Defending the Dardanelles: Cevat Paşa,‘The Hero of 18 March’

The aim of this article is to reconsider the role played by Cevat Paşa (General Cevat Çobanlı: 1870-1938) in the defence of the Dardanelles, prior to and following the entry of the Ottoman Empire into First World War, and to argue that the Allied naval defeat in forcing the straits on 18 March 1915 was neither due to good luck on the part of the defenders, nor due to a blunder by the attackers, but was simply the result of a carefully planned and competently executed defensive operation.

Although Cevat Paşa’s leading role in the operation as the Commander of the Çanakkale ¹ Fortified Zone (ÇFZ) earned him the honorary title of ‘Hero of 5 March’ ² at the time, his fame seems to have remained somewhat in the shadows ever since. This may be due to some extent to Paşa’s personal modesty, for which he was well-known. There are also a number of other reasons which can explain why most historians and narrators of the war have failed to adequately recognize Cevat Paşa’s part in the defence of the Dardanelles. ³ During the war, Enver Paşa, the War Minister and Deputy Commander in Chief on behalf of the Sultan, was careful not to let any military or political figure become too prominent. After the armistice, the shock of having lost the war and concerns for the future of the country dominated the agenda. From March 1920 to October 1921, Cevat Paşa was imprisoned in Malta by the British, mostly on account of the role he played as Minister of War, and later as Chief of General Staff, in sending Mustafa Kemal to Anatolia. During the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922) and after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) acquired such brilliant fame that everybody else has been kept in the shadows since then. Furthermore, unlike many prominent figures of those fateful years, Cevat Paşa did not write his memoirs (despite all the requests that he should do so, according to some of his biographers); only a few interviews conducted with him are published in later years. ⁴ Finally, one must take into consideration that the naval attack culminated into a 1-day operation, while the land campaign which followed lasted for more than 8 months with heavy casualties on all sides. Hence, once the immediate naval threat was avoided, the emphasis has shifted to a more general concern involving in total half a million combatants. Although 18 March is the Turkish official date of commemoration for the whole Gallipoli campaign, eventually more emphasis has been devoted to land operations and their commanders. ⁵ Consequently, heroic accounts of the land campaign somewhat overshadowed the tedious preparations for the strait defences, which deserve more credit since had they failed, a land campaign of this magnitude would not be needed.

Cevat (then a colonel, hence Cevat Bey) assumed command of the ÇFZ on 10 August 1915, the very day on which Goeben and Breslau made their fateful entrance through the Dardanelles. Defending the ÇFZ was central to Ottoman war planning. ÇFZ was a First Grade Fortified Zone, its commander being equal in rank to that of a corps commander. ⁶ The concept of a Fortified Zone had emerged as a result of a holistic approach to the problem of defending a vital spot with very peculiar geography and topography against an attack by land and/or sea. In 1914, there were six fortified zones in the territories of the Empire: Istanbul and Çanakkale straits, Çatalca, Edirne, Erzurum, and Izmir. ⁷ At Çanakkale, the fortified zone had been conceived as an integrated system of forts and a whole variety of other defensive means available to the armed forces at the time. Its ultimate purpose was to bar access to the Ottoman capital. Under a unified command, for the most part directly under the orders of the Commander in Chief, ⁸ the ÇFZ was intended to protect the strait and both of its shores, making use of the land, sea, and, for the first time, air forces. The 13 forts, extending to as many as 28 different locations, covered the approaches of the straits as a funnel, starting from the outside rim and concentrating at the narrowest part between Çanakkale and Kilitbahir (‘the Narrows’). Consequently, artillery was the centrepiece of the defence system. A wide variety of defensive measures were built around it, some of them quite ahead of their times. Colonel (shortly afterwards, Major General) Cevat proved to be an excellent choice in terms of both planning and executing the defences of such a critical place at such a critical time.

