| Middle Eastern theatre of World War I |
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| Part of World War I |
From left to right: The Ottoman Shaykh al-Islām who declared Jihad against the Entente Powers; Burning oil tanks in the port of Novorossiysk after the Ottoman Empire's strike on Russian ports; 5th Army during the Gallipoli Campaign; 3rd Army on the Caucasus campaign; The heliograph team of the Ottoman army in the Sinai and Palestine campaign; Ottoman soldiers during the Siege of Kut in Baghdad vilayet. |
| Date | 29 October 1914 – 30 October 1918 |
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| Location | Middle East ( Caucasus, Sinai Peninsula, Palestine, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Persia, Gallipoli, Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf, Iraq) |
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| Result |
Allied victory |
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Territorial
changes |
Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire |
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|
| Belligerents |
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Allied Powers:
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Italy (from 1917)
Hejaz (from 1916)
Armenia (from 1918)
Local allies:
Assyrian volunteers
Armenian fedayi
Allied Kurdish Tribes
Emirate of Nejd and Hasa (from 1915) |
Central Powers:
Ottoman Empire
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Jabal Shammar
Azerbaijan (from 1918)
Georgia (from 1918) |
| Commanders and leaders |
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Julian Byng
Archibald Murray
Edmund Allenby
Ian Hamilton
John Nixon
Percy Lake
Stanley Maude
Lionel Dunsterville
T. E. Lawrence
I. Vorontsov-Dashkov
Grand Duke Nikolai
Nikolai Yudenich
Nikolai Baratov
Henri Gouraud (WIA)
Maurice Bailloud
Agha Petros
Malik Khoshaba
Shimun XIX Benyamin
Hovhannes Hakhverdyan
Tovmas Nazarbekian
Andranik Ozanian
Hussein bin Ali
Faisal bin Hussein
Hemoye Shero
Ibn Saud |
Enver Pasha
Djemal Pasha
Cevat Pasha
Vehip Pasha
Nuri Pasha
Ahmed Izzet Pasha
Mustafa Kemal Pasha (WIA)
Fevzi Pasha
Abdul Kerim Pasha
Halil Pasha
Nureddin Pasha
Mehmet Esat Pasha
Fakhri Pasha
F. B. von Schellendorf
Otto Liman von Sanders
Colmar von der Goltz
Erich von Falkenhayn
F. K. von Kressenstein
Saud bin Abdulaziz
Fatali Khan Khoyski
Noe Zhordania |
| Strength |
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2,550,000
1,000,000
Several 100,000's
Several 100,000's
70,000
100,000+
20,000+
Total: 4,000,000+ |
3,059,205
800,000 (peak)
323,000 (during Armistice)
6,500 (1916)
20,000 (1918)
~6,000 (1918)
9,000 (1918)
Total: 3,100,000 |
| Casualties and losses |
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Total:
1,250,000+ casualties- 1,025,800
- 119,000+
- 47,000
- Military dead:
- 150,000–200,000
|
Total:
1,788,200 casualties
- Military dead:
- 325,000–771,000
- Civilian dead:
- 1,200,000–2,500,000
|
|
2,000,000 Persian civilians dead from famine exacerbated by Russian, British, and Ottoman occupation
Total dead: 7,000,000+ |
The Middle Eastern theatre of World War I saw action between 30 October 1914 and 30 October 1918. The combatants were, on one side, the Ottoman Empire (with the help of a great number of Kurdish tribes and Circassians, and the relative majority of Arabs), with some assistance from the other Central Powers; and on the other side, the British (with the help of a small number of Jews, Greeks, Armenians, some Kurdish tribes and Arab states, along with Hindu, Sikh and Muslim colonial troops from India) as well as troops from the British Dominions of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the Russians (with the help of Armenians, Assyrians, and occasionally some Kurdish tribes), and the French (with its North African and West African Muslim, Christian and other colonial troops) from among the Allied Powers. There were four main campaigns: the Sinai and Palestine, Mesopotamian, Caucasus, and Gallipoli campaigns. There were four more minor campaigns in Persia, South Arabia, the Arabian interior, and Libya.
Both sides used local asymmetrical forces in the region. On the Allied side were Arabs who participated in the Arab Revolt and the Armenian militia who participated in the Armenian resistance supported by Russia during the War; along with Armenian volunteer units, the Armenian militia formed the Armenian Corps of the First Republic of Armenia in 1918. In addition, the Assyrians joined the Allies and saw action in Southeastern Turkey, northern Ottoman Iraq, northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria following the Assyrian genocide, instigating the Assyrian war of independence. The theatre covered the largest territory of all theatres in the war.
Russian participation in the theatre ended as a result of the Armistice of Erzincan (5 December 1917), after which the revolutionary Russian government withdrew from the war under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918). The Armenians attended the Trebizond Peace Conference (14 March 1918) which resulted in the Treaty of Batum on 4 June 1918. The Ottomans accepted the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies on 30 October 1918, and signed the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920 and later the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923.