Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Despite Ottoman military reforms, the Ottoman Army met with disastrous defeat in the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), resulting in the Ottomans being driven out of North Africa and nearly out of Europe. Continuous unrest leading up to World War I was caused by the Ottoman counter-coup of 1909, which preceded the 31 March Incident (Restoration, 1909) and 1912 Ottoman coup d'état ("Saviours") and the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état in the Empire. The Ottoman participation in World War I in the Middle Eastern theatre ended with the partition of the Ottoman Empire's remaining territories under the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres. This treaty, as designed in the conference of London, allocated nominal land to the Ottomans and permitted them the title Ottoman Caliphate (similar to the Vatican, a sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the Catholic Pope), leaving them weak enough not to be a further threat but just powerful enough to protect Britain from the Khilafat Movement.