The Sarikamish Operation

The Sarikamish Operation, which took place around these days 109 years ago, is one of the most unsuccessful military operations in Ottoman history.

The Sarikamish Operation was organized by the decision of the Minister of War and Deputy Commander-in-Chief Enver Pasha. The decision for the operation was not taken as a result of any strategic necessity. The Russian army had an undisputed superiority over the Ottomans. While it was uncertain how much of a chance the Ottomans would have against the Russians even in defense, Enver Pasha fell into the delusion that he could destroy the Russian forces on the Eastern Front by launching an attack as a result of an unexpected opportunity that arose.

This opportunity arose as a result of a heavy defeat the Russians suffered against the Germans as soon as the war began. The Germans surrounded and destroyed one of the two Russian armies that launched an attack in August at the Battle of Tannenberg. With this defeat in the opening move, the morale of the Russians was severely damaged, and since urgent reinforcements were needed against the Germans, two Caucasian and one Turkestan Corps located on the Ottoman border were sent to the German front.

Remaining were a total of one Caucasian and one Turkestan Corps with a strength of 115,000, along with volunteer irregular units. The opposing Ottoman Third Army had a strength of 75,000, and this figure was supported by 37,000 irregulars. Although the Russians did not have a significant numerical superiority, they launched an attack with the Ottoman entry into the war and moved into a risky position by moving away from their supply centers at the end of November. The initiative was with the Ottomans, and Enver Pasha was not going to miss this opportunity.

Although the situation Russia was in seemed to offer an unmissable opportunity to Enver Pasha, in reality, the Ottomans had no superiority over the Russians. When the Ottomans entered the war in November 1914, the army was in a state of full mobilization and was ready for war on paper. However, the army was in a pathetic state in practice, and except for food, almost everything was lacking—including personnel due to the losses suffered in the Balkan Wars.

The fact that the Russians had entered Ottoman lines had left their flanks exposed, and in theory, a victory similar to the one the Germans won at Tannenberg seemed quite achievable. However, Eastern Anatolia was a terrain consisting of snowy mountains, not plains like the town of Tannenberg, and the Ottoman army did not possess the weapon and logistical superiority that the German army had. Against the 168 cannons of the Ottoman Third Army on the Eastern Front, the Russians had 256 cannons, and while the Russians were reinforcing their units in Sarikamish via railway, the closest train station to the battlefield for the Ottomans was 600 kilometers away. The Germans had won the battle through their artillery superiority and by breaking the codes of the Russians' wireless telegraph messages. The Ottomans possessed neither of these two advantages. Enver Pasha dismissed Third Army Commander Hasan Izzet Pasha, who had highlighted these risks and did not approve of the operation, and replaced him with himself.

The plan was prepared by Enver Pasha himself. Ottoman forces would bypass the Russian forces, move to their rear, and destroy the Russians by surrounding them. If Sarikamish were captured, the railway line providing the Russians' supplies would have been cut, and if this success were achieved, the Russians would indeed have had little chance left.

Enver Pasha was aware that his soldiers did not have sufficient equipment for a winter operation. However, morale was high, and the weather conditions were proceeding quite well during the days the operation plan was being prepared.

The operation began on December 22. Thanks to the good weather conditions, the Ottoman units, which advanced rapidly, easily captured their first targets. As Enver Pasha had predicted, the Russians' morale had collapsed rapidly, and they had done nothing but retreat. When the Ottoman units reached Sarikamish on December 25, victory seemed certain. However, on the same day, the temperature suddenly dropped and fell to minus twenty-five degrees. In the following days, the temperature would drop to minus forty degrees. The soldiers' equipment was not at a level to cope with sub-zero weather conditions. Many soldiers of the X Corps, who were caught in adverse weather conditions in the Allahuekber Mountains, froze to death in a short time.

However, despite all the negative conditions, Enver Pasha, encouraged by the soldiers reaching Sarikamish, decided to continue the operation, and the bloody Battle of Sarikamish began on December 27. On December 30, the Russians, who had been shaken by the effect of the surprise attack, recovered and launched a counter-offensive. Due to the cold weather conditions, the Ottomans were in a very worn-out state, and the Ottoman Third Army completely collapsed in the face of the Russian counter-offensive. The units began to retreat, suffering heavy losses. The IX Corps, which could not manage to escape, was surrounded and destroyed on January 4. Only 2,500 people from the X Corps were able to survive.

The operation resulted in a complete fiasco, and the losses were of enormous proportions. Within a short period of two weeks, the Third Army had lost more than half of its personnel, with 30,000 dead, 7,000 wounded, and 27,000 prisoners. These figures were the numbers provided by the Ottoman army, and the Russians claimed that they found about 30,000 Turkish soldiers who had frozen to death just around Sarikamish. Russian losses were around 28,000. The vast majority of Russian losses also consisted of soldiers who, like the Ottomans, had frozen to death.

Enver Pasha handed over command on January 9 and returned to Istanbul in a hurry. Although Enver Pasha tried to hide the scale of the disaster by implementing censorship within the country, the Sarikamish Operation was an unmissable source of propaganda for the Russians, who had started the First World War very badly, and they did not miss this opportunity and announced what happened to the whole world.

Sarikamish was an operation that should never have been organized, with a very low chance of success and very high risks. Compared to its risks, the potential return of success was also low. Although Enver Pasha claimed that if the operation were successful, the Turks under Russian yoke would be liberated and join the Ottomans, it was obvious that with the Russian reinforcements arriving in the region, the Ottoman forces would be stopped before they could reach the regions where Turks lived. The possible short-term gain of a potential success would only have been the recapture of Kars, Batum, and Ardahan, which were lost to the Russians in the 93 War (Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878).

As a result of the Sarikamish Operation, the initiative on the Eastern Front passed permanently to the Russians. Although the Third Army was reinforced after the disaster, it never reached the capacity to cope with the Russians, and the Russians captured most of Eastern Anatolia and the Eastern Black Sea with the victories they easily won in 1915 and 1916. At the end of 1916, the Eastern Front was the front where the Ottomans were most desperate, and no one had any idea how the Russians would be stopped. In 1917, Russia entering the revolutionary process came to the aid of the Ottomans. With the Russian administration losing control over the army, the Russians' operations stopped on their own, and over time, the vast majority of Russian units withdrew from the region. In the winter and spring of 1918, while the Brest-Litovsk negotiations were ongoing, the Ottomans took back the lands they had lost piece by piece. By the end of April, all the lost lands, including Kars, Ardahan, and Batum, had been recaptured. After this date, Ottoman forces entered Russian territory and advanced as far as the Caspian Sea.