Cevat Bey was the son of Mehmet Şakir Paşa of Arapgir, the Chief of Staff of Officers in Attendance of Sultan Abdülhamid II. Mehmet Şakir was a prominent personality in the retinue of the Sultan, having raised to the rank of Müşir (Field Marshal). He accompanied Wilhelm II in his visit to Istanbul as his official host in 1898. ⁹ Cevat’s educational formation both reflected his family background and was a relevant example of late Ottoman attempts to bring the Empire’s institutions up to date with contemporary developments in Europe. A graduate of the Lycée Impérial Ottoman de Galatasaray in 1888, Cevat Bey’s secondary education represented an experiment with the French system in Ottoman lands, as well as an attempt to create a model for educating a modern civilian bureaucratic elite for the Empire. With this aim, Galatasaray had been established in 1868 through a cooperation agreement between Sultan Abdülaziz and Emperor Napoléon III as a multilingual lycée providing secular education open to all subjects of the Empire.

Instead of joining civil service after Galatasaray, Cevat Bey chose to join the Military School from where he graduated in 1891 and continued with the War Academy.

Cevat Bey was a brilliant student both at the Military School and at War Academy, from where he graduated as valedictorian in 1894. The formation he received in the War Academy was in many ways a combination of French and German approaches to military education and training of the time. In fact, modern military education had started in the Empire in the 1830s by emulating the French model. The main purpose was to academically train officer cadres, gradually replacing those who rose from the ranks, as traditionally was the case. The curriculum was comprehensive and scientifically oriented, closely following contemporary technical and technological developments. ¹⁰ This particularly French influence was supplemented by the more practical German model after 1882 when German military advisers were employed by the Empire. The Ottomans, however, resisting German insistence on replacing the old system, tried instead to strike a balance between a scientific/engineering approach and an on-hands military application. ¹¹ Fluent in French and German, Cevat Bey was a product of this modernist system à l’Ottomane, which introduced an elite group of administrators and general staff officers well versed in the current political and military affairs of Europe at time. He also served as the commanding officer of the Military Academy himself between 1909 and 1911.

Immediately before his appointment to the ÇFZ, Cevat Bey had served as First (later ‘Şark’ or Eastern) Army Chief of Staff, then as Çatalca Fortified Zone, and Artillery Command Chief of Staff during the First Balkan War (1912). During the Second Balkan War (1913), which resulted in the recapturing of Edirne from Bulgarians, he had commanded the 9th Division and subsequently served on border delimitation commissions. ¹²

In sum, Cevat Bey’s appointment to the ÇFZ was squarely in line with his professional experience and accumulation, given the particular situation of this strategic gateway to the Empire. Even before the First World War and Cevat Bey’s assumption of command of the ÇFZ, during the tense period between the end of the Balkan Wars and the Sarajevo crisis, an attack against the straits was seen as imminent by the Ottomans, albeit from a different source of threat, that is, Greece. In the immediate aftermath of the Balkan Wars, the unresolved issue of the Aegean islands continued to be a source of friction between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. A naval arms race was in full swing, and the balance favoured Greece. Following several incidents on both sides of the Aegean, Greek naval activity in front of the Dardanelles intensified. In response, in mid-June 1914, 2 weeks prior to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a reorganization programme for the ÇFZ artillery was activated. ¹³ In addition, the 9th Division of the III Corps and detached gendarmerie units were placed under ÇFZ command and deployed in the peninsula. ¹⁴ The involvement of the 9th Division represented an interesting twist in this story, not only because its three regiments (25th, 26th, 27th) successfully faced the full initial thrust of the Allied landings on 25 April 1915, but also because it had been under the command of Cevat Bey since 4 February 1913 and would have remained so during the subsequent land operations if he had not assumed command of the ÇFZ on 10 August 1914.

These early preoccupations were followed by a comprehensive evaluation of naval defences of Çanakkale strait. A report by Admiral Shack of the German military mission proposed to rely on torpedoes instead of mines to defend the straits. ¹⁵ However, mines had been laid on two previous occasions to close the straits, during the Tripolitanian (1911) and Balkan (1912-1913) wars, and had proved to be dissuasive. Admiral Schack’s proposal was therefore not adopted, but torpedoes were added, alongside minefields, to the list of defensive measures.

