Arming the Sultan: German Arms Trade and Personal Diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire before World War I

Abstract

Naci Yorulmaz’s book, based on his Ph.D. dissertation completed at the uni-versity of Birmingham in 2011 under the title Arming the Sultan: German Arms Trade and Personal Diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire before World War I begins with a quote from Friedrich Naumann, a German liberal politician and advocate of Germany’s Mitteleuropa Plan, which aimed the domination of Central Europe. In Naumann’s words, “We need to make the country economically dependent on us in order to be able to control it politically later” sum up the aims of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany before the World War I. The “country” was the Ottoman Empire, and Yorulmaz’s work examines the relationship between German Empire and the Ottoman Empire in terms of the arms trade started and was carried on until the last battle of these two empires.