Italo-Turkish War

Italo-Turkish War
Part of the Scramble for Africa
Clockwise from top left: Battery of Italian 149/23 cannons; Mustafa Kemal with an Ottoman officer and Libyan mujahideen; Italian troops landing in Tripoli; an Italian Blériot aircraft; Ottoman gunboat Bafra sinking at Al Qunfudhah; Ottoman prisoners in Rhodes.
Date 29 September 1911 – 18 October 1912 (1 year, 2 weeks and 5 days) Location Ottoman Tripolitania (Ottoman Libya), Aegean Sea, Eastern Mediterranean Result Italian victory Territorial changes Italy gains Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and the Dodecanese Islands
Belligerents
Italy	Ottoman Empire Senussi Order
Commanders and leaders
Victor Emmanuel III Giovanni Giolitti Carlo Caneva Augusto Aubry † Giovanni Ameglio Luigi Faravelli	Mehmed V Mehmed Said Pasha Enver Pasha Mustafa Kemal (WIA)[1] Omar al-Mukhtar
Strength
Mobilisation 1911:[2] 89,000 troops 14,600 quadrupeds 2,550 wagons 132 field guns 66 mountain guns 28 siege guns Exigencies 1912:[2] 4 battalions Alpini, 7 battalions Ascari and 1 squadron Meharisti	Initial:[3] ~8,000 regular Turkish troops ~20,000 local irregular troops Final:[3] ~40,000 Turks and Libyans
Casualties and losses
1,432 killed in action[4][5] 1,948 died of disease[4][6][5] 4,250 wounded[5]	8,189 killed in action[7] ~10,000 killed in reprisals & executions[8]

Events leading to World War I
Unification of Germany 1866–1871 Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871 Second Concert of Europe 1871 Great Eastern Crisis 1875–1878 Campaign in Bosnia 1878 Dual Alliance 1879 Boer Wars 1880–1902 Austro–Serbian Alliance 1881–1903 Triple Alliance 1882 Berlin Conference 1884 Bulgarian Crisis 1885–1888 Reinsurance Treaty 1887–1890 Franco-Russian Alliance 1894 First Sino-Japanese War 1894–1895 Anglo-German naval arms race 1898–1912 Fashoda Incident 1898 Anglo-Japanese Alliance 1902 May Coup 1903 Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905 Entente Cordiale 1904 First Moroccan Crisis 1905–1906 Pig War 1906–1908 Anglo-Russian Convention 1907 Young Turk Revolution 1908 Bosnian Crisis 1908–1909 Racconigi Bargain 1909 Second Moroccan Crisis 1911 Italo-Turkish War 1911–1912 Balkan Wars 1912–1913 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand 1914 July Crisis 1914
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The Italo-Turkish or Turco-Italian War (Turkish: Trablusgarp Savaşı, "Tripolitanian War", Italian: Guerra di Libia, "War of Libya") was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from 29 September 1911 to 18 October 1912. As a result of this conflict, Italy captured the Ottoman Tripolitania Vilayet, of which the main sub-provinces were Fezzan, Cyrenaica, and Tripoli itself. These territories became the colonies of Italian Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which would later merge into Italian Libya.

During the conflict, Italian forces also occupied the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea. Italy agreed to return the Dodecanese to the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Ouchy^[9] in 1912. However, the vagueness of the text, combined with subsequent adverse events unfavourable to the Ottoman Empire (the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and World War I), allowed a provisional Italian administration of the islands, and Turkey eventually renounced all claims on these islands in Article 15 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.^[10]

The war is considered a precursor of the First World War. Members of the Balkan League, seeing how easily Italy defeated the Ottomans^[11] and motivated by incipient Balkan nationalism, attacked the Ottoman Empire in October 1912, starting the First Balkan War a few days before the end of the Italo-Turkish War.^[12]

The Italo-Turkish War saw some technological changes, most notably the use of airplanes in combat. On 23 October 1911, an Italian pilot, Capitano Carlo Piazza, flew over Turkish lines on the world's first aerial reconnaissance mission,^[13] and on 1 November, the first aerial bomb was dropped by Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti, on Turkish troops in Libya, from an early model of Etrich Taube aircraft.^[14] The Turks, using rifles, were the first to shoot down an airplane.^[15] Another use of new technology was a network of wireless telegraphy stations established soon after the initial landings.^[16] Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, came to Libya to conduct experiments with the Italian Corps of Engineers.