Defensive preparations continued as the international crisis unfolded in Europe. On 31 July, 3 days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, a partial mobilization order concerning the straits was issued. Accordingly, the ÇFZ gradually assumed war strength, and further artillery revisions were implemented, including an intensive retraining programme. ¹⁶ On the same day, the light fleet under ÇFZ command assumed its duties and was scheduled to reach full operational strength in the following week with two destroyers, four torpedo boats, three gunboats, a patrol boat, and two minelayers (Selanik and Intibah). ¹⁷ On 2 August, the day after Germany declared war on Russia, the Ottoman-German alliance was sealed and general mobilization orders were issued by the General Command in Istanbul. The ÇFZ had prepared another plan for defending the strait in the meantime, but the authors of the official history of the campaign are ambivalent about the fate of this particular plan. ¹⁸ On 3 August, the ÇFZ Command ordered the first mines to be laid to partially close the entrance to the Dardanelles. ¹⁹ On that same day, ÇFZ Commander Emin Paşa received orders to admit any German or Austrian warships that might come in front of the strait and wish to enter. ²⁰ On 7 August, the General Command ordered the ÇFZ to keep all vessels currently in the strait from proceeding until the next day. On 8 August, the arrival of Goeben and Breslau was signalled to the ÇFZ with orders to lead them in. ²¹ At the same time, the General Command criticized an earlier decision of the ÇFZ Commander to keep a German ship carrying coal and ammunition outside the strait, despite earlier orders. This apparent misunderstanding cost Emin Paşa his post, and he was immediately replaced by Cevat Bey.

Cevat Bey’s chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Selahattin Adil Bey, who would later command the 12th Division on the Seddülbahir and Anafarta front, remembered how hard they all worked at the headquarters to upgrade the ÇFZ defences in the days that followed. ²² The work consisted of identifying possible gaps in the defences, planning measures, and taking action. Already on 10 August, Erich Weber Paşa, the Inspector of Shore Defences, had examined the Saros shores of the Gallipoli peninsula and the resulting report established the area between Seddülbahir and Teke Burnu (Cape Helles), the southern beaches of Kaba Tepe, and the area between Kaba Tepe and Suvla as possible landing spots. ²³ On 15 August, Cevat Bey ordered a third line of mines to be laid and a number of floating mines to be kept ready. The next day, he personally examined the situation at Seddülbahir and followed the activities of the three British battleships and a Greek destroyer around the islands outside the strait. ²⁴

From the next set of measures taken at the ÇFZ, we can deduce that at that point Cevat Bey started to prepare the closure of the Dardanelles to defend it against a British attack assisted by Greece, or vice versa. Within a week, he was given the authority to fully close the Dardanelles, if necessary. In the meantime in Istanbul, Vice-Admiral Guido von Usedom was appointed as Inspector General of Shore Fortifications and Mine Works. On 30 August, a German contingent of about 160 sailors and seven officers arrived with Vice-Admiral Johannes Merten, who replaced Weber Paşa as the Delegate of the General Command. The arrival of the German contingent under the SoKo ²⁵ was a clear sign that a serious threat was perceived at the Dardanelles, not only by the Ottoman Government which considered that a Russian and/or Greek attack (inevitably with help from the British and the French) against its territories was imminent, but also by the German Government, which at that stage seriously included the Ottoman Empire in the war plans of the Reich.

In February 1915, an order from Supreme Military Command put Merten in charge of sea patrols, mines, torpedoes, and pilotage, without altering the chain of command. There were, however, signs of discontent among the officers of the ÇFZ in reaction to frequent changes introducing new elements, especially involving German officers. ²⁶ Vice-Admiral von Usedom, who carried the titles of inspector general of Istanbul and Çanakkale straits and the chief of SoKo mission, considered that he was at the top of the chain of command after 25 April. ²⁷ Thus, a certain ambiguity was always present as to the division of responsibilities in the conduct of various cross-cutting operations on the land, sea, and underwater, which led to claims for a greater share from success by everybody involved and blaming others for failures. ²⁸

