‘How could Turkey recover? How could it even survive? It had nothing; it had been devastated not just by the First World War but also by more than eleven years of endless wars…’
Whilst the battles of Gallipoli (1915) and Sakarya (Aug 1921) on one hand and that of Dumlupınar (Aug 1922) on the other differ in the sense that the first two were defensive but the third was offensive, they all played an equal role in preserving Turkey as we know it today.
During the 19th century, in particular, then in the wake of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), the Ottoman realm had, after each defeat, shrunk so much that by the First World War, only Turkey as we know it today was left. Had the Turks lost the battles cited here, there would be no Turkey as exists now; and whatever would have survived would have been a much narrower piece of land with a population perhaps the tenth of what it is today.
This work does not focus on the military side of these battles, although this takes some interest; its interest is in highlighting what was in store for Turkey in terms of its final carving up, including just prior to the Gallipoli Campaign, and soon after prior to the other two battles. The book relies primarily on sources of the time to catch the raw picture of what was truly happening on the ground, a reality that has been since much muddled by historical narrative.
This is the first book on the Battles of Sakarya and Dumlupınar written in a European language. The book includes maps and illustrations.
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About the Author
Dr Salah Eddine Al-Djazairi is an experienced historian, researcher and writer with over 30 years of academic experience. He has lectured, tutored and researched at the University of Constantine in Algeria, the University of Manchester’ Geography Department and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). He has also given many public lectures as invited speaker at various institutions in the UK and online.
He has published academic articles in leading journals, contributed to well-known encyclopaedias, and written books on topics such as environmental degradation and desertification in the Muslim World, the history of science and technology, Muslim civilization, and the Crusades.
He is known and liked by his readers for his unique style of being rigorously academic in his research and providing plenty of footnotes yet being accessible and clear to a wider audience, debunking myth and pointing out distortions, and not mincing his words. The strength of his work lies also in using Muslim as well as non-Muslim sources in different languages, old and new.
When he isn’t writing, he likes to sit in silence and think. He can also be found cooking, going on long walks and spending time in nature.
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