Gallipoli & the Dardanelles

[Robert Dunlop]

I think perhaps the British were viewing the Ottomans as equivalent to African tribesmen; a show of force, and the enemy melt away. Also, up to that point, the British had been facing Arab levies, not Anatolian regulars, leading to a serious underestimation of what the Ottomans could do.

Abdul, I think you are quite right. I have just been reading Yigal Sheffy's fascinating book on the British military intelligence services in the Middle East. He makes the interesting point that having seriously under-estimated the capability of the Ottoman Army prior to Gallipoli, the British then began to over-estimate. Thus, the British struggled to fully understand the Turkish Army and it was only very late in the war that there was a truer appreciation of how much effect desertions, etc were having on the numbers of forces that they were facing. The stubborn defensive capabilities of the Turkish soldiers would have added to this misconception being maintained.