However, as was true of the earlier nationalist historiography, the “Ten-Year War” view also ignores the significance and uniqueness of the Great War when seen as a “mid-point” in a longer series of wars. It is true that only brief respites existed between these wars and that this longer view highlights important continuities from one war to another. Consequently, some scholars forwarded the view that the Great War was part of a continuous “Ten-Year War” that started with the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and ended with the end of the War of Independence. In the later 20 th century, historians started to highlight continuities between the late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. In this view, Gallipoli foreshadowed what was to come and became a “proto-type” of the War of Independence.
Eventually, other nationalist historians and intellectuals, ignoring chronology, started to treat the Battle of Gallipoli as if it belonged with the War of Independence. This historiography treated the beginning of the struggle for independence in 1919 as a major break from the Ottoman past. The war also led to large-scale internal displacement and forced deportation and killing of certain ethnic groups who were perceived or portrayed as an “internal security risk.” Yet, despite the scale and uniqueness of the Ottoman Great War (1914-1918), the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922) overshadowed it for many decades in the nationalist historiography of the Turkish Republic. At times it became nearly impossible to distinguish between the military front and the home front. Its industrial shortcomings aside, in some ways the Great War became more of a “ total war” for the Ottoman Empire than it did for other belligerents.
Introduction: “Ten-Year War” and the Ottoman Great War ↑Īs the conflict that ended the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire, the First World War changed the political, social, and demographic landscape of large parts of the Middle East.
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