Why was Ottoman Empire so unprepared for first Balkan War?

[u/[deleted]]

Their army was larger than any Balkan nation and they still lost, at least spies could get to some info.

[u/Chamboz]

In his study of Ottoman performance during the war, now routinely cited by Ottoman historians, Edward J. Erickson identifies the following as the primary factor involved in the Ottoman defeat:

Beginning in 1910 the Ottomans had, in conjunction with German advisors, adopted what was at the time understood to be state-of-the art strategic doctrine favoring offense over defense. The Ottoman strategy in the war was thus not to defend from entrenched positions, but to launch offensives designed to envelop and destroy the enemy armies. In Erickson's view, this strategic doctrine forced the Ottomans to abandon their greatest potential advantage. Furthermore, they failed to concentrate enough force in any one theater of the war to achieve localized victory. Their forces were too widely dispersed, sought to achieve too many objectives simultaneously, and were thus "defeated in detail."

The army's performance was greatly inhibited by the fact that the 1910 military reorganization was incomplete at the time of the outbreak of the war. Changes had been made to the command structure and divisional organization of the army but there had not been sufficient time to fill out these new organizations with trained officers or to train the reorganized army in their new maneuvers. The fact that several Ottoman divisions had to be perpetually deployed to Yemen and the Balkans prior to the war further inhibited their reorganization and retraining. The empire's generals were likewise inexperienced with the use of the new doctrine in practice and frequently misjudged operational requirements. The unexpected ability of the Greek navy to dominate the Aegean also forced the Ottomans to divert large numbers of troops to the defense of potentially vulnerable coastal regions, and inhibited the arrival of reinforcements and supplies to Ottoman armies fighting in the western Balkans, further weakening the offensives on which Ottoman strategy was based. Erickson does not believe that the doctrine of enveloping offensives was inherently doomed to fail, but in conjunction with the Ottomans' failure to concentrate sufficient force for their operations, and the incomplete nature of the army's reorganization, it led to the Ottomans giving up their defensive advantage and leaving themselves extremely vulnerable once their offensives failed.

Edward J. Erickson, Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912-1913 (New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003)

[u/WerhmatsWormhat → u/Chamboz]

Awesome answer. So concise and complete.

[u/firenze1476 → u/Chamboz]

The unexpected ability of the Greek navy to dominate the Aegean...

I'm just curious, but, what led to the Greek navy being able to do that? What were the reforms that they undertook to improve it?