Throughout the Dardanelles campaign, German officers contributed a great deal to the defence of the straits, individually or as members of commissions, as advisers (such as Vice-Admiral Merten who urged ²⁹ the implementation of an earlier plan to have a minefield at Erenköy Bay – Karanlık Liman ³⁰ – hence the famous 26 mines laid by Nusret on 8 March) ³¹ or in a commanding capacity (good examples are Lieutenant Colonels Heinrich Wehrle and Fritz Wossidlo, in charge of the Howitzer zone and Hamidiye Fort, respectively). ³² In many ways, the chain of command was unclear throughout the Ottoman army in so far as the German and to a lesser extent Austro-Hungarian staff were concerned. Perhaps this was intentional, in order to incorporate the useful contribution of the allies’ expertise while retaining the local hierarchical control. The members of SoKo were organized in a parallel structure under General Command, usually in high ranking yet advisory positions in the ÇFZ, which also was directly under General Command. However, the person in charge of, and responsible for, the overall defence of the Dardanelles against an attack from the sea had always been the Commander of the ÇFZ, Cevat Bey, who signed his general orders and reports to the General Command as ‘The Commander of the Mediterranean Strait’. ³³ In fact, the ÇFZ Commander was so sensitive about his privileged position that when, on 4 November, Esat Paşa’s (Bülkat) III Corps moved its headquarters to Çanakkale and assumed the defence of the straits, taking over the ÇFZ and the 9th Division, Cevat Bey, frustrated, immediately sent his chief of staff to the Deputy Commander in Chief in an attempt to reverse the order. As a result, on 14 November the III Corps headquarters was ordered to move to Gallipoli and the ÇFZ was again placed under the General Command, leaving Cevat Bey in charge. ³⁴ The III Corps Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Fahrettin Bey (Altay), recalled how disappointed they were about this incident and also on learning that Selahattin Adil Bey had asked Enver Paşa (incidentally, his classmate) for a transfer for Cevat Bey and himself if the earlier decision was not reconsidered. ³⁵

A directive to the fleet and an order to the mine detachment, dated 11 and 12 September, respectively, and signed by Cevat Bey, specified the immediate actions to be taken in the event of a sudden attack against the Dardanelles. ³⁶ Notably, on 19 September a defence exercise against possible attempts to force the strait was implemented by the ÇFZ command. The light fleet under the command of the ÇFZ simulated the enemy fleet entering the strait, and the shore batteries were given an opportunity to observe possible enemy manoeuvres. ³⁷ The next day, the ÇFZ chief of staff Selahattin Adil Bey presented a plan to the General Command entitled ‘The Views of the Commander of the Dardanelles on the Defence of the ÇFZ and the Report on the Precautions Taken’, signed ‘Colonel Cevat’. ³⁸ This proved to be a very important document, not only because the main defensive strategy was ultimately designed according to the analyses and proposals contained in it, but also because it predicted (almost down to the last detail, as Nykiel observes ³⁹ ) the British plan of attack on 18 March as one of two possibilities.

Cevat Bey’s analysis was clear and straightforward. He argued that a powerful fleet forcing the Dardanelles had two options: first, that of silencing the defending batteries at the entrance and, once in the strait, trying to deal with the inner forts one by one while sweeping the mines. Conscious of all the measures he has already taken against this possibility, however, Cevat Bey confidently concluded that ‘this sort of action is not quite probable since it would result in great loss of time and a major artillery battle with doubtful results [for the attacker]’. ⁴⁰ The second option consisted of one part of the fleet keeping the entrance under heavy bombardment, while the other part forces the strait, fighting the forts and destroying the mines simultaneously and at great speed. Cevat Bey considered this course of action to be even less likely, bearing in mind the inner fortifications, mines, and torpedoes. Nevertheless, in both cases it would have been unrealistic to rely on the outer defences, hence the necessity to concentrate on the defences in the inner part of the strait, the Narrows. Building on this premise, the report explains the roles and duties assigned to shore batteries, heavy artillery, searchlight units, mine detachment, light fleet, and the infantry units (the 9th Division and the Gendarmerie detachments) in charge of shore defences covering the northern and southern coasts of the Gallipoli peninsula, as well as the Anatolian coast from Çanakkale to the northern end of Edremit Bay.

While the efforts to strengthen the ÇFZ were underway, something that proved to be a turning point in the events occurred on 26 September: the Akhisar torpedo boat, on patrol duty just outside the Dardanelles, was stopped by two British destroyers, which notified the commander that they had orders to fire on any Ottoman navy vessel coming out of the strait. ⁴¹ Cevat Bey warned the General Command and ordered the Dardanelles to remain closed to all naval traffic the next day by filling the gaps in the third line of mines. ⁴² From then on the ÇFZ entered into a tense waiting period, expecting at any time the first signs of – now imminent – war.

