The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern

The Ottoman Endgame is the first, and definitive, single-volume history of the Ottoman empire´s agonising war for survival. Beginning with Italy´s invasion of Ottoman Tripoli in September 1911, the Empire was in a permanent state of emergency, with hardly a frontier not under direct threat. Assailed by enemies on all sides, the Empire-which had for generations been assumed to be a rotten shell-proved to be strikingly resilient, beating off major attacks at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia before finally being brought down in the general ruin of the Central Powers in 1918. As the Europeans planned to partition all its lands between them and with even Istanbul seemingly helpless in the face of the triumphant Entente, an absolutely unexpected entity emerged: modern Turkey. Under the startling genius of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a powerful new state emerged from the Empire´s fragments.