It is becoming more evident from primary documents preserved in the various Europen, American and Ottoman archives, now made available to researchers and the public, that long before the outbreak of the First World War the major Powers, such as Russia, Britain, France, Germany and others, were vying with one another in order to gain ascendance and influance in the Near and Middle East. The main contry which in both the economic and military sense, became their arena of conflict, before, during and after the war, was the Ottoman Empire