The Ottoman war plans (such as the one dated 7 June 1914) foresaw a sudden attack against the Russian Black Sea Fleet as the best way of preventing a Russian landing operation at the Bosporus. ⁴³ It seems improbable that an officer of such calibre and with such responsibilities as Cevat Bey would not expect the inevitable to happen then. Not surprisingly, in retrospect, a week before the Ottoman Navy’s fateful Black Sea operation on 29 October, the General Command had asked the ÇFZ to update the defence plans. As a result, the analysis and the proposals contained in Cevat Bey’s 20 September report, with some additional details he incorporated into it on 7 October, were fully adopted by the commission of the General Command and developed into ‘The Defence Plan of the Fortified Zone against Sea Battles’ dated 8 November 1914. ⁴⁴

This updated plan incorporated all the elements which seem to have played their intended roles perfectly on 18 March. As far as the artillery was concerned, the strait was divided into four zones, each with specific duties. In the Entrance Zone, the heavy artillery would try to prevent the attacking fleet from approaching the entrance. It was realistically assessed that defences in this zone would not be able to hold out for long. The second zone was the 12- to 150-mm Howitzer Zone. There, the artillery was to prevent the enemy fleet, having passed the first zone, from establishing itself at Erenköy Bay, just inside the strait, safe from the heavy artillery of the Narrows. The third zone was the Kepez – Soğanlı Zone, which had the specific duty of guarding the minefields and preventing any minesweeping operations. Finally, in the fourth zone, the Çanakkale – Kilitbahir Zone, or the Narrows, major defensive works with the greatest firepower were given the task of ultimately denying entrance to the Marmara Sea. ⁴⁵

Thus, when the hostilities finally started following the 29 October 1914 naval bombardment of Russian Black Sea ports by an Ottoman naval squadron – including Goeben and Breslau – in what amounted to a pre-emptive strike, ⁴⁶ there was a carefully prepared plan for defending the Dardanelles, with a commander ready to assume this responsibility. A month after the Black Sea raid, Cevat was promoted to the rank of Major General, hence Cevat Paşa. In the meantime, the British fleet had bombarded the outer forts of the Dardanelles on 3 November and Britain had declared war on the Ottoman Empire the next day. France and Russia followed suit, and the Ottoman Government declared war on Russia on 11 November. For the ÇFZ, this was the time to execute the planned measures and to further strengthen the defences.

In fact, a naval or a joint amphibious attack against the Dardanelles was expected before and after the beginning of hostilities, so the start of operations did not come as a surprise to the Ottoman General Command. Intelligence reports from all over the Mediterranean region, mainly from Rome, Cairo, Sofia and Athens, but also from the Ottoman agents in Marseille and Toulon, the main base of the French fleet, indicated that as early as December 1914 ‘the Allied fleet expected to attack the Dardanelles is completing its preparations’ ⁴⁷ with the probable aim of preventing a possible Ottoman deployment against Egypt. ⁴⁸ The Ottoman Consul in Salonika wrote on 2 March that the attack was expected within a month. ⁴⁹ Regular reports of Directorate of Intelligence Department Staff Major Seyfi indicate that, throughout the campaign, there was a constant flow of intelligence information about Allied activities in the Aegean, mainly from (presumably Greek) agents on the Aegean islands. ⁵⁰ There are also accounts revealing that from November 1914 onwards and throughout the Gallipoli campaign at least two wireless stations were operational in the battleground, not only eavesdropping on naval communications of the Entente (as well as on German communications), but also successfully disrupting them. ⁵¹

The ÇFZ had further improved its capabilities, yet the work was still going on by the time the decision to implement Vice-Admiral Carden’s plan to force the Dardanelles was taken by the Allies. The plan was approved by the War Council on 13 January and consisted of four stages, starting with reduction of the forts at the entrance and followed by destruction of the inside defences as far as Kepez, reduction of the forts at Narrows, and finally clearing the minefield, reduction of the defences above the Narrows, and advance into the Marmara Sea. The whole operation was to take about 1 month. The decision of the War Council, urged by Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, and Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, was formulated as follows: ‘[t]he Admiralty should prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula, with Constantinople as its objective’. Finalized on 28 January, the plan was communicated to the French government, which readily agreed to a joint naval operation under British command. ⁵² The main expectations from the campaign, as suggested in the 28 January meeting of the War Council, were to

… cut the Turkish Army in two; . . . put Constantinople under [Allied] control; . . . settle the attitude of Bulgaria and the whole of the Balkans; give [the Allies] the advantage of having the Russian wheat and enable Russia to resume exports; . . . open a passage to the Danube. ⁵³

