War

Italian dirigibles bomb Turkish positions on Libyan territory. The Italo-Turkish War was the first in history to feature aerial bombardment by airplanes and airships.[23]

Ismail Enver Bey in Cyrenaica, 1911.

Despite the time that it had to prepare the invasion, the Royal Italian Army (Regio Esercito) was largely unprepared when the war broke out. The Italian fleet appeared off Tripoli in the evening of 28 September but began bombarding the port only on 3 October. The city was conquered by 1,500 sailors, much to the enthusiasm of the interventionist minority in Italy. Another proposal for a diplomatic settlement was rejected by the Italians, and so the Ottomans decided to defend the province.[24]

On 29 September 1911, Italy has published the declaration of their direct interest towards Libya. Without a proper response, the Italian forces landed on the shores of Libya on 4 October 1911. A considerable number of Italians were living within the Ottoman Empire, mostly inhabiting Istanbul, Izmir, and Thessaloniki, dealing with trade and industry. The sudden declaration of war shocked both the Italian community living in the Empire as well as the Ottoman government. Depending on the mutual friendly relations, the Ottoman Government had sent their Libyan battalions to Yemen in order to suppress local rebellions, leaving only the military police in Libya.[25]

Therefore, the Ottomans did not have a full army in Tripolitania. Many of the Ottoman officers had to travel there by their own means, often secretly, through Egypt since the British government would not allow Ottoman troops to be transported en masse through Egypt. The Ottoman Navy was too weak to transport troops by sea. The Ottomans organised local Libyans for the defence against the Italian invasion.[26]

Between 1911 and 1912, over 1,000 Somalis from Mogadishu, the capital of Italian Somaliland, served as combat units along with Eritrean and Italian soldiers in the Italo-Turkish War.[27] Most of the Somalian troops stationed would return home only in 1935, when they were transferred back to Italian Somaliland in preparation for the invasion of Ethiopia.[28]

The first disembarkation of Italian troops occurred on 10 October. Having no prior military experiences and lacking adequate planning for amphibious invasions, the Italian armies poured onto the coasts of Libya, facing numerous problems during their landings and deployments.[29] After a destructive bombing of its Ottoman fortifications, the city of Tripoli and its surroundings were quickly conquered by 1,500 Italian sailors.[30]

The Italian contingent of 20,000 troops was then deemed to be sufficient to accomplish the conquest. Tobruk, Derna, and Khoms were easily conquered, but the same was not true for Benghazi. The first true setback for the Italian troops happened on 23 October at Shar al-Shatt, when the poor placement of the troops near Tripoli led them to be almost completely encircled by more mobile Arab cavalry, backed by some Ottoman regular units. The attack was portrayed as a simple revolt by the Italian press although it nearly annihilated much of the small Italian expeditionary corps.

The corps was consequently enlarged to 100,000 men who had to face 20,000 Libyans and 8,000 Ottomans. The war turned into one of position. Even the Italian utilisation of armoured cars[31] and air power, both among the earliest in modern warfare, had little effect on the initial outcome.[32] In the first military use of heavier-than-air craft, Capitano Carlo Piazza flew the first reconnaissance flight on 23 October 1911. A week later, Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti dropped four grenades on Tajura (Arabic: تاجوراء Tājūrā’, or Tajoura) and Ain Zara in the first aerial bombing in history.[33]

16 May 1912: surrender of the Ottoman garrison in Rhodes to the Italian general Giovanni Ameglio near Psithos.
(From Italian weekly La Domenica del Corriere, 26 May – 2 June 1912).

Technologically and numerically superior Italian forces easily managed to take the shores. However, the Italians still could not penetrate deep in to the land.[34] The Libyans and Turks, estimated at 15,000, made frequent attacks day and night on the strongly-entrenched Italian garrison in the southern suburbs of Benghazi. The four Italian infantry regiments on the defensive were supported by the cruisers San Marco and Agordat. The Italians rarely attempted a sortie.[35]

An attack of 20,000 Ottoman and local troops was repulsed on 30 November with considerable losses. Shortly afterward, the garrison was reinforced by the 57th infantry regiment from Italy. The battleship Regina Elena also arrived from Tobruk. During the night of 14 and 15 December, the Ottomans attacked in great force but were repulsed with aid of the fire from the ships. The Italians lost several field guns.[35]

At Derna, the Ottomans and the Libyans were estimated at 3,500, but they were being constantly reinforced, and a general assault on the Italian position was expected. The Italian and Turkish forces in Tripoli and Cyrenaica were constantly reinforced since the Ottoman withdrawal to the interior enabled them to reinforce their troops considerably.[35]

