Before Yavuz.. Before Midilli...

In 1914, the main concern of the Turkish Navy was maintaining a balance of power with the Greeks with whom relations were very tense. Both countries were attempting to enlarge their navies and Turkish orders included two British dreadnoughts, two scout cruisers and four destroyers, none of which were delivered. In fact the non-delivery of the two completed dreadnoughts did much to bring Turkey into the war on Germany’s side in November 1914. By then the only modern additions to the Turkish Navy were the German battlecruiser 'Goeben' and light cruiser 'Breslau', which having escaped from the British Navy in August 1914, were nominally transferred to Turkey although largely retaining their German crews. The entire Turkish fleet then came under the command of German Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. Before Yavuz and before Midilli there were 2 other German warships.



Brandenburg Class. Unusual for a ship of this time in having a powerful main armament of 6 heavy guns and a weaker than normal secondary armament. The central turret guns were however shorter than the others and even then had considerable blast effects when fired. They were the first ships in the German Navy to be fitted with radio. The first German ocean going battleships. Weissenburg and Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm were fitted with Krupp nickel steel armour but owing to delivery problems the other two had compound armour which effectively gave them twice the protection. Crew 568.

Two of the class sold to the Ottoman Empire in 1910, both of which were the better armoured pair of the class

Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm
1910 sold to the Ottoman Empire on 12.09.1910 and was renamed to Barbaros Hayreddin . It was sunk by the British submarine E11 on 08.08.1915 near the Dardanelles off Bolayir on the Gallipoli Peninsula on its way to support the Turkish land defences.

Weissenburg
1910 sold to the Ottoman Empire was renamed Turgut Reis and survived WWI
1938 scrapped.

The obsolescent Ottoman Navy played its part during WWI, including the combined German-Turkish bombardment of Russian bases before the declaration of war. Other operations included escorting coal convoys from Zonguldak to the Constantinople area, sweeping Russian mines off Constantinople, escorting troop convoys through the Sea of Marmara to Gallipoli, manning some of the Dardanelles defences, and operating light flotillas on the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers