The Ottoman Empire was established by the Turks at the end of the 13th century, and became a world power in the 16th century, and at the same time had a vast territory in Asia, Europe and Africa, and its territory reached its peak in the 17th century, with most of the territory of the Balkan Peninsula, the Middle East and North Africa, and the territory of northern Algeria in the west, Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf in the east, Austria, Slovenia, Romania and southern Ukraine in the north, Sudan and Yemen in the south, and the Ottoman navy once dominated the Mediterranean. However, like all civilizations, the Ottoman Empire flourished and declined, losing to Russia, Austria, Britain and other Western powers, and its power continued to shrink, gradually becoming the "sick man of Europe". This process of decay lasted from the late 17th century to the beginning www.biquge.info of the 20th century, just when people thought that this terminally ill empire could fall at any time, it won the First World War by absorbing Western civilization for modernization and joining the Allied camp. A slow but determined process of modernization began in areas such as education, but the corrupt bureaucracy and brutal national policy did not change substantially, and the accumulation of ills over the centuries eventually led to the collapse of the empire......

The Ottoman Empire's rebellion for power first gave the various ethnic groups under the empire who were dissatisfied with the rule of the Turks a good opportunity to fight for independence. The Persians (Iranians), Egyptians, and Arabs all had their own glorious civilizations, and they were only annexed by the Ottoman Empire in recent centuries, and their national consciousness was particularly strong. The smoke of armed insurrection spread throughout the eastern and southern regions of the Ottoman Empire.

In the eastern part of the empire, the twice-destroyed state of Persia was once again "resurrected." Without the military assistance of the United States and Britain, the Persian guerrillas could not confront the Ottoman army with modern armaments, so they had to turn to the Soviet Russian government for help, which undoubtedly drove the tiger away, because the Russian invasion and encroachment on Persia can be traced back to the late 18th century, and Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were the territories separated from the old Persian state. Although the current Soviet Russian government has labeled itself as the liberation of all mankind and the unity of the world, it has not shaken off the expansionist ambitions of the Russians since the time of Peter the Great, and they do not openly provide weapons and equipment to the Persians like the United States and Britain, but accept Persian armed personnel into the territory of Soviet Russia for military training, from which they will screen and cultivate pro-Russian and pro-Soviet elements, and lay the foundation for the re-expansion of Soviet Russian forces into the Persian region. Soon, the Persian guerrillas were in a desperate situation due to the disparity between the enemy and the enemy, and the Soviet Russian army began to intervene directly, sending thousands of fighters into the Persian region in the name of international volunteers, and dealt a heavy blow to the Ottoman army that had come to exterminate the guerrillas.

In the southeastern territories of the empire, Arab nationalist movements had already flourished, and during World War I, the brutal plundering and bloody repression of the Ottoman army strengthened the Arabs' resolve to break away from Ottoman rule, and several tribes formed secret alliances, supported by the American and British camps. In 1927 and 1933, the Arabs staged two uprisings, and although the uprisings were ultimately declared unsuccessful, they greatly shook the Ottoman Empire's rule in the Arabian Peninsula, and in March 1935, the third Arab uprising finally ignited a fire that swept through much of the Middle East, and the Ottoman army had to withdraw from Tabuk, Medina, and Mecca under the fierce and sustained blows of the Arab coalition camp.

In the southern part of the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptians, who had been trying to survive in the gap between Britain and France in the early years, "sidewalked" with the Italian government. The ambitious Italians seized Libya on the border with Egypt in the early 20th century through a war against Ottoman Turkey and have been salivating over rich Egypt ever since. In the Egyptian rebellion in the 20s, Italy actively intervened in the name of the Allies to help the Ottoman Empire quell the war provoked by the United States and Britain behind the scenes, taking the opportunity to expand Italy's influence in Egypt, and secretly cultivating pro-Italian forces, providing them with funds, weapons and military instructors to help them continue to grow and develop. As the Arab revolt severed the land connection between the Ottoman hinterland and the western territories, the Italians encouraged the Egyptians to launch an armed uprising.

From April to June 1935, the Western Allied forces led by Germany launched a spring offensive on the Atlantic front, capturing the Bahamas, which was only one step away from the southern coast of the United States, at the cost of more than 40,000 casualties, and then landed on the island of Cuba, engaged in fierce battles with the American troops stationed there, successively seized a series of important military towns on the island, basically realized the blockade of the Gulf of Mexico, and created favorable strategic conditions for the landing of Allied troops in the southern United States. After more than half a year of fighting, the Allied forces attacking from the northern flank had gained a foothold on the islands off the southeast coast of Canada, and in May they launched the Battle of Halifax, winning a difficult but important victory in Nova Scotia after several weeks of fierce fighting against 300,000 British Commonwealth troops. During this period, the Japanese army launched another attack on the Hawaiian Islands, seizing all the islands except Oahu, leaving hundreds of thousands of American troops in a situation where foreign aid was cut off.

