Military history of Turkey

This military history of the Republic of Turkey is the history of the armed forces established under the Republic of Turkey, beginning with the Turkish War of Independence.

The Turkish revolutionaries rejected the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which had left the Ottoman government in control of substantially less of Anatolia than modern Turkey controls. Following the victory of Atatürk's forces in the War of Independence, the Treaty of Sèvres was substituted with the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which granted international recognition to the government of Ankara, rather than the Ottoman government in Istanbul.

In 1938, the Turkish Army at peacetime strength consisted of 174,000 soldiers and 20,000 officers forming 11 army corps, 23 divisions, one armoured brigade, 3 cavalry brigades and 7 frontier commands. Like most nations at the time it was ill-equipped with primarily World War I era weapons. The rifles used were a mixture including Mausers, Mannlichers, Lee–Enfields, Martinis, Lebels and others. As late as February 1940, the British Foreign Office noted: "The Turkish Army is very short of rifles and has asked us to supply 150,000".

The Turkish Air Force had 131 first line aircraft in 1937, of which only half were relatively modern. Turkey hoped to increase the size of its fleet to 300 by 1938. Although Turkey had 300 trained pilots, the majority of them would be rated with moderate ability to fly in bad weather in a Western European Air Force. In 1942, Ernest Phillips in his work Hitler's last Hope: A factual survey of the Middle East warzone and Turkey's vital strategic position admitted: "If the Germans were to stage an all out offensive in this area, they could bring more planes into the air than the Turks could even gather, and if we were to send too many from Libya to help Turkey, the weakness there would be such that we should be in difficulties on the other side of the Suez." At the beginning of World War II the Turkish Air Force consisted of some 370 aircraft of all types, 450 pilots and 8,000 men. During the war Turkey sent pilots to Great Britain for training purposes. 14 are known to have died in Great Britain. One of them was shot down by a German plane during a training flight in British air space, the rest died in accidents. The daughter of former Air Forces Commander Emin Alpkaya, who had been sent to Britain for training during the war, stated she found something amazing while examining her father's wartime diaries. He wrote that "they have told me that I am ready to go to Berlin. I have returned from the bombardment at 6 in the morning. I was tired". There were some allegations that Turkish pilots, who had been in Britain to get training during World War II, joined missions which bombed Berlin. However officials of the Turkish General Staff asserted that their pilots were never assigned in active aerial warfare and bombing flights. Alpkaya may have been referring to a ride along in a plane manned by an allied crew, in which he took on the role of observer, and not a combat role.

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