Decline of the Ottoman Empire

© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin Enver Pascha

On the eve of the First World War the Ottoman Empire, the so-called „sick man on the Bosporus“, is tainted by slow decay. On January 18th the Young Turk Revolution Movement, led by Enver Pascha, starts a putsch against the old imperial government. This move was caused by the government’s standpoint on peacetalks relating to the Balkan Wars.