The Impact of the Confiscation of the Turkish Dreadnoughts and of the Transfer of Goeben and Breslau to Constantinople upon the Turkish Entry into WWI

When Winston Churchill then First Sealord of the Royal Navy had the two
Dreanoughts, ordered and paid for by the Ottoman Empire before World War
I, confiscated he created the preconditions for the Goeben-and Breslau-affair
and the entry of Turkey into the war. This “act of piracy” (B. Tuchman) shifted
the weight from the so far stronger neutralists to the bellicists with in the Turkish
Government towards war minister Enver. Without this mistake Goeben and
Breslau would never have sought shelter in Turkey. And these two men of war
were the reason for Turkey’s entry into the war when they bombarded Russian
harbours in the Black Sea.