World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire signed a secret alliance with Germany on 2 August 1914, negotiated chiefly by War Minister Enver Pasha, and its entry into the war was sealed when the German warships Goeben and Breslau, renamed for the Ottoman navy, bombarded Russian Black Sea ports on 29 October 1914 without any declaration of war. Russia, Britain, and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire in the following days, and Sultan Mehmed V, as caliph, proclaimed jihad against the Entente powers, though the appeal had little practical effect among the Muslim colonial subjects it targeted.