TURKISH MILITARY ACTIVITIES IN THE CAUCASUS FOLLOWING THE 1917 RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: THE BATTLE OF SARDARABAD AND ITS POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

Year 2009, Issue: 19, 7 - 20, 01.05.2009

Abstract

The Caucasian front was one of the major fronts on which Ottomans fought in the First World War. With the withdrawal of Russia from the war because of the Revolution in 1917, the Ottoman Empire gained the opportunity to take back the territories it had lost during the war, even those it had yielded to the Russians prior to the war. However, there were those who opposed that, among them the Ottoman and Russian Armenians. Furthermore, the Ottomans’ aim to be operative in regional politics was not shared by their ally, Germany, let alone the Allied Powers. Therefore, the fighting and the loss of lives in the region did not end when the First World War came to an end. Aspiring to found a great state and encouraged and incited by the international conjuncture, the Armenians continued their military and terrorist activities to make their own homeland a territory where they were a minority group. But the Ottoman state did not allow this to happen. The Armenians were forced to retreat from the territories they had occupied. In a few months, the Ottoman forces were in the vicinity of Yerevan. Fearing that they would lose everything they possessed, the Armenians put everything they had into these battles. Among all the battles in the region, the Armenians attached special importance to those fought on the front in Serdarabad. This study will try to examine the views of the Turkish sources regarding these events and the repercussions, and try to determine why the Armenians had attached such importance to the fighting on that particular front.

Keywords

First World War, the Caucasian Front, the battle of Serdarabad, Turkish Armenian Battles, Armenia.