WWI and the End of the Ottoman Empire

with Mustafa Aksakal

hosted by Chris Gratien and Sıla Önder

| The First World War brought an end to six centuries of Ottoman imperial rule and in many ways, made the Middle East region as it is known today. In this episode recorded live at the University of Virginia Institute for the Arts and Humanities, we are joined by Mustafa Aksakal, author of two books about the Ottoman Empire's involvement in WWI. In his new book The War That Made the Middle East, Prof. Aksakal takes a fresh look at the fateful decisions of the empire's last days, as well as how the First World War transformed Ottoman society and politics with devastating consequences for the people who lived it and lasting implications for the future Middle East region.   

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The First World War brought an end to six centuries of Ottoman imperial rule and in many ways, made the Middle East region as it is known today. In this episode recorded live at the University of Virginia Institute for the Arts and Humanities, we are joined by Mustafa Aksakal, author of two books about the Ottoman Empire's involvement in WWI. In his new book The War That Made the Middle East, Prof. Aksakal takes a fresh look at the fateful decisions of the empire's last days, as well as how the First World War transformed Ottoman society and politics with devastating consequences for the people who lived it and lasting implications for the future Middle East region.

Contributor Bios

	Mustafa Aksakal is Associate Professor of History and the Nesuhi Ertegün Chair of Modern Turkish Studies at Georgetown University. He teaches courses in the History of the Late Ottoman Empire and the Modern Middle East.
	Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century. His current project, provisionally titled The Book and the Sword: Civil War and Reconstruction in Late Ottoman Syria, offers a global microhistory of the Tanzimat period, centered on the unsolved murder of an American missionary in the Ottoman Empire.
	Sıla Önder is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Virginia.

Credits

Episode No. 592
Release Date: 22 August 2026
Recording Location: University of Virginia
Special thanks to the UVA Institute for the Arts and Humanities
Sound production by Chris Gratien
Audience questions by Graham Pitts, Kate Dannies, Audrius Rickus, Jülide Etem, Can Gümüş, and Yiğit Akın
Opening music by Chad Crouch. Closing music by Kara Güneş.
Bibliography courtesy of Mustafa Aksakal

Further Listening

	Yiğit Akın	429 10/3/19	How War Changed Ottoman Society
	Mostafa Minawi	540 3/27/23	Arab-Ottoman Imperialists at the End of Empire
	Christine Philliou	506 7/16/21	Refik Halit: A Life of Opposition
	Nazan Maksudyan	440 12/9/19	Ottoman Children and the First World War
	Çiğdem Oğuz	495 2/28/21	I. Dünya Savaşı'nda Ahlak Buhranı
	Laura Robson	510 8/13/21	The Politics of Mass Violence
	Ozan Ozavci	526 4/22/22	A New History of the Eastern Question

Further Reading

Akın, Yiğit. When the War Came Home: The Ottomans’ Great War and the Devastation of an Empire. Stanford University Press, 2018.

Beşikçi, Mehmet. The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance. Brill, 2012.

Beşikçi, Mehmet, Selçuk Akşin Somel, and Alexandre Toumarkine. Not All Quiet on the Ottoman Fronts: Neglected Perspectives on a Global War, 1914-1918. Orient-Institut Istanbul, 2020.

Birdal, Murat. The Political Economy of Ottoman Public Debt: Insolvency and European Financial Control in the Late Nineteenth Century. I. B. Tauris, 2010.

Campos, Michelle U. Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Stanford University Press, 2010.

Çetinkaya, Y. Doğan. The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement : Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey. I.B. Tauris, 2014.

Çiçek, M. Talha. War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s Governorate during World War I, 1914-1917. Routledge, 2014.

Deringil, Selim, ed. The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War. Academic Studies Press, 2019.

Der Matossian, Bedross. Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire. Stanford University Press, 2014.

Dolbee, Samuel. Locusts of Power : Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Doumanis, Nicholas. Before the Nation: Muslim-Christian Coexistence and Its Destruction in Late-Ottoman Anatolia. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Dölek-Sever, Deniz. Istanbul's Great War: Public Order, Crime and Punishment in the Ottoman Capital, 1914-1918. Libra, 2018.

Ekmekçioğlu, Lerna. Recovering Armenia : The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey. Stanford University Press, 2016.

Fortna, Benjamin C. The Circassian: A Life of Eşref Bey, Late Ottoman Insurgent and Special Agent. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Genell, Aimee M. Empire by Law: The Ottoman Origins of the Mandate System in the Middle East. Columbia University Press, 2026.

Gingeras, Ryan. Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1922. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Gratien, Chris. The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier. Stanford University Press, 2022.

Hamed-Troyansky, Vladimir. Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State. Stanford University Press, 2024.

Kaligian, Dikran Mesrob. Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule: 1908-1914. Transaction Publishers, 2009.

Kayalı, Hasan. Imperial Resilience : The Great War’s End, Ottoman Longevity, and Incidental Nations. University of California Press, 2021.

Kayalı, Hasan. Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918. University of California Press, 1997.

Kayaoğlu, Turan. Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Klein, Janet. The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone. Stanford University Press, 2011.

Low, Michael Christopher. Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj. Columbia University Press, 2020.

Makdisi, Ussama. Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World. University of California Press, 2019.

Mahir Metinsoy, Elif Mahir. Ottoman Women during World War I : Everyday Experiences, Politics, and Conflict. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Minawi, Mostafa. The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz. Stanford University Press, 2016.

Özok-Gündoğan, Nilay. The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy and Privilege. Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

Peçe, Uğur Zekeriya. Island and Empire: How Civil War in Crete Mobilized the Ottoman World. Stanford University Press, 2024.

Philliou, Christine M. Turkey: A Past Against History. University of California Press, 2021.

Polatel, Mehmet. Armenians and Land Disputes in the Ottoman Empire, 1850–1914. Edinburgh University Press, 2025.

Suny, Ronald Grigor. “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton University Press, 2015.

Tanielian, Melanie S. The Charity of War : Famine, Humanitarian Aid, and World War I in the Middle East. Stanford University Press, 2018.

Thompson, Elizabeth F. How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs : The Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of Its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance. Grove Atlantic, 2021.

Üngör, Uğur Ümit. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Yosmaoğlu, İpek. Blood Ties: Religion, Violence, and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908. Cornell University Press, 2014.

Wyrtzen, Jonathan. Worldmaking in the Long Great War: How Local and Colonial Struggles Shaped the Modern Middle East. Columbia University Press, 2022.