Five Years in Turkey

Otto Liman von Sanders (1855 – 1929) will always be associated with the Dardanelles campaign in which he commanded the Turkish Fifth Army, the army that defended Gallipoli, defeated the allied invasion and, after a campaign lasting some eight months (April-December 1915) forced the Allies to give up and withdraw. He was a cavalry officer who was commanding the German 22nd Division in Cassel when, in June 1913, he was offered the post of Chief of a German Military Mission in Turkey: he accepted and took up his post in December of that year and took over command of the Turkish First Army Corps, in Constantinople. Three months later, March 1914, he was given command of the Turkish Fifth Army defending Gallipoli and as such his version of events is of considerable interest to the history of that campaign. He later (1918) commanded the combined Turkish/German Yilderim force in Palestine where he was defeated by the greatly superior forces of Allenby. This account is based on notes written up in Malta where he was detained for some six months in 1919 before being permitted to return to Germany.