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The Anatolian Labyrinth

Jophiel

Trend Setting 'Gender Tourist' since 2018.
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Newcastle upon Tyne
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she/her, they/them.
The region of Anatolia, specifically before World War One, was one of the most diverse places in the world, with Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds and many more living there under the Ottoman Empire. However, the Ottoman Empire fell, and as a result, this region was almost destined to come into conflict.

Is there a way to draw the new borders, or even have no borders, to avoid bloodshed? In this case, I guess the least amount of bloodshed is also a success.

For the sake of this scenario we can ignore imperial desires of places like Britain, France and Italy in carving up their own regions of Anatolia, this is purely a thought exercise to create peace in Anatolia.

I'll ping @Redolegna @Ares96 and @aurinoko as they were involved in the discussion beforehand.
 
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For my first suggestion, I'm going to put forward is some form of confederation of Turks, Greeks, Armenians and Kurds. The advantages of this are the borders don't need to be very rigid, however the largest problem with this solution is the much higher population of Turks compared to other groups, and thereby they'd have far more influence than others over policy, so this could cause its own issues.
 
However, the Ottoman Empire was going to fall

No country is destined to fall. The sick man of Europe was a very handy phrase to justify carving up the Ottoman Empire bit by bit, and Western Powers were very happy to prop it up in the Crimean War or at Berlin in 1878. If the Tanzimat had succeeded, or if WWI had not kicked off, maybe the various modernisations and investments in infrastructure would have paid off and allowed for better control over the most far-flung provinces (as @David Flin put it, it was quicker for the British to ship troops to Basra in WWI than for the Ottomans to get them marching). That still would not have put an end to internal strife.

Is there a way to draw the new borders, or even have no borders, to avoid bloodshed?

Flat-out impossible. There was bloodshed even in time of peace, see the Hamidian massacres where the death toll was in the hundreds of thousands. The Young Turks wanted to move out of the millet system without according more rights to the non-Turks. That's a recipe for ethnic and religious violence.

Nationalism was on the rise, and in the nineteenth century and early twentieth, it was most often an excluding kind of nationalism. Armenians were very resented as a perceived moneyed minority (I think a comparison to Jews in other countries would not be insane) and defamed as an 'enemy within', agents for the Russians. Kurds were considered fringe mountaineers which the Ottomans were happy to use as their enforcers in the massacres and the genocide. Greeks were looked ever more askance at, since independent Greece had forever been on the warpath and relentlessly expanding, with considerable Western or Russian backing, and not shy about making a Greater Greece which would have taken off the richest and most strategic territories.

For my first suggestion, I'm going to put forward is some form of confederation of Turks, Greeks, Armenians and Kurds. The advantages of this are the borders don't need to be very rigid, however the largest problem with this solution is the much higher population of Turks compared to other groups, and thereby they'd have far more influence than others over policy, so this could cause its own issues.

That's the closest to the millet system, which is still far from perfect but at least allows some peaceful coexistence. But the Turks have no reason to buy-in, because if they can interfere somewhat with other communities' affair, why should they be restricted when their numbers are the greatest, and the non-Turks have no reason to give up their own rights and privileges and be the oppressed minorities by dint of numbers.



Don't kid yourself. If the Ottoman Empire falls, there's going to be a rat race to carve it up. Even if everything was settled nicely and cleanly in conferences (that means Western oversight and threat of violence to enforce the partition, so they'll extract their own pounds of flesh). Ethnic cleansing is mostly weasel words to cover an extreme level of violence, both physical and moral. Transfers of population sounds very clinical as well, but even with limited numbers, the suffering is immense (see the Trail of Tears for how it gets awful even for numbers far below those of the Anatolian minorities). The logistics are not there in the modern world, they certainly weren't there after WWII, after WWI or before that.
 
No country is destined to fall. The sick man of Europe was a very handy phrase to justify carving up the Ottoman Empire bit by bit, and Western Powers were very happy to prop it up in the Crimean War or at Berlin in 1878. If the Tanzimat had succeeded, or if WWI had not kicked off, maybe the various modernisations and investments in infrastructure would have paid off and allowed for better control over the most far-flung provinces (as @David Flin put it, it was quicker for the British to ship troops to Basra in WWI than for the Ottomans to get them marching). That still would not have put an end to internal strife.

Fair enough, I rushed the introduction.

