During World War I, Indian troops spread across the Ottoman empire, helped lay the foundations of West Asia as we know it
“The Turkish Empire has committed suicide, and dug with its own hands its grave”, the British prime minister Herbert Asquith, proclaimed in early November 1914. He was responding to the Ottoman naval bombardment of Ukraine, bringing Turkey into the First World War in alliance with Germany against the Allies.
To illustrate — in north-west Iran and the Caucasus, Indian regiments helped to block Turkish movements towards Central Asia. In central and southern Iran, they attacked suspected anti-Allied jihadists, and countered Turkish and German agents seeking to infiltrate sensitive Indian border zones. From the Arabian Gulf, Indian troops attacked hundreds of miles into Iraq, reaching its northernmost Ottoman province to seize the oil fields. On the Arabian Peninsula, they contained the Ottoman garrisons of Yemen, assisted Lawrence of Arabia and embedded like him in local Arab rebel forces, and raided Ottoman outposts on Red Sea islands. Then out of Egypt Indian units made multiple attacks, both westwards in the Western Desert against Libyan jihadists, and eastwards into the Sinai, Palestine and Syria. From Egypt they also took part in the Allies’ amphibious assault on European Turkey: The Gallipoli campaign.
By November 1918, the Indian army’s immense grip on formerly Ottoman-controlled soil, where it had defeated the Turks, was reflected in the sheer size and breadth of its occupation. It was the single-largest Allied force in the Turkish theatres, having deployed a total of approximately 7,60,000 Indian troops to them. Its men stood guard from Basra, Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul to Cairo, Suez, Gaza, Jerusalem, Amman, Haifa, Damascus, Gallipoli and Istanbul. At the time, the British empire, in fact, approached its territorial zenith.
The Allied peace negotiations with the Turks were to last longer than the First World War itself. Their protraction was proof of their complexity. The Allies hotly competed for the spoils of Ottoman defeat: The British angled for new British-influenced Middle Eastern buffer states from Iraq to Palestine in order to cushion the Indian imperial sphere, while the French, Greeks and Italians looked to partition the Ottoman empire for new imperial possessions of their own. The Turks wanted Turkey for themselves and fought for it, above all against the Greeks.
Eventually, the Allies and the Turks signed the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923. In conjunction with other international agreements applying more widely to the Ottoman lands of 1914-18, the borders were drawn of the Turkish Republic and other post-war Middle Eastern states and European-administered mandates including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. The map of the modern Middle East had taken shape.
The Indian army gradually evacuated the Middle East up to the late 1920s as the post-war settlements took effect. Having been a wrecking ball to knock down the Ottoman empire during the war, its place between the old and the new Middle East had ultimately been destructive — on behalf, of course, of the British empire.
https://indianexpress.com/article/o...y-turkish-empire-ottoman-world-war-i-5439839/
While the Muslims from India had other thoughts:
For many South Asian Muslims the thought of going to war against the Ottoman Caliph was repulsive and lead some to defect to the Ottomans.
The website for Britain's Sikh Museum contains a critical letter sent to a Muslim soldier serving in France in March 1916 that explains the distaste many South Asian Muslims toward serving Britain against the Ottomans: "You are entangled in a war in which no victory has been gained nor can any be gained in the future. What you ought to do is raise your fellow caste-men against the English and join the army of Islam (the Turks)."
Indeed, the multifaith character of the Singapore rebellion was noted by the Ottoman Consul General Rıfat Efendi in Batavia who filed a dispatch on the rebellion, "the truth is that an Indian Muslim, in the aforementioned city and Indian Muslim soldiers have declared major Jihad for the greater Islamic state against the British and also including the Hindu soldiers arriving from Singapore as well those Muslim civilians according to the intelligence that I have received" he wrote.
The Singapore Mutiny was not the only pro-Ottoman mutiny of World War I. Less than a year later a similar mutiny erupted in the winter of 1915-1916 when over 400 members unit the Indian Army's 15th Lancers, another majority Muslim unit refused to fight their Ottomans co-religionists during the Mesopotamia Campaign.
WW1 though not our war nor initiated by us, but nonetheless fought completely with our men, resources and money. We certainly can claim the credit for the victory and the effects it had.
Muslims from India supported the Khilafat and also ran against the interests of the empire and also India n the name of Jihad.
Indian contribution to WW1:
India provided Britain with not just men and material, but finances as well to fight World War 1. India bore £100 million towards the cost of the war. In the context of Britain; £100 in 1917 would be worth £34,000 today. An initial offer of a lump sum of £100 million was made in 1917. Three quarters of this was raised by war loans or bonds and the rest by the Government of India. In terms of direct monetary contribution India gave; £146.2 million from its revenues by 1920.
172,815 animals, which included 85,953 horses, 65,398 ponies and mules, 10,781 camels, 5,061 bullocks, 5,692 dairy cattle and 369.1 million tonnes of supplies and stores left the ports of India for various destinations. Within the first few weeks of the war, India supplied 70,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 600,002 rifles, mortars and machine guns. Considerable quantities of shell cases were manufactured. The Army Clothing Department produced 41,920,223 garments between 1914 and 1918. Raw materials like rough tanned hides, wool, manganese, mica, salt-petre, timber, bamboo, raw silk, hemp, coir, tea, rubber, petroleum oils and food stuffs were supplied. A total of 2,737,862 tonnes of items such as rice, flour, atta, ghee, sugar, tea, tinned meat, grain and hay for animals, jam, biscuits and firewood were shipped from India up to March 1919.
While rest of the empire took loan from British treasury. India self financed its war. Thus, we did wipe the so called largest Islamic empire. If any Turk or Paki talks about history, we surely can rub on their faces.
