Ottoman Empire
The Ottomans performed better than had been expected early in the war. They won the Battle of Gallipoli, partly because of the incompetence of the British and French commanders. However, they did not do so well against the Russians in the Caucasus sector and the majority of eastern Anatolia was conquered by Russia who installed an Armenian puppet state to rule the eastern parts of Anatolia. The Ottomans however won the Battle of Kut against the British during the Middle Eastern campaign though Iraq was lost later. In 1915, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and others were targeted, and many as 1.5 million people were killed. The Ottoman Empire fell soon after the Arabs revolted in 1916 with British help. The empire fell after the Sinai, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and eventually Anatolia itself fell. The Ottomans surrendered in 1918. After the official surrender of the Ottoman Empire during the end of World War I, the capital Istanbul began to be occupied by British, French, Italian and Greek troops who began entering the city in November 1918. Many parts of the Ottoman Empire in western Anatolia were occupied by Greece meanwhile southeast Anatolia was occupied by France and southwest was occupied by Italy. The First Republic of Armenia was also occupying the majority of eastern Anatolia during this time. Due to the desperate situation, one Ottoman military commander Mustafa Kemal Pasha decided to resign from the Ottoman army and gathered up a Turkish resistance force to push the occupying Allied armies out of Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal decided to set up his base of operations in Ankara.