The Fourth Army of the Ottoman Empire (Turkish: Dördüncü Ordu) was one of the field armies of the Ottoman Army. It was formed in the middle nineteenth century, during Ottoman military reforms.
The army did not survive the WWI battles in Palestine and Syria.[1][2]
After the Young Turk Revolution and the establishment of the Second Constitutional Era on 3 July 1908, the new government initiated a major military reform. Army headquarters were modernized. The Fourth Army's new operational area was Caucasia and its many troops were scattered along the frontier to keep an eye on the Russian Empire. It commanded the following active divisions and other units:[4]
7th Infantry Division (Yedinci Fırka)
8th Infantry Division (Sekicinci Fırka)
19th Infantry Division (On Dokuzuncu Fırka)
4th Artillery Division (Dördüncü Topçu Fırkası)
Erzurum Fortress Artillery Regiment
The Fourth Army also had inspectorate functions for four Redif (reserve) divisions:[5][6]
13th Erzincan Reserve Infantry Division (On Üçüncü Erzincan Redif Fırkası)
14th Trabzon Reserve Infantry Division (On Dördüncü Trabzon Redif Fırkası)
15th Diyarbekir Reserve Infantry Division (On Beşinci Diyarbekir Redif Fırkası)
16th Sivas Reserve Infantry Division (On Altıncı Sivas Redif Fırkası)
With further reorganizations of the Ottoman Army, to include the creation of corps level headquarters, by 1911 the Army's headquarters were Baghdad. Before the First Balkan War in 1911, the Army was structured as:[7]
On 26 September the Fourth Army headquarters moved to Damascus, dividing its area of responsibility in half, leaving Cemal Pasha answerable for Syria and western Arabia.[13]
^Lawrence, T.E. (1935). Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. p. 640.
^Faulkner, Neil (2016). Lawrence of Arabia's War: The Arabs, the British and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 449. ISBN9780300226393.
^Ian Drury, Illustrated by Raffaele Ruggeri, The Russo-Turkish War 1877, Men-at-Arms 277, Ospray Publishing Ltd., Reprinted 1999, ISBN1-85532-371-0, p. 35.
^T.C. Genelkurmay Başkanlığı, Balkan Harbi, 1912–1913: Harbin Sebepleri, Askerî Hazırlıklar ve Osmanlı Devletinin Harbe Girişi, Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1970, pp. 87–90. (in Turkish)
Erickson, Edward J. (2001). Order to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War. Greenwood Press. ISBN0-313-31516-7.
Erickson, Edward J. (2003). Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Falls, Cyril (1930). Military Operations Egypt & Palestine from June 1917 to the End of the War. History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Vol. 2 Part II. A. F. Becke (maps). London: HM Stationery Office.
Ottoman Empire
