Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War in late October 1914, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Were its leaders 'simple-minded,' 'below-average' individuals, as the doyen of Turkish diplomatic history has argued? Or, as others have claimed, did the Ottomans enter the war because War Minister Enver Pasha, dictating Ottoman decisions, was in thrall to the Germans and to his own expansionist dreams? Based on previously untapped Ottoman and European sources, Mustafa Aksakal's dramatic study challenges this consensus. It demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond Enver, that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public, and that the Ottoman leadership sought the German alliance as the only way out of a web of international threats and domestic insecurities, opting for an escape whose catastrophic consequences for the empire and seismic impact on the Middle East are felt even today.
In this article we compare the perceived cultural integration challenges by young Spanish migrants in Germany with the support offered by one national government initiative and one local migrant organisation. Based on qualitative interviews, we identified four inequality‐related and interrelated challenges: personal relationships, housing, company culture and bureaucracy. Our findings show that MobiPro‐EU, as an example of a government initiative, emphasises labour market integration and thereby neglects the cultural dimension of integration. The German‐Spanish Association, which is a regional example for migrant self‐support, lacks the financial means, staff and geographic scope to provide large‐scale support. We conclude that both initiatives follow a different support strategy and demonstrate shortcomings in supporting migrants. As a consequence, particularly for migrants who cannot draw on social support, for instance provided by their personal networks, the absence of effective support measures can negatively affect cultural integration into society as well as career development.
Swimming in a sea of military defeats, the Ottoman leadership, it seems, should have opted for less war, not more, in 1914. The generation at the helm of the state, however, welcomed the July Crisis not as a reprieve but as an opportunity to end the empire’s international isolation. Whereas the Ottoman leaders of the nineteenth century had launched a broad program of reforms in their search for a place in the European Concert, by the twentieth century a new crop of radical leaders had taken charge of the state. Many of these new leaders came from borderlands, from territories now lost, and they believed that the survival of their state rested on the creation of a “nation in arms.”
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