Your question is perhaps based on a few misconceptions. Let me clear a few things up for the sake of answering the question.

The Ottoman Empire did not align itself to Austria-Hungary. As recently as 1908, the Austrians had seized an opportunity to yoink Bosnia-Herzegovina out of the Ottoman rule - here's a fun little cartoon by the French "Le Petit Journal", dated 18 October 1908, making a caricature of the coordinated Austrian efforts and Bulgarian declaration of independence. The Ottomans were of course rather displeased - they had de facto lost control of Bulgaria in 1878, but Bulgaria had remained a nominal vassal state during its time as a principality. In fact, the Austrian relation of Bosnia and thus the cover fire they were giving for Bulgaria would set up several crucial diplomatic ties: Serbia was offended by the Austrian annexation of its northern neighbor region, whereas Bulgaria, seeing Austria-Hungary as well as to some extent Russia as its natural allies, had a far more amicable opinion of the Habsburg Empire. Bulgaria was however aware that Russia favored Serbia and that a possible conflict between Bulgaria and Serbia - especially about the future of ethnic Bulgarians in what is today the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - would likely see Russian support of Belgrade.

There was however one European great power the Ottomans did befriend: Germany. The Germans from 1903 onwards had helped the Ottomans with their massive Baghdad railway project after already having had stakes in the Orient Express. Germany also positioned its naval Mediterranean Division, consisting of Goeben and Breslau, in Constantinople.

The Ottomans signed a military alliance with the Germany on August 2nd, 1914, but critically left out Austria-Hungary and did not yet make a promise to join the German-Russian War which would shortly escalate into a war against France on the 3rd and then a war against Belgium and the UK on the 4th.

From August 5th onwards, the afromentioned German Mittelmeerdivision was under pursuit by Entente warships, fleeing from the British squadron around Indomitable after having bombed two French ports on August 4th. On the 10th, the ships reached the Ottoman-controlled Dardanelles and passed them unharmed, with the Ottomans as per their alliance with Germany threatening to fire upon the British if they followed. Subsequently, Goeben became Yavûz Sultân Selîm and Breslau became Midilli. The German transfer of ships to the Ottomans contrasted the British move, when they requisitioned two almost-finished Ottoman battleships that they had been building for the Turks. These ships would go on to serve in the war as Agincourt and Erin under British flags. So the Ottoman upper class, outraged by this British insult, allthemore appreciated the German gesture. To top things off, the former commander of Goeben, Wilhelm Souchon, went on to serve as Ottoman commander-in-chief of the navy until 1917.

But the Ottoman Empire was still is no state for war. How do you get your people and your government pumped up to join into a global conflict that you are in no logistical or economic position to participate in? Well, easy - you get your enemy to declare war on you. The afromentioned Wilhelm Souchon, while he was also fatefully overseeing the fortification of the Dardanelles where thousands of troops would soon die at in the Gallipoli campaign, was also the commander of the legendary Black Sea Raid. He took his trusted ships, now under Turkish names and flags of course, and he drove them straight to Russia's coast line. He bombed Odessa, Sevastopol, Feodosia and Yalta - just to make sure Russia got the message. Souchon had acted on the orders of the most jingoistic Ottoman politician, Enver Pasha - minister of war in Constantinople.

What followed were a plan by the Turkish civilian government to purge Pasha and apologize, but then the British government sent an ultimatum to remove the German military staffs in Turkey, wile Winston Churchill - First Sea Lord in London - already gave orders without permission from the British government that hostilities against the Ottoman Empire were now acceptable. No immediate naval attack on the Ottomans followed however, due to the sheer luck of no British vessels being in a position to do so. Either way, the Ottomans refused to comply with the British ultimatum - showing the British a false picture in which the attack was not Pasha going rogue in cooperation with Germans but instead that the attack was planned by and approved of by the Sultan and his government.

Pasha, still not removed from his position of power, in the last second changed the text of the apology by changing a passage that could then be easily interpreted as accusing the Russians of causing the whole affair. The message arrived in Moscow on 1 November and annoyed the Tsar and his foreign minister Sazonov quite a bit. Sazonov now sent Russia's own ultimatum that the Germans should get the hell out of Turkey, and the Ottomans - dependent of German support for much-needed military reform - once more refused.

On 2 November, the Russian Empire declared war on the Ottoman Empire, thus drawing the Turks into the Great War on the side of the Austro-Hungarian and German empires. All four of these great imperial states would cease to exist within the next four years.

And that's just an overview. I'm open to any possible follow-up questions.

---

Further reading:

• Kershaw, Ian: "To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949", 2015

• Piekalkiewicz, Janusz: "Der Erste Weltkrieg", 1988

• Shaw, Stanford: "History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey" [Volume 2], 1976

• Wucher, Albert: "Marksteine der deutschen Zeitgeschichte 1914-1945", 1991

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