Conclusions

The most striking feature of British policy towards the Ottoman Empire, during the period between the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908 and the outbreak of war in November 1914, was the change from a sympathetic attitude to one of hostility. British policy should not, however, be assessed solely by the failure explicit in the rupture of diplomatic relations. It should be placed, rather, in the context of the potentialities existing before August 1914, and judged by the extent to which the British could and did exploit those potentialities. Conversely, it would be equally fallacious to concentrate on peripheral issues: the subsidiary points of the successful negotiations concerning the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia (which had no importance in terms of higher policy after 1912); the appointment of Orme Clarke as Inspector-General to the Ottoman Ministry of Justice; and the positions occupied by Graves and Crawford in the other Ministries. These functions clearly carried with them no political influence whatsoever. Again, no importance can be attached to the goodwill visit to Constantinople by the C.-in-C. Mediterranean on the very eve of the European War. ¹ The real differences between Britain and the Porte had not been solved by August 1914. Basically, this was because those differences could not, from the British point of view, be treated in isolation. The fundamental fact of British policy towards the Ottoman Empire, and indeed towards any other country during this period, was its complete subordination to two major considerations: the agreements with France and Russia, and the welfare of the British Empire. Young Turk policy, in a number of ways, threatened both. Never, therefore, were the Ottoman suggestions for an alliance with Britain a question of practical policy for Britain, even when relations were at their peak in late 1908. That is why they were rejected out of hand.