Page 238 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

238 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

in the defense of Silistra, and on the Russian side, Marshal Paskevitch was wounded.
Still, there were a great number of lives lost during the Crimean War resulting from
not only the conflicts between the belligerent parties but also diseases. British Marshal
Raglan (June 29, 1855), Commander-in-chief of the Allied armies, and French Marshal
Saint Arnaud (September 29 1854 – Alma river) died of cholera. During the Crimean
War, weapons had evolved but the medical facilities had not ever developed. Florance
Nigtingale created miracles at Istanbul Selimiye Barracks with the nurses beside her,
and the Selimiye Barracks became a place where the wounded coming from the north of
Black Sea were cured, dropping the death rate.
Construction of railways by Russia in all the harbors of the Black Sea, from Kefe
[Caffa] to Odessa, due to the problems in the transfer of the soldiers during the war;
works such as drying up some swamp areas in Crimea, construction of bridges there,
and installation of railed systems represent the first heritage left by the allied troops to
the peninsula on account of the combined landing in the Crimean War.
When the war broke out, another reality came to the fore as well. In that war, Russia
understood that fighting with Turks was not an easy task because of the commanding
superiority of the Ottoman officers educated in the Military Academy, the contributions
of the Polish-Hungarian refugees and the presence of the war industry.
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Russia caused the death of many people from every social class on the Crimean
peninsula during this war, which lasted two and a half years. The cruelty of war can be
better understood from the work of the famous writer Lev Tolstoy, “Sevastopol 1855”,
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rather than history books and military reports.
In conclusion, the Crimean War, in which Britain, France and Piedmont-Sardinian
Kingdom took the side of the Ottoman Empire against Russia 160 years ago in order to
prevent the Russian Mediterranean dream, can be qualified as both the first modern world
war and the first “combined operation” where the Turkish army took part in modern
terms. In that war, the Ottomans allied themselves with the Western European states for
the first time, and in addition, the first trench warfare, the first wire communication, and
the first war photographs appeared on the history scene during this war. Furthermore,
this war is the first one that introduced the Ottoman State to the migration problem. In
this war, the Crimean people, including not only the Muslim Turks but also Crimean
Jews, met their rescuers in an atmosphere of bloody clashes. Therefore, a few years later,
all these ethnic groups, most of which were the local people of the Crimean peninsula,
and the Crimean Tatars, a Turkish and Muslim people, had to migrate and take refuge
in the Ottoman Empire in great numbers. Crimean Tatars were also the first Muslim
40
38 İlber Ortaylı, Atlas Tarih, “160.Yılında Kırım Savaşı-Rusya Akdeniz’e İnmemeli”, Dogan Yayincilik,
Istanbul, Issue 20, June-July 2013, pp. 70-73.
39 Crimean War was a turning point for the Turkish War Literature as well. The first to remember among the

works on this war is certainly “Vatan yahut Silistre”, the theatrical work by Namik Kemal examining the
theme of Silistra Blockade. That Silistra was defended heroically by the Turks and Russians were finally
forced to retreat was met with great joy in the rear area of the front. Namik Kemal revives this significant
victory with “Vatan yahut Silistre”, approximately 19 years after the war. This work emphasizes that love for
motherland is superior to the love for humans. See Ömer Çakır, ibid., p.1855.
40 İlber Ortaylı, Milliyet Daily, 04.10.2009.