ABSTRACT
Ottoman foreign policy prior to 1914 was influenced by a variety of external and internal forces. Adding to the conflicting influences on the Ottoman foreign policy was the divided loyalty of the military; the Ottoman Army was firmly under the guiding hand of German officers and pro-German Ottoman officers who had attended military schools in Germany, while the small Ottoman Navy was being advised by Great Britain, which was also constructing a battleship for the Ottoman Navy. By 1908, the reform movement had become strong enough to engage in a revolution with reinstallation of the Ottoman Constitution as a central tenet. Turkish nationalism then became the approach underlying the Young Turk movement and subsequently the strongest of the internal forces shaping Ottoman foreign policy. The British and Indian soldiers faced two enemies in Mesopotamia. One was the regular German-organized, re-equipped, and trained Turkish Army. The second was the many Arab irregulars that aided the Ottoman Army.
