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Ottoman Empire: Military flags

Unidentified military flag

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Ottoman Empire

Unidentified military flag

Unidentified miltary flag (greytone image) - Image by Ivan Sache, 30 June 2008

A black and white photograph shown by the Digger History website depicts some kind of Ottoman military flag.
The flag has a dark field (red?) with a white crescent, a white reverted "L" shape and a vertical bar. Their might be a dark coloured star in between the crescent's points.

Marc Pasquin, 29 June 2008

At the period the Arabic script was still in use in Turkey and the bars may be some initials or numerals of the unit.

Željko Heimer, 30 June 2008

Is there some writing on the crescent?
This is a strange one, because, as far as I know, Turkish military colours of the period were plain red with a central device consisting of a trophy of arms (gun barrels, flags and medals) in gold and a gold fringe.
I don't think that there was anything on them to say to which regiment it belonged. The Russian Army captured at least twenty-one flags from the Turks during the First World War, and were able to attribute only three to an individual regiment, which would suggest that the flags bore no identification.
Having said that, other styles of flags were apparently used, particularly by irregular forces, and it may be one of those that is shown here (the headgear of the soldiers doesn't look like the regular army uniform, but I wouldn't like to say exactly which minority they belong to).

Ian Sumner, 2 July 2008