The main assumption, in the words of Admiral Fisher, First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, was that the appearance of the Allied fleet in front of the Ottoman capital ‘would be the end of the ruling powers in Turkey. That was what we were always given to understand – that there would have been a revolution in Constantinople if we had arrived there with the fleet’. ⁵⁴

The first test of both the offensive plan and defensive measures came on 19 February ⁵⁵ with a massive bombardment of the outer forts, which was repeated on 25 February and resulted in silencing them. Between 26 February and 17 March, the second stage of the naval plan was implemented, with limited success. The mobile shore howitzers proved to be very effective against mine clearing efforts. ⁵⁶ Vice-Admiral Carden, under pressure, decided for a major push ‘to overwhelm forts of the Narrows at decisive range’ ⁵⁷ with the full power of available naval guns for 18 March, but a day before the fatal operation he reported sick and was replaced by Vice-Admiral de Robeck.

Very early on the morning of 18 March, Cevat Paşa had gone to meet the Commander of the III Corps, Esat Paşa, in Gallipoli and to inspect the troops at Bolayır. He also saw Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal at the head of his 19th Division, ⁵⁸ which, despite being a reserve of the III Corps, was also under Cevat Paşa’s command at the time, as was the 11th Division. ⁵⁹ When the Yenişehir observing post reported at dawn large-scale hostile fleet movements around Bozcaada (Tenedos), Selahattin Adil Bey knew that the attack had begun. He immediately notified the General Command and sent a telegram to his Commander, who rushed back to his headquarters at Çanakkale. ⁶⁰ It is an ironic footnote to history that Cevat Paşa missed a good part of the action, but his plans were implemented and worked almost perfectly. In any case, there were not much command functions to be performed but to witness the unfolding of events, and there is no evidence for any intervention into the conduct of defensive operations from the headquarters at that time. When he reached his command post a few minutes after Bouvet went down, ⁶¹ the fate of the Allied naval attack was almost sealed, and most probably he was not yet aware that he had, in fact, won the most important battle of late Ottoman history. At the end of the day, out of the 16 Allied ships involved, three battleships were sunk, a further two battleships and one battlecruiser were seriously damaged, several others suffered various damages that required docking, and the naval attack ultimately failed. ⁶² At the end of day, that final push which lasted for a little more than 6 hours from the first howitzer and field guns opening fire against the advancing fleet to Vice-Admiral de Robeck hoisting the ‘General Recall’ ⁶³ resulted in abandoning all original war objectives to be attained by a naval campaign. Churchill reluctantly acquiesced to forgo the operation on 23 March. ⁶⁴

In retrospect, this outcome was to be expected. When fully operational, the ÇFZ defences disposed of 263 artillery pieces of varied size and calibre with about 56,000 shells (11,000 for the shore batteries); 19 lines of a total of 586 mines (11 lines of 403 mines on 18 March) and 4 minelayers; two shore torpedo tubes with several torpedoes, plus the Akhisar torpedo boat positioned north of Kilitbahir ready to fire torpedoes; up to five airplanes for reconnaissance and bombing; a fleet of transports, gunboats, torpedo boats, and light destroyers which proved to be capable of conducting such aggressive missions as those which resulted in the sinking of the battleship Goliath and the submarine E 20; decoys such as pipe guns and floating mines fitted with periscope-like tubes and wireless jamming; two lines of anti-submarine nets; two old battleships at anchor at the other end of the Narrows, ready for suicide missions; projectors for night-time guidance of howitzer fire; anti-aircraft guns; 12,577 men in the forts, and an infantry division (the 9th) of 23,510 men, the Fifth Army notwithstanding; and regular intelligence reports. ⁶⁵ In addition to that, the whole Ottoman fleet, having blocked the Russian fleet inside the Black Sea, was waiting in the Bosporus and the Marmara Sea, together with several German submarines after May 1915. Admiral Fisher testified that at best, the fleet succeeding to pass could have remained in the Marmara Sea at the most 3 weeks, if the political objective – the revolution in Istanbul – was not achieved. ⁶⁶

This combination, set to use according to elaborately conceived plans, amounted to an insurmountable challenge to the Allied plans. The Allied fleet took on the challenge and failed as a result. Even when success seemed very close, in the early afternoon of 18 March, most of the minefields (377 out of 403 mines in 10 lines) were intact; only 2,250 (about 21 per cent) of the available shells had been spent ⁶⁷ ; the majority of the artillery pieces (148 of 235) had not yet fired a shot; and the shore torpedoes at the Narrows were still ready to fire. The losses of the ÇFZ after the attack came to an end amounted to 27 dead and 61 wounded, and just five guns damaged beyond repair. ⁶⁸ When compared with the Allied losses, this leads one to conclude that the abortion of the operation on 18 March was indeed a wise decision on the part of Vice-Admiral de Robeck.

