The British and Irish press and the outbreak of war with the Ottoman Empire in 1914

Abstract

ABSTRACTOn November 5, 1914, after the Ottoman Navy bombarded Russian ports in the Black Sea, Britain and the Ottoman Empire were at war with each other. For the better part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain had, in fact, supported the Ottoman Empire from foreign aggressors and worked hard to maintain the territorial integrity of the latter’s borders. War with Constantinople marked a considerable change in Britain’s foreign policy. How, then, did the press, both in Britain and Ireland, react to the outbreak of war between the two powers? This article argues that the Committee of Union and Progress, Constantinople’s ruling political body, was represented in the war’s opening months as a pro-German pawn, as an enemy of Islam and Muslims worldwide, and as a crypto-Jewish cabal, made up of dönmeh (Jewish converts) from Salonika, pushing the Ottoman Empire towards a hopeless war.