Flat-out impossible. There was bloodshed even in time of peace, see the Hamidian massacres where the death toll was in the hundreds of thousands. The Young Turks wanted to move out of the millet system without according more rights to the non-Turks. That's a recipe for ethnic and religious violence.

Nationalism was on the rise, and in the nineteenth century and early twentieth, it was most often an excluding kind of nationalism. Armenians were very resented as a perceived moneyed minority (I think a comparison to Jews in other countries would not be insane) and defamed as an 'enemy within', agents for the Russians. Kurds were considered fringe mountaineers which the Ottomans were happy to use as their enforcers in the massacres and the genocide. Greeks were looked ever more askance at, since independent Greece had forever been on the warpath and relentlessly expanding, with considerable Western or Russian backing, and not shy about making a Greater Greece which would have taken off the richest and most strategic territories.



That's the closest to the millet system, which is still far from perfect but at least allows some peaceful coexistence. But the Turks have no reason to buy-in, because if they can interfere somewhat with other communities' affair, why should they be restricted when their numbers are the greatest, and the non-Turks have no reason to give up their own rights and privileges and be the oppressed minorities by dint of numbers.



Don't kid yourself. If the Ottoman Empire falls, there's going to be a rat race to carve it up. Even if everything was settled nicely and cleanly in conferences (that means Western oversight and threat of violence to enforce the partition, so they'll extract their own pounds of flesh). Ethnic cleansing is mostly weasel words to cover an extreme level of violence, both physical and moral. Transfers of population sounds very clinical as well, but even with limited numbers, the suffering is immense (see the Trail of Tears for how it gets awful even for numbers far below those of the Anatolian minorities). The logistics are not there in the modern world, they certainly weren't there after WWII, after WWI or before that.

So at best, we're getting a nicely done conference with ethnic cleansing, and the only reason it doesn't get even worse is because western nations threaten to get involved, or are already actively involved in taking over large chunks of Anatolia. Christ.
 
So at best, we're getting a nicely done conference with ethnic cleansing, and the only reason it doesn't get even worse is because western nations threaten to get involved, or are already actively involved in taking over large chunks of Anatolia. Christ.

Once you introduce ethnonationalism to places where the polities have been, for better or for worse, multiethnic empires, you get a horror show.

Even places which have federations of different ethnicities and/or religions such as Belgium or Switzerland which gets along nowadays, you find serious levels of oppression by one dominant group in the nearby past.
 
Once you introduce ethnonationalism to places where the polities have been, for better or for worse, multiethnic empires, you get a horror show.

Even places which have federations of different ethnicities and/or religions such as Belgium or Switzerland which gets along nowadays, you find serious levels of oppression by one dominant group in the nearby past.

Then I guess the best scenario is the least amount of genocide possible, and the minorities able to defend themselves well enough so that they can actually form decent states, rather than the rump Armenia that was created in OTL.
 
When's the PoD?

As @Redolegna says, the collapse wasn't inevitable, at least not until 1917 or so. Asking about the PoD may feel like a derail, but when you're unravelling the Anatolian Knot has a very big impact on questions such as "whither Armenia?"

Whatever happens, there will be bloodshed. Tens of thousands at the least. Potentially millions.

Unless the Turks have a reason to give the minorites something, they won't. With Pontic and Anatolian Greeks, Armenians (especially further west as they're less homogenous), Kurds and Assyrians, there's a lot of people who want something.

This is giving me ideas for my "Free City of Constantinople" idea, though, so I'm glad you've brought it up, Jo.
 
When's the PoD?

As @Redolegna says, the collapse wasn't inevitable, at least not until 1917 or so. Asking about the PoD may feel like a derail, but when you're unravelling the Anatolian Knot has a very big impact on questions such as "whither Armenia?"

Whatever happens, there will be bloodshed. Tens of thousands at the least. Potentially millions.

Unless the Turks have a reason to give the minorites something, they won't. With Pontic and Anatolian Greeks, Armenians (especially further west as they're less homogenous), Kurds and Assyrians, there's a lot of people who want something.

This is giving me ideas for my "Free City of Constantinople" idea, though, so I'm glad you've brought it up, Jo.

I’m honestly not sure what the best POD would be. I’d say 1914, before the death of the archduke Franz Ferdinand, since this started due to maps of Anatolia before WW1.
 