Cevat Paşa served from 10 August 1914 to 9 October 1915 as ÇFZ Commander. After 18 March, keeping in mind the possibility of a renewed attack, he immediately proceeded with repairs and reorganization of the defences. Notably, Cevat Paşa’s report of 20 March contained proposals for additional measures to defend the ÇFZ, taking into consideration the possibility of a major landing operation, for which there was ample intelligence information. The resulting reorganization consisted mainly, in addition to new minefields and artillery positions in the Dardanelles, ⁶⁹ of a fresh deployment of land forces to cover the Gallipoli peninsula and the Anatolian coastline. Cevat Paşa’s related order dated 23 March was directed to the units under his command – albeit not for much longer – that is, the 9th, 11th, and 19th Divisions and other detached gendarmerie and artillery units. ⁷⁰ The next day, the General Command notified the ÇFZ of the formation of the Fifth Army under Liman von Sanders Paşa, composed of the III Corps (together with the 9th Division), the 11th and 5th Divisions, the 64th Regiment and some other units. ⁷¹ The ÇFZ kept its status while closely cooperating with the Fifth Army, which was to provide the necessary land support for shore defences.

The decisions taken in the immediate aftermath of 18 March indicate that the weight of the future operations was shifting landwards. After the capture of the British submarine E 15 on 17 April, Cevat Paşa himself interrogated the intelligence officer Lt. Palmer, formerly British Vice-Consul at Çanakkale, who had been taken prisoner with the crew. The questions Cevat Paşa invoked clearly indicate that by mid-April a land operation was expected by the Ottomans at any time. ⁷² He knew that the Dardanelles campaign was evolving into a ‘Gallipoli campaign’. Predicting the shift, and having reached his goal of stopping the Allied fleet at the gates of Istanbul, Cevat Paşa’s role in Gallipoli campaign continued after 14 October as Commander of the XIV Corps and Southern (Seddülbahir) Group of the Fifth Army. ⁷³ He oversaw the evacuation of the peninsula and remained fully in charge as Çanakkale Group Commander until 18 November 1916, when he became Commander of the XV Corps and was sent to the Galicia front (Nazajowka, Zlota, Lipa, Brezany, Miezyscow, Diziki-Lany sectors). The role he played in preparing the 18 March victory was recognized by the Ottoman Government and its allies, which honoured him with the Ottoman Gold Military Distinction Medal, Austrian Mérite Militaire Medal 2nd Class, and German Iron Cross 1st Class. ⁷⁴ The media gave him the honorary title of ‘the Hero of 18 March’, ⁷⁵ his photo was printed with that caption in war propaganda leaflets, and the public embraced him as such. For his efforts on the Galicia front, he further earned several Ottoman, Austrian, and German medals. He returned on 19 August 1917, once more as Commander of the XIV Corps, then as Commander of the Eight Army in Palestine and Syria from 8 November 1917. ⁷⁶ Faced with a decisive British offensive on 29 September 1918 at Nablus, the Eight Army hastily retreated to Aleppo. This time unable to impress Liman von Sanders, now the commander of the army group, Cevat Paşa returned to Istanbul.

The armistice period saw him holding a number of very high offices: first as Chief of General Staff, then as War Minister from 19 December 1918 to 14 May 1919, and then as Chief of General Staff again, at the decisive moment when Mustafa Kemal started his journey to organize a national resistance movement against the Allied plans on the fate of the Empire. It was Cevat Paşa who authorized Mustafa Kemal to go to Anatolia as army inspector, whose landing at Samsun on 19 May 1919 is considered to be the beginning of the National Struggle. ⁷⁷ Cevat Paşa was forced to resign as a result of Allied pressure soon after the last Ottoman parliament in Istanbul met in January 1920. When the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital in March, he was immediately arrested and sent to Malta as the prisoner of war no. 2773, on the charges of ‘supporting nationalists and disregarding the authority of Allied Representatives’. ⁷⁸ In Malta, he was charged, in a failed court case, with attempting to organize armed resistance by the border-dwelling nomadic tribes against the Allies. ⁷⁹ Although Cevat Paşa was on the British shortlist of Ottoman prisoners of war not to be allowed to return to Turkey, he was eventually subject to the exchange agreement of 23 October 1921 and repatriated a few days later.

