Why did the Ottomans seem to prioritize annexing Caucuses land in WWI, rather than retaking Arabia or Egypt from the British?

Did you know that in the middle of WWI the Ottoman Empire and Germany nearly went to war over the Caucuses?

After Russia dropped out there was a free for all between the Germans, the Ottomans, and newly independent Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, all of which had overlapping ambitions.

The Ottomans wanted to annex much of Armenia and Georgia, including Georgia’s capital Tbilisi and then set up a friendly Azerbaijani puppet state. Germany, which wanted a protectorate in Georgia and access to the Baku oil fields strongly opposed this, and sent 20,000 Bavarian troops into Georgia to protect them from the ottoman advance and undo the treaty of Batumi the Ottomans had forced on the Armenians and Georgians. Forcing the Turks to withdraw and humiliating the Ottomans.

While these events may seem unimportant given that the Central Powers ended up losing, Germany’s actions meant the Turkish army was unable to occupy land in the Caucuses that would later be occupied by the Soviets during the Turkish war of independence. If Germany had not the Turks May have been able to keep much of this land as the Bolsheviks were not interested in starting a war with the new Turkish Republic.