“The Turkish Empire has committed suicide, and dug with its own hands its grave”, the British prime minister Herbert Asquith, proclaimed in early November 1914. He was responding to the Ottoman naval bombardment of Ukraine, bringing Turkey into the First World War in alliance with Germany against the Allies.
To illustrate — in north-west Iran and the Caucasus, Indian regiments helped to block Turkish movements towards Central Asia. In central and southern Iran, they attacked suspected anti-Allied jihadists, and countered Turkish and German agents seeking to infiltrate sensitive Indian border zones. From the Arabian Gulf, Indian troops attacked hundreds of miles into Iraq, reaching its northernmost Ottoman province to seize the oil fields. On the Arabian Peninsula, they contained the Ottoman garrisons of Yemen, assisted Lawrence of Arabia and embedded like him in local Arab rebel forces, and raided Ottoman outposts on Red Sea islands. Then out of Egypt Indian units made multiple attacks, both westwards in the Western Desert against Libyan jihadists, and eastwards into the Sinai, Palestine and Syria. From Egypt they also took part in the Allies’ amphibious assault on European Turkey: The Gallipoli campaign.
By November 1918, the Indian army’s immense grip on formerly Ottoman-controlled soil, where it had defeated the Turks, was reflected in the sheer size and breadth of its occupation. It was the single-largest Allied force in the Turkish theatres, having deployed a total of approximately 7,60,000 Indian troops to them. Its men stood guard from Basra, Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul to Cairo, Suez, Gaza, Jerusalem, Amman, Haifa, Damascus, Gallipoli and Istanbul. At the time, the British empire, in fact, approached its territorial zenith.
The Allied peace negotiations with the Turks were to last longer than the First World War itself. Their protraction was proof of their complexity. The Allies hotly competed for the spoils of Ottoman defeat: The British angled for new British-influenced Middle Eastern buffer states from Iraq to Palestine in order to cushion the Indian imperial sphere, while the French, Greeks and Italians looked to partition the Ottoman empire for new imperial possessions of their own. The Turks wanted Turkey for themselves and fought for it, above all against the Greeks.
Eventually, the Allies and the Turks signed the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923. In conjunction with other international agreements applying more widely to the Ottoman lands of 1914-18, the borders were drawn of the Turkish Republic and other post-war Middle Eastern states and European-administered mandates including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. The map of the modern Middle East had taken shape.
The Indian army gradually evacuated the Middle East up to the late 1920s as the post-war settlements took effect. Having been a wrecking ball to knock down the Ottoman empire during the war, its place between the old and the new Middle East had ultimately been destructive — on behalf, of course, of the British empire.
https://indianexpress.com/article/o...y-turkish-empire-ottoman-world-war-i-5439839/
While the Muslims from India had other thoughts:
For many South Asian Muslims the thought of going to war against the Ottoman Caliph was repulsive and lead some to defect to the Ottomans.
The website for Britain's Sikh Museum contains a critical letter sent to a Muslim soldier serving in France in March 1916 that explains the distaste many South Asian Muslims toward serving Britain against the Ottomans: "You are entangled in a war in which no victory has been gained nor can any be gained in the future. What you ought to do is raise your fellow caste-men against the English and join the army of Islam (the Turks)."
Indeed, the multifaith character of the Singapore rebellion was noted by the Ottoman Consul General Rıfat Efendi in Batavia who filed a dispatch on the rebellion, "the truth is that an Indian Muslim, in the aforementioned city and Indian Muslim soldiers have declared major Jihad for the greater Islamic state against the British and also including the Hindu soldiers arriving from Singapore as well those Muslim civilians according to the intelligence that I have received" he wrote.
The Singapore Mutiny was not the only pro-Ottoman mutiny of World War I. Less than a year later a similar mutiny erupted in the winter of 1915-1916 when over 400 members unit the Indian Army's 15th Lancers, another majority Muslim unit refused to fight their Ottomans co-religionists during the Mesopotamia Campaign.
WW1 though not our war nor initiated by us, but nonetheless fought completely with our men, resources and money. We certainly can claim the credit for the victory and the effects it had.
Muslims from India supported the Khilafat and also ran against the interests of the empire and also India n the name of Jihad.
Indian contribution to WW1:
India provided Britain with not just men and material, but finances as well to fight World War 1. India bore £100 million towards the cost of the war. In the context of Britain; £100 in 1917 would be worth £34,000 today. An initial offer of a lump sum of £100 million was made in 1917. Three quarters of this was raised by war loans or bonds and the rest by the Government of India. In terms of direct monetary contribution India gave; £146.2 million from its revenues by 1920.
172,815 animals, which included 85,953 horses, 65,398 ponies and mules, 10,781 camels, 5,061 bullocks, 5,692 dairy cattle and 369.1 million tonnes of supplies and stores left the ports of India for various destinations. Within the first few weeks of the war, India supplied 70,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 600,002 rifles, mortars and machine guns. Considerable quantities of shell cases were manufactured. The Army Clothing Department produced 41,920,223 garments between 1914 and 1918. Raw materials like rough tanned hides, wool, manganese, mica, salt-petre, timber, bamboo, raw silk, hemp, coir, tea, rubber, petroleum oils and food stuffs were supplied. A total of 2,737,862 tonnes of items such as rice, flour, atta, ghee, sugar, tea, tinned meat, grain and hay for animals, jam, biscuits and firewood were shipped from India up to March 1919.
While rest of the empire took loan from British treasury. India self financed its war. Thus, we did wipe the so called largest Islamic empire. If any Turk or Paki talks about history, we surely can rub on their faces.