Lacking a considerable navy, the Ottomans were not able to send regular forces to Libya, the Ottoman government supported a great number of young officers to travel to the area in order to rally the locals and coordinate the resistance. Enver Bey, Mustafa Kemal Bey, Ali Fethi Bey, Cami Bey, Nuri Bey and many other Turkish officers managed to reach Libya, traveling under secret identities such as covering as a medical doctor, journalist among others. The Ottoman Şehzade Osman Fuad had also joined these officers, granting royal support to the resistance. During the war, Mustafa Kemal Bey, the future founder of the Republic of Turkey, was wounded by a shrapnel to his eye. [36] The cost of the war was defrayed chiefly by voluntary offerings from Muslims; men, weapons, ammunition and all kinds of other supplies were constantly sent across to the Egyptian and Tunisian frontiers, notwithstanding their neutrality. The Italians occupied Sidi Barrani on the coast between Tobruk and Solum to prevent contraband and troops from entering across the Egyptian frontier, and the naval blockaders guarded the coast as well as capturing several sailing ships laden with contraband.[35]

Italian troops firing on the Turks in Tripoli, 1911.

Italian troops landed at Tobruk after a brief bombardment on 4 December 1911, occupied the seashore, and marched towards the hinterlands facing weak resistance.[37] Small numbers of Ottoman soldiers and Libyan volunteers were later organized by Captain Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The small 22 December Battle of Tobruk resulted in Mustafa Kemal's victory.[38] With that achievement, he was assigned to Derna War quarters to coordinate the field on 6 March 1912. The Libyan campaign ground to a stalemate by December 1911.[5]

On 3 March 1912, 1,500 Libyan volunteers attacked Italian troops who were building trenches near Derna. The Italians, who were outnumbered but had superior weaponry, held the line. A lack of coordination between the Italian units sent from Derna as reinforcements and the intervention of Ottoman artillery threatened the Italian line, and the Libyans attempted to surround the Italian troops. Further Italian reinforcements, however, stabilised the situation, and the battle ended in the afternoon with an Italian victory.

On 14 September, the Italian command sent three columns of infantry to disband the Arab camp near Derna. The Italian troops occupied a plateau and interrupted Ottoman supply lines. Three days later, the Ottoman commander, Enver Bey, attacked the Italian positions on the plateau. The larger Italian fire drove back the Ottoman soldiers, who were surrounded by a battalion of Alpini and suffered heavy losses. A later Ottoman attack had the same outcome. Then, operations in Cyrenaica ceased until the end of the war.

Although some elements of the local population collaborated with the Italians, counterattacks by Ottomans soldiers with the help of local troops confined the Italian army to the coastal region.[8] In fact, by the end of 1912 the Italians had made little progress in conquering Libya. The Italian soldiers were in effect besieged in seven enclaves on the coasts of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.[39] The largest was at Tripoli and extended barely 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from the town.[39]

Italian cruiser bombarding Ottoman vessels in Beirut harbor.

At sea, the Italians enjoyed a clear advantage. The Italian Navy had seven times the tonnage of the Ottoman Navy and was better trained.[40]

In January 1912, the Italian cruiser Piemonte, with the Soldato class destroyers Artigliere and Garibaldino, sank seven Ottoman gunboats (Ayintab, Bafra, Gökcedag, Kastamonu, Muha, Ordu and Refahiye) and a yacht (Sipka) in the Battle of Kunfuda Bay. The Italians blockaded the Red Sea ports of the Ottomans and actively supplied and supported the Emirate of Asir, which was also then at war with the Ottoman Empire.[41]

Then, on 24 February, in the Battle of Beirut, two Italian armoured cruisers attacked and sank an Ottoman casemate corvette and six lighters, retreated and returned and then sank an Ottoman torpedo boat. Avnillah alone suffered 58 killed and 108 wounded. By contrast, the Italian ships took no casualties and also no direct hits from any of the Ottoman warships.[42] Italy had feared that the Ottoman naval forces at Beirut could be used to threaten the approach to the Suez Canal. The Ottoman naval presence at Beirut was completely annihilated and casualties on the Ottoman side were heavy. The Italian Navy gained complete naval dominance of the southern Mediterranean for the rest of the war.

Although Italy could extend its control to almost all of the 2,000 km of the Libyan coast between April and early August 1912, its ground forces could not venture beyond the protection of the navy's guns and so were limited to a thin coastal strip. In the summer of 1912, Italy began operations against the Ottoman possessions in the Aegean Sea with the approval of the other powers, which were eager to end a war that was lasting much longer than expected. Italy occupied twelve islands in the sea, comprising the Ottoman province of Rhodes, which then became known as the Dodecanese, but that raised the discontent of Austria-Hungary, which feared that it could fuel the irredentism of nations such as Serbia and Greece and cause imbalance in the already-fragile situation in the Balkan area. The only other relevant military operation of the summer was an attack of five Italian torpedo boats in the Dardanelles on 18 July.

Mustafa Kemal (left) with an Ottoman military officer and Libyan mujahideen.

