[Vigilanteman]

If I remember my World War I history right, both the Goeben and Breslau were trapped in the Mediterranean when the war broke out.

With Great Britain in firm control of the Straight of Gibraltar, there was no way they were going to get home. So the next best thing was to arrange a flag transfer to the Ottoman Empire in the manner you described.

While you are right about most of the Ottoman's fleet being out of date, the sheer numbers were impressive enough to:

1. Block the Bosporus as you describe.
   
2. Keep the Russian fleet from operating in the Black Sea.
   
3. Contribute to the disastrous British defeat in the Gallipoli Campaign, 1915-1916.

Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, suffered a near fatal career setback for his role in the campaign whereas an obscure Ottoman commander named Mustafa Kemal managed to parlay his outstanding performance into being Ataturk, the first leader of modern Turkey.

[Little Ray]

The Russian ships weren’t much better than the Turks, and totally outclassed by the Goeben, which was an honest-to-goodness post-Dreadnaught BC. Any attempt for a Russian BB to shoot it out with Goeben would have been suicide.

But yes, the Ottomans did okay.