The title tells is all, as Erickson finds a force that started the Great War with a competent officer corps imbued with an effective doctrine, committed to hard & realistic training and with the instrument of an army from which all the fat had been carved away. Arguably the Turkish military was brought down by the backward nature of the society that produced it, not from any inherent flaws. Considering its orderly demobilization under men who knew their business, it's understandable how the army of the Turkish republic held at bay those powers who wished to dismember the Anatolian heartland after 1918. ( )