Upon his return, Cevat Paşa immediately went to Ankara to join the National Struggle, modestly agreeing (given his experience and rank as the most senior of all commanders in Anatolia) to lead the relatively minor force of Elcezire Group amounting to a corps in Southeast Anatolia. The group’s activity mostly consisted of organizing local resistance by the irregular ‘national forces’ (Kuva-i Milliye) against French forces occupying the region from the Taurus mountain passes to the Euphrates river and Armenian irregulars they were supporting.

After the successful end of the National Struggle, Cevat Paşa was elected to the Grand National Assembly in 1923 as an MP from Elaziz, his ancestral home (today Elazığ), simultaneously commanding the Third Army. In October 1924, a year after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, by then the President of the Republic, took a radical decision to counter what he suspected to be a conspiracy by the commanders of the First and Second armies who were also members of parliament, and demanded Cevat Paşa (among others) to resign from the Grand National Assembly. Ultimately, MPs with active military duties were required to choose between the two functions. Cevat Paşa hesitated to follow Mustafa Kemal’s advice. He wanted to remain an MP and instead offered to resign from the army, citing his responsibility towards his constituency. Even though Mustafa Kemal was convinced Cevat Paşa was not involved in any opposition, this hesitation cost him both posts and he eventually was removed from his army command and made to resign from the parliament as of December 1924. ⁸⁰

The rest of Cevat Paşa’s career is marked by a series of militarily and politically passive but honourable posts and functions. He remained a soldier till his death. It seems that as opposed to some other comrades in arms of Atatürk who moved to opposition, Cevat Paşa silently yielded to the demands of the new regime and was modestly rewarded as a result. He was appointed to the Supreme Military Council immediately after his resignation from the Grand National Assembly and subsequently served at various supervisory boards of the armed forces.

In 1924, Cevat Paşa was appointed as military adviser of the Turkish delegation to the League of Nations during the negotiations on the Iraqi border and the Mosul question according to Art. 3(2) of the Treaty of Lausanne. His function was that of the Turkish assessor to assist in the work of the Commission of Enquiry in the Question of the Frontier between Turkey and Iraq. He was still a respected figure in the region, as according to the official reports of the Commission, during a fact-finding mission Cevat Paşa’s appearance in Turkish uniform on the streets of Mosul resulted in an incident when he became subject to ‘acclamations and further demonstrations of sympathy’. ⁸¹ He followed up on this duty in 1925 as a member of the Turkish delegation in the 35th Session of the Council of the League Nations discussing the Mosul issue. ⁸²

Promoted to a four-star general in 1926, Cevat Paşa later served as a delegate to the 1928-1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference to which Turkey was invited by the Soviet Union and Poland. He took part as a deputy in the preparatory commission of the conference. ⁸³ He retired from the army in 1935 and settled in the quiet Istanbul neighbourhood of Göztepe until his death on 13 March 1938. His Galatasaray schoolmates remembered him enjoying school reunions as a joyful elderly figure.

The traditional literature on the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign is generally biased on both sides. On the Allied side, the preoccupation with the ‘this could not have happened, therefore somebody must have done something wrong’ argument ignored the possibility that everybody had done their best, especially the Ottomans and Germans, and that these latter have proven to be better. This trend seems to have started to change. ⁸⁴ On the Turkish side, the bias in the general Çanakkale literature has always been towards presenting the confrontation as a David and Goliath story: the assailants were omnipotent; the defenders had nothing but faith. Again, however, when the official accounts of the campaign are carefully put into perspective, the picture that emerges is very different: the defenders were better prepared and better organized and, in sum, they fought better and won in the end. The Allies’ only consolation was the memory of an impeccable withdrawal and evacuation following a long and futile land campaign that would not have taken place the way it did if the naval assault had succeeded on 18 March.