In the summer of 1914, the Ottoman Empire faced a world of enemies. Surrounded by voracious powers – Britain in Egypt, Russia along the Black Sea, a hostile Habsburg Empire to the west, and a recently hostile Italy in the Mediterranean – the Young Turks who ruled the empire saw enemies everywhere. Their desperate gamble to cut the Suez Canal would become one of the most audacious – and doomed – campaigns of the First World War.
Egypt in 1914 was already a cauldron of colonial tension. The British had been there since 1882, ostensibly to collect debts but effectively running the country as their own fiefdom. Egypt remained technically an autonomous part of the Ottoman Empire, under a Khedive, but British soldiers, advisors, and bankers dominated every aspect of its economy and politics. The British presence was deeply resented. British soldiers in particular were disliked.
When war broke out, the Ottomans initially hoped to stay out of the fighting. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) – the Young Turk government – kept an open mind about which side to ally with. But they saw Britain, France, and Russia as voraciously hungry powers intent on dismembering the Ottoman Empire. Germany, they knew, was an unreliable friend – but it offered a security guarantee. That guarantee, and the Kaiser’s promise of a pan-Islamic jihad against the British Empire, tilted the Ottomans towards the Central Powers.
The Road to Suez
The German High Command placed a high priority on cutting the Suez Canal. Between August and December 1914, 376 transport ships had passed through the canal carrying nearly 164,000 troops to the Allied war effort. The canal was a vital artery for Britain’s empire – connecting the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, allowing troops and supplies from India, Australia, and New Zealand to reach the Western Front. If the Ottomans could pinch it off, they could deal Britain a mortal blow.
The man chosen to lead the attack was Cemal Pasha (often spelled Jemal or Kemal in sources – not to be confused with Mustafa Kemal, later Atatürk). In November 1914, Cemal Pasha stood in Istanbul’s central train station and publicly proclaimed his intention to conquer Egypt. The British dismissed his pledge as empty rhetoric. They did not think he could raise an army large enough, nor cross the waterless Sinai desert.
The March Across the Sinai
Cemal’s plan was always a long shot. He would rely on 50,000 combatants, but no more than 3,000 could be deployed for the Suez campaign itself – the rest were needed to garrison restive Arab provinces. The British had 50,000 dug-in troops, warships, armoured trains, and the canal itself – a water barrier hundreds of metres wide and 12 metres deep. Any attacker would need a three-to-one advantage to force a crossing. Cemal had a tenth of that.
Yet he counted on surprise. He hoped that if he could catch the British off guard, they might surrender a stretch of the canal. From there, he could bring up reinforcements, occupy the key town of Ismailia, and inspire a popular uprising against British rule. The jihad that the Sultan had declared would, Cemal believed, free Egypt “in an unexpectedly short time”.
The march across the Sinai took 12 days. Each man carried light rations of dates, biscuit, and olives – no more than one kilo. Water was carefully rationed. The winter nights were too cold to sleep, so the troops marched through the night and rested during the day. Against all expectations, they lost neither a man nor a beast. It was a tribute to meticulous planning.
The Ottoman Army of the Levant
What kind of army did Cemal assemble? It was a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic force – a testament to the Ottoman Empire’s diversity and its desperation. Regular soldiers from the Arab provinces of Aleppo, Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem formed the core. They were joined by volunteers from the Bedouin, Druze, Circassians, Kurds, Assyrians, Albanians, and even Jewish volunteers led by Prince Shakib Arslan, a member of the Ottoman parliament.
Cemal had also written to Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, the chief religious authority in Mecca, asking him to contribute a detachment under one of his own sons. Hussein sent his son Ali – but Ali went no further than Medina, promising to catch up later. Cemal noted with concern that Ali never left Medina. That reluctance was a warning. Within two years, Hussein and his sons would lead the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, allied with Britain.
British Surprise
The British initially dismissed the threat. Intelligence reports from a French priest were taken seriously only when aerial reconnaissance confirmed them. But early aircraft had limited range. The central Sinai – where the ground was firmest and best suited for marching – was beyond the reach of British planes based in Ismailia. French seaplanes operating from Port Said could only view the northern and southern extremities of the peninsula.
By late January 1915, the French planes began reporting alarming concentrations of Turkish troops. Wings were shredded by ground fire. The British realised that the impossible was happening: the Ottomans were coming.
H.V. Gell, a young signals officer posted near Kantara on the northern Suez Canal, recorded a series of false alarms and skirmishes. On 25 January, he received an urgent message: “Return camp immediately – Kantara being threatened by real enemy.” False alarm. The next day, British positions came under artillery fire. Gell was dispatched south. “Three thousand enemy are reported near Bala,” he noted, increasingly concerned.
The British still did not know where the Ottomans were, what their numbers were, or where they planned to attack. To that extent, Cemal had achieved surprise.
The Defences
The British took precautions. They withdrew all troops to the western shore of the canal. They left dogs chained at regular intervals on the east bank to bark at any approaching men during a night attack. They flooded low-lying areas to reduce the length of canal to be defended. Armoured trains patrolled the west bank. Warships were positioned at key points.
The canal itself was a formidable obstacle – hundreds of metres wide, too deep to ford, with warships and 50,000 troops on the far side. Even if the Ottomans reached the canal, crossing it with inadequate numbers was a suicidal proposition. Surprise, as Cemal would soon discover, ceases to matter when the odds are stacked against you.
The Attack
The actual assault on the Suez Canal began on 2 February 1915 – but that is a story for another episode. What matters for now is the audacity of the Ottoman plan, the desperation that drove it, and the sheer improbability of its success.
The Suez campaign is often forgotten in histories of the First World War, overshadowed by Gallipoli, the Somme, and Passchendaele. But it was the first real test of the Ottoman army’s capacity to fight a modern war – and the first demonstration that the British Empire’s control of Egypt was not as secure as they thought.
In the end, Cemal’s army was repulsed. The canal remained open. But the threat never entirely disappeared. The Ottoman forces had proven that they could cross the impossible desert, that they could mobilise a multi-ethnic army on a wing and a prayer, and that they could surprise the world’s greatest imperial power.
Lessons for Empire
The Suez campaign also exposed the fragility of Britain’s position in Egypt. The British had been there since 1882, but their rule was never legitimate. The Egyptians resented them. The Khedive was a puppet. The British soldiers – camped in vast numbers, bored, violent, burning down brothels, clashing with locals – were deeply disliked. If the Ottomans had reached the west bank of the canal, Cemal might well have sparked the uprising he hoped for.
It didn’t happen. But the spectre of a pan-Islamic jihad, of millions of Muslim subjects rising against the British, haunted London throughout the war. The Kaiser had promised it. The Ottomans tried to deliver it. And though they failed at Suez, they succeeded in forcing Britain to divert hundreds of thousands of troops to defend Egypt and the canal – troops that might otherwise have been sent to the Western Front.
The Suez campaign was a failure. But it was a failure that revealed the limits of British imperial power, the resilience of the Ottoman army, and the deep rot beneath the surface of colonial rule. It was the first battle of a new kind of war – one fought in deserts, across impossible terrain, with multi-ethnic armies, aircraft, armoured trains, and the ghosts of empires past.
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