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Later, in early 1915, at the same time that battles were raging in Gallipoli, British forces in the Persian Gulf, under the command of General Charles Townshend, began advancing northward up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with the eventual goal of seizing Baghdad. On June 3, 1915, they captured the Turkish garrison of Amara with unexpected ease—the entire garrison surrendered without a fight. On June 27, in a much more difficult battle, the British attacked Nasariya.

Continuing north in the unbearable heat, the Allied forces marched onward to Kut, which they reached and occupied on September 28. On November 22, they reached Ctesiphon, only twenty miles from Baghdad. At this point, however, the Turks put up a vigorous fight, and the Allied troops were forced to retreat all the way back to Kut, where they dug in. The Turks followed and lay siege to Townshend’s troops at Kut for the next five months. On April 29, 1916, Townshend surrendered all 10,000 of his surviving men—the largest surrender of British troops in history up to that time.

A Two-Front War for Britain

At the start of World War I, British leaders were aware that the Ottoman Empire was slowly falling apart and thus did not regard Turkey as a serious opponent. As a result, Britain expected quick victories in both the Dardanelles and in Mesopotamia—victories that Britain needed badly in light of the gridlocked trench wars on the western front. When Turkey also became a quagmire, it was a heavy blow for Britain and sent large ripples through the government and military leadership, even costing Winston Churchill his job as first lord of the British Admiralty. Though British military leaders did have the advantage of being able to recruit forces from the many nations in its empire, the situation in Turkey and Mesopotamia left Britain facing a war on multiple fronts.

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