During World War One, the Ottoman Empire would join the war on the side of the Central Powers, in part because of a decision by the British Navy to seize a pair of battleships under construction for the Ottomans in the UK. This also caused the Ottoman military to adopt the 1909 Maxim as their standard machine gun, purchasing them from DWM in Germany. Once commercial sales ended in 1916, they would continue to use German MG08 and MG08/15 machine guns provided as military aid.

When World War Two broke out, England (and Winston Churchill personally) very much wanted to avoid a repeat of the the previous war. In an effort to build an alliance with Turkey, they provided nearly 1200 like-new refurbished Vickers machine guns to Turkey.

The Turks had outfitted their previous inventory of Maxims with an assortment of accessories, and these were added to the new Vickers guns. In addition to being rechambered for the 8x57mm Mauser cartridge, Turkey added antiaircraft sights, ZF12 optical sights, and MG 08/15 drum brackets, and completely rebuilt the tripods to make them more stable and add antiaircraft capability.