Caucasus Campaign - Background

Background

The main objective of the Ottoman Empire was the recovery of its territories in Armenian Highland. These regions were captured by Russians after the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78. The strategic goals of the Caucasus Campaign for Ottoman Forces was to retake Artvin, Ardahan, Kars, and the port of Batum. A success in this region would mean a diversion of Russian forces to this front from the Polish and Galician fronts. A Caucasus Campaign would have a distracting effect on Russian forces. The plan found sympathy with German advisory. Germany supplied the missing resources and the Ottoman 3rd Army's manpower was used to achieve the desired distraction. War Minister Enver Pasha hoped a success would facilitate opening the route to Tbilisi and beyond with a revolt of Caucasian Muslims. The Ottoman – or rather German – strategic goal was to cut off Russian access to the hydrocarbon resources around the Caspian Sea.

Russia viewed the Caucasus front as secondary to the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front had the most Russian manpower and resources. Russia had taken the fortress of Kars from the Turks during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877 and feared a campaign into the Caucasus aimed at retaking Kars and the port of Batum. In March 1915, when the Russian foreign minister Sergey Sazonov in a meeting with British ambassador George Buchanan and French Ambassador Maurice Paléologue stated that a lasting postwar settlement demanded full Russian possession of the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, the straits of Bosphorus and Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, southern Thrace up to the Enos-Midia line as well as parts of the Black Sea coast of Anatolia between the Bosphorus, the Sakarya River and an undetermined point near the Bay of Izmit. The Russian Tsarist regime planned to replace the Muslim population of Northern Anatolia and Istanbul with more reliable Cossack settlers.

Armenian national liberation movement sought to establish First Republic of Armenia. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation achieved this goal with the establishment of the internationally recognized Democratic Republic of Armenia in May 1918. Also as early as 1915, the Administration for Western Armenia and later Republic of Mountainous Armenia were Armenian controlled entities, while Centrocaspian Dictatorship was established with Armenian participation. None of these entities were long lasting.

The British worked with Russian revolutionary troops to prevent Enver Pasha's goal of establishing an independent Transcaucasia. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was in the proposed path of Ottoman ambitions, which owned the exclusive rights to work petroleum deposits throughout the Persian Empire except in the provinces of Azerbaijan, Ghilan, Mazendaran, Asdrabad and Khorasan. In 1914, before the war, the British government had contracted with the company for the supply of oil-fuel for the navy.