The Italo-Turkish or Turco-Italian War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and Italy from September 28, 1911 to October 18, 1912.

The war was started after Italian imperialist ambitions, notably for the Turkish provinces of Tripolitana and Cyrenaica, in Libya, as well as the Dodecanese archipelago, reached boiling point, causing the Italians to decide to take the provinces by force from the Ottoman Empire.

The war, though minor in scale, was a key step towards the First World War, as it exposed the overall disorganisation and weakness of Turkey and awakened a ferocious nationalism in Italy that would, in 1922, help Benito Mussolini to power.

It also saw numerous technological advances developed in the early 1900s used in warfare; notably the aeroplane. On October 23, 1911, an Italian pilot flew over Turkish lines on a reconnaissance mission, and in 1912, the first ever bomb dropped from the air landed on Turkish troops in Libya.

The war was concluded after the Italian army took Tripoli, and on October 18, a peace treaty was signed, handing over the provinces that Italy had started the war to control.

The Italo-Turkish war was also key in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire as it showed, to the subjects of the empire, that the government in Constantinople was not invincible, thus strengthening the Arabic nationalism that T.E. Lawrence would later use to Britain's advantage in the First World War.

See Also

• List of Wars
• History of Italy
• History of Turkey