Ottoman Prisoners of War in Russia, 1914–22

Abstract

During the Great War, Russia captured more than two million soldiers of the Central Powers, including over 50,000 Ottoman officers and enlisted men. While the captured Ottomans included men of other ethnic groups, the great majority were Turks. Most of the prisoners remained in Russia long after the war was over, some as late as 1922. While there is a large amount of scholarly literature on the POWs of the second world war, fewer studies describe the prisoners of the first world war, and these concentrate mainly on the soldiers of Germany, Britain, France and Austria-Hungary.2 There have been only a few studies on the prisoners of other nations. Recently, the subject of the Ottoman POWs has provoked some interest in Turkey. However, the publications that have appeared are based on limited sources and have a smaller scope.3 This article will give an account of their captivity in Russia and draw some preliminary conclusions about their behaviour and Ottoman society itself. Ottoman participation in the Great War did not result in the same amount of literature as was generated by the 'lost generation of 1914' in England or in the other European countries. Nevertheless, the Ottoman, or more correctly the Turkish, experience in the first world war produced a number of notable