With a decree of 5 November 1911, Italy declared its sovereignty over Libya. Although the Italians controlled the coast, many of their troops had been killed in battle and nearly 6,000 Ottoman soldiers remained to face an army of nearly 140,000 Italians. As a result, the Ottomans began using guerrilla tactics. Indeed, some "Young Turk" officers reached Libya and helped organize a guerrilla war with local mujahideen.[43] Many local Libyans joined forces with the Ottomans because of their common faith against the "Christian invaders" and started bloody guerrilla warfare. Italian authorities adopted many repressive measures against the rebels, such as public hangings as retaliation for ambushes.

On 23 October 1911, over 500 Italian soldiers were slaughtered by Turkish troops at Sciara Sciatt, on the outskirts of Tripoli.[44] As a consequence, on the next day the 1911 Tripoli massacre had Italian troops systematically murder thousands of civilians by moving through local homes and gardens one by one, including by setting fire to a mosque with 100 refugees inside.[45] Although Italian authorities attempted to keep the news of the massacre from getting out, the incident soon became internationally known.[45] The Italians started to show photographs of the massacred Italian soldiers at Sciara Sciat to justify their revenge.

In 1924, the Serbian diplomat Miroslav Spalajković could look back on the events that led to the First World War and its aftermath and state of the Italian attack, "all subsequent events are nothing more than the evolution of that first aggression."[52] Unlike the British-controlled Egypt, the Ottoman Tripolitania vilayet, which made up modern-day Libya, was core territory of the Empire, like that of the Balkans.[53] The coalition that had defended the Ottomans during the Crimean War (1853-1856), minimised Ottoman territorial losses at the Congress of Berlin (1878) and supported the Ottomans during the Bulgarian Crisis (1885–88) had largely disappeared.[54] The reaction in the Balkans to the Italian declaration of war was immediate. The first draft by Serbia of a military treaty with Bulgaria against Turkey was written by November 1911, with a defensive treaty signed in March 1912 and an offensive treaty signed in May 1912 focused on military action against Ottoman-ruled Southeastern Europe. The series of bilateral treaties between Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro that created the Balkan League was completed in 1912, with the First Balkan War (1912-1913) beginning by a Montenegrin attack on 8 October 1912, ten days before the Treaty of Ouchy.[55] The swift and nearly-complete victory of the Balkan League astonished contemporary observers.[56] However, the Serbs were unhappy with the division of captured territory and continued to hold areas promised to Bulgaria, which resulted in the Second Balkan War (1913) in which Serbia, Greece, the Ottomans, and Romania took almost all of the territory that Bulgaria had captured in the first war.[57] In the wake of the enormous change in the regional balance of power, Russia switched its primary allegiance in the region from Bulgaria to Serbia and guaranteed Serbian autonomy from any outside military intervention. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by a Serbian nationalist and the resulting Austro-Hungarian plan for military action against Serbia was a major precipitating event of the First World War (1914-1918)

The Italo-Turkish War illustrated to the French and British governments that Italy was more valuable to them inside the Triple Alliance than being formally allied with the Entente. In January 1912, the French diplomat Paul Cambon wrote to Raymond Poincaré that Italy was "more burdensome than useful as an ally. Against Austria, she harbours a latent hostility that nothing can disarm".[58] The tensions within the Triple Alliance would eventually lead Italy to sign the 1915 Treaty of London, which had it abandon the Triple Alliance and join the Entente.

In Italy itself, massive funerals for fallen heroes brought the Catholic Church closer to the government from which it had long been alienated. There emerged a cult of patriotic sacrifice in which the colonial war was celebrated in an aggressive and imperialistic way. The ideology of "crusade" and "martyrdom" characterised the funerals. The result was to consolidate Catholic war culture among devout Italians, which was soon expanded to include Italian involvement in the Great War (1915–1918). That aggressive spirit was revived by the Fascists in the 1920s to strengthen their popular support.[59]

The resistance in Libya was an important experience for the young officers of the Ottoman Army, such as Mustafa Kemal Bey, Enver Bey, Ali Fethi Bey, Cami Bey Nuri Bey and many others. These young officers were to perform important military duties and accomplishments in the First World War, led the Turkish independency war and found the Republic of Turkey. [60]

Because of the First World War, the Dodecanese remained under Italian military occupation. According to the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which was never ratified, Italy was supposed to cede all of the islands except Rhodes to Greece in exchange for a vast Italian zone of influence in southwest Anatolia. However, the Greek defeat in the Greco–Turkish War and the foundation of modern Turkey created a new situation that made the enforcement of the terms of that treaty impossible. In Article 15 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which superseded the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, Turkey formally recognised the Italian annexation of the Dodecanese. The population was largely Greek, and by treaty in 1947, the islands eventually became part of Greece.[61]

In his book Primo, the Turkish Child, the renowned Turkish author Ömer Seyfettin tells the fictional story of a boy living in the Ottoman city of Selânik (Salonica, today Thessaloniki), who has to choose his national identity between his Turkish father and Italian mother after the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912 and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 (Ömer Seyfettin, Primo Türk Çocuğu).