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The British, far from being enemies of the Ottomans, as the Khilafat Movement propaganda suggested, had remained their steadfast allies over many centuries. Their enduring alliance with the Ottomans was motivated, as far as the British were concerned, by a threat to British imperial interests that came from expansionist ambitions of Czarist Russia. The Ottomans were equally worried about the Russian threat, the more so with their increasing weakness. They needed a strong and dependable ally which they found in Britain. The Ottoman decision to ally (but belatedly) with Germany in World War I was a temporary break in a centuries old British-Ottoman alliance.
Turkey's aberrant Wartime alliance with Germany arose due to a peculiar combination of circumstances within Turkey itself and despite every effort made by the British to prevent Turkey from joining with the Central Powers in the War. Turkey stumbled into the war, in opposition to her traditional ally, by an un calculated accident. It is an interesting episode about which we shall have more to say below. British relations with the Ottoman Empire were founded on Britain's own imperial interests. That was dictated by the Ottoman Empire's strategic location vis -- vis a perceived threat from Czarist Russia. For Britain the Ottoman Empire was a valuable bulwark in Russia's way, in the context of a new age that had been inaugurated by the great explosion of maritime trade and the correspondingly increased importance of naval power, from the 16 th century onwards.
Global strategic priorities were radically changed. Control of the high seas, and not of large land masses, was now to be the secret of Imperial power. Britain soon emerged as a major maritime power and extended its imperial might around the globe. Czarist Russia was handicapped in this new game of world power.
Its naval power was constrained by geography. Its Baltic Fleet was vulnerable at the narrow straits that separated Sweden from Germany and Denmark. Its Black Sea fleet was even more vulnerable at the Bosporus and Dardanelles. Its Eastern fleet at Vladivostok was too far out of the way to play an effective role in the game. If Russia was to become a major world power, it had to have free and open access to the oceans of the world. The option before it was to push southwards, to conquer territory that would place it in a dominating position on the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
But that would be a direct threat to British imperial interests. The Ottoman Empire stood in the Russia's way to the warm waters that lay to the South. It would have to break Ottoman power to be able to mount a successful southward move. Russian policy was therefore consistently hostile to the Ottomans. Given that equation, the Russian threat to move south was an immovable foundation on which an enduring alliance between the British and the Ottomans was built.
It was to last for centuries. They fought wars together as allies, most famously in the long and expensive war, in money and in blood, the Crimean War of 1854 - 56. That war ended, as the British desired, in a Treaty that banned passage through the Bosporus and Dardanelles of all naval units, which for all practical purposes meant Russian naval units. That effectively bottled up the Russian Southern fleet in the Black Sea. The Ottoman Empire some 500 years ago was at its zenith ruling the whole of Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, Cyprus, modern day Lebanon, Syria, modern day Iraq, the religious towns of Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina, Egypt and most of the fertile Mediterranean coast of North Africa. The Ottomans also had naval control of the Mediterranean and the Black sea.
They were therefore custodians of both the Islamic and Eastern Christian faiths. The latter caused much grief outside the Ottoman empire particularly in Eastern Orthodox Russia as they grew more powerful under Tsar Peter the Great and afterwards. By contrast, the Muslim Ottomans did not murder Christians who would not convert; rather they just had to pay more in taxes. Indeed under the ruling dynasty many of the leading officials both in civil life and the army were recruited from the Christian sectors.
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