This is the conventional view, and the one taken by Eugene Rogan in a recent book entitled The Fall of the Ottomans. According to Efraim Karsh, it is incorrect:
The truth of the matter is that the Ottoman empire was neither forced into the war in a last-ditch attempt to ensure its survival nor maneuvered into it by an overbearing German ally and a hostile Entente; rather, it plunged head on into the whirlpool. . . . [And] just as the fall of the Ottoman empire was not the result of external machinations but a self-inflicted catastrophe, so too the creation of the modern Middle East on its ruins was not an imperialist imposition but the aggregate outcome of intense pushing and shoving by a multitude of regional and international bidders for the Ottoman war spoils in which the local actors, despite their marked inferiority to the great powers, often had the upper hand. . . .
But to acknowledge [the truth] would mean abandoning the self-righteous victimization paradigm that has informed Western scholarship for so long, and [would mean] treating Middle Easterners as equal free agents accountable for their actions, rather than giving them a condescending free pass for political and moral modes of behavior that are not remotely acceptable in Western societies.
Read more on Middle East Forum: http://www.meforum.org/5240/fall-of-ottomans