As a member of the Allied camp, the Ottoman Empire no longer enjoyed the glory of victory on the frontal battlefield. Despite the support of the German government, Enver not only failed to seize the Ottoman Empire, but almost lost his life - the scheming Vasibi used money and official positions to lure the two commanders of the regiment under Enver to defect, and Enver was able to escape under the desperate protection of the guards, and then took a German plane to the northwestern Ottoman Empire, using Adriatic as a stronghold to regain his strength, while the hapless Sulman was captured and sacrificed to Vasibi as a trophy.

Like Enver, Fatih was plagued by mutinies among his subordinates, and when he learned that the renegades were planning to attack his ship with torpedo boats, he had to temporarily evacuate Istanbul with his ships that remained loyal to him.

In the struggle for imperial power, Vasibi unexpectedly defeated two fierce rivals, but he proved to be not a powerful ruler or a pillar of control, and many provincial officials swore allegiance to the new sultan and were reused, but the generals who were on the border and had heavy troops were suspicious and questioned, and Vasibi seized their families in Istanbul and forced them to go to suppress the rebels everywhere and measure their loyalty by their achievements. In dealing with the rebel forces in Persia, Egypt, Arabia and other places, the training and equipment of the Ottoman Empire's front-line army have obvious advantages, but in the current situation, the normal supply of the army is difficult to guarantee, and the consumption of grain, grass and ammunition has increased exponentially, but Vasibi has not been able to solve these problems, resulting in the defeat of many troops due to insufficient supplies, and the commanders are harshly reprimanded and punished, which then triggers a vicious circle.

The situation of the Ottoman Empire was worsened by the loss of popularity of Vasibi, who was constantly losing the hearts and minds of the people, and his most stupid decision was to kill the sultan candidate Sulman on charges of treason by Enver and others, which directly led to the powerful alliance of Enver and Fatih, the former of whom had good relations with the German top and had extraordinary influence in the Ottoman military and political circles, and the latter who was of pure blood and military achievements, but too conceited to know how to win the hearts and minds of the people. After Surman's death, Fatih became the most legitimate candidate for primogeniture as the Sultanate, and Enver sent people to meet and negotiate a common alliance against Wasibi. After that, Enver mobilized the 2nd Army Corps of the Ottoman Army, which had been stationed in the Balkans for a long time, to Istanbul, Fatih gathered marines and fortress guards to move south along the Dardanelles, and Vasibi hurriedly sent troops from all over the country to intercept it, but more than half of the troops either deliberately did not move, or were trapped because of traffic jams and poor supplies, and the troops who arrived at the front line had no intention of serving Vasibi.

Although Vasibi rebelled against his relatives, he still firmly held the command of the Ottoman Guards, so he used the strong city defense of Istanbul to confront the Enver-Fatih coalition army, and on the other hand, he repeated the old trick and used the money position to buy the senior officers who held the military power, but this time Enver and Fatih had already taken precautions, and the officers had long hated Vasibi's approach, and the siege lasted for more than a month, and the materials in Istanbul became increasingly scarce, and the army and the people were panicked. The Arabs declared their independence one after another, and the Persian forces, supported by the Soviet Russian army, even gathered and annihilated an Ottoman force with nearly 10,000 soldiers in a battle on the banks of the Zaindai River, shocking the Central Powers.

Although the country was on the verge of collapse, the ugly struggle for the throne continued to play out in Istanbul, and as a result, no one emerged as the ultimate victor, and Mustafa Kemal, the military governor of the Ottoman province of Ankara, raised his arms and called on the Turks to replace the rotten monarchy with an enlightened democratic government, and announced the formation of a national government in Ankara, which was supported by the local population and a considerable part of the army. By the time Vasibi was defeated and killed, and Enver and Fatih entered Istanbul as victors, Kemal's Nationalist Government was up and running and militarily preparing for the attack of the royalist army.

Eager to achieve victory, Enver and Fatih did not regard Kemal's Nationalist government as a great enemy, nor did they take the armed independence of Persia, Egypt, and Arabia seriously, and they spent several weeks debating how to deal with the "illegitimate sultan" Mahmud III and the appointment of officials after the purge of the military and political leadership, Erzurum and other provinces, with a ruling population of more than 2 million, although the national army lacked weapons and ammunition, its morale was higher than that of the Ottoman army, and Kemal adapted to the situation and made fruitful contacts with the Persian state in the north and the Arab alliance in the south, and secretly formed a temporary front to join forces against the Ottoman Empire.

The competition between democracy and monarchy, the struggle between national independence and hegemonic rule, who wins and who loses will be determined by the victory or defeat on the battlefield, but the Ottoman Empire, which has just recovered from a serious illness and has not broken its roots, has experienced turmoil in just over a year, and the old foundation of the country has collapsed, and the era that belongs to it is irretrievably gone......

(End of chapter)