ABSTRACT
The Ottoman government ordered all Ottoman men of military age to report for duty on October 31, creating large processing delays as well as compromising the fall harvest in many areas that depended on manual farm labor. Germany had been building stronger economic ties to the Ottoman Empire for some time as well. Use of foreign military commanders was a longstanding Ottoman tradition. The first hostile acts taken by a military unit under an Ottoman flag were in fact under the command of Souchon, who led a naval squadron that shelled the Russian Black Sea ports of Sevastopol and Odessa and destroyed the Russian minesweeper Prut on October 29. The government also took the unusual step of having the Ottoman Shaykh al-Islam issue a fatwa to legitimize the war as a jihad that all Muslims around the world were invited to join.