The Ottoman Empire would have to democratize in some way before the Great War if it wanted to survive. The only people that wanted it's survival were the rulers themselves.
 
@David Flin has correctly surmised I was low-balling the figure. I didn't want to be accused of hyperbole, but it rather looks like an attempt to whitewash the Ottomans as a result. He was right to put the record straight.
I’m honestly not sure what the best POD would be. I’d say 1914, before the death of the archduke Franz Ferdinand, since this started due to maps of Anatolia before WW1.
No shortage of opportunites to disintegrate the Ottoman Empire from about 1877 onwards, but I think your aim is too optimistic at any point. Nevertheless, if you want to do something with Anatolia, I've made a little list. From memory, so there's probably just as many I've missed.

Off the top of my head, you could have:
  • A different end to the 1877-8 war. San Stefano? A different Berlin?
  • The Greek annexation of 1881 causing a backlash in the OE that gets the Great Powers involved.
  • The 1885 Bulgarian Unification causing a backlash in the OE that gets the Great Powers involved/
  • The Hamidian massacres of the 1890s, backlash, Great Powers. Get Gladstone in power in the UK, and this one is quite likely. He was rather vocal about it at the time.
  • The ructions leading to the Young Turks in 1908, same.
  • Intervention after the Adana massacre in 1909.
  • The Italo-Turkish and First Balkan Wars, kick off, Great Powers.
  • The Great Powers deciding that they didn't like the Ottomans pushing back in 1913 when they reclaimed Edirne in the 2nd Balkan War.
  • The Great Powers objecting to the 'population transfers' after the Balkan Wars.
The OE wasn't destined to fail, even by 1913. However, if enough of the Great Powers wanted to kill it off, and those who didn't were unable, unwilling, or too distracted to stop them, it's going down. Unfortunately, I think the OP for some sort of condominium is doomed to failure, and probably relatively quickly.
 
I can't see much of a way out for the complex and localised ethnic mixture in inland Anatolia to escape some form of ethnic cleansing once the Young Turks take over, given their attitude to breaking up the 'millet' system and the results likely for the smaller ethnic groups if the Turks are given their head in Anatolia as a whole thereafter - as seems probable, WW1 or no WW1, as the Turks will be seen in Constantinople as the govt's own people and a reliable force to keep their empire together. The govt and the top military men in C, the two intertwined as of 1909 and even more so after the 1913 coup, will also see the Kurds as reliable and as a useful coherent armed force, and the Armenians as a pro-Russian, non-Turkish 'fifth column' - war or no war. So we are likely to get the local Turks and Kurds upping the struggle for land and driving out their rivals, whether the govt arms them or not, and a repeat of what has already been happening in Macedonia and Thrace. Logically, if there is no WW1 then the Russians will still be appealed to by their attacked Christian co-religionists to save them, and have the troops in the Caucasus to do it ; and if Russia has backed off from interfering in Serbia (or helping Serbia against Bulgaria or Greece in another mini Balkan war over the spoils of 1912 around 1914-16) the expansionists and Slavophiles in St Petersburg will be champing at the bit to show the flag and help an 'oppressed little brother'.

I can easily see a messy inter-ethnic conflict in E Anatolia , or even a pre-emptive Young Turk 'strike' to disarm and break up the Armenians in the region as a 'threat', turning into a repeat of the 1876-8 Bulgarian crisis but with the Russians now taking on the Turks in Asia Minor via a large-scale advance SW to Erzerum (as in OTL 1916) and propping up a rump Armenian state in the region. Ditto the Russian army and navy taking Trabzon and propping up a rump Greek state there - with the mountains protecting them from the S , a coherent and fairly large Greek community (relics of the Empire of Trebizond from 1204-1461) and the Russians dominating the sea they only have to guard the landward W approach from Sinope to keep the region safe. So as long as the other Great Powers are too alarmed at the Anatolian massacres to prop up Turkey and just insist on the territorial integrity of the main part of the Turkish empire and its capital, an d there is no WW1 to break up the Tsarist state, I can see the Christian part of NE Anatolia being turned into Russian vassal states. This could also start up a Kurdish revolt to take advantage of the Turks' defeat and take over Diyarbakr province, but a messy Kurds vs Armenia struggle around Lake Van and probably a dramatic loss of Turkish military strength in Mosul province and Syria as their army has to fight the Armenians or the Kurds. So this could start a 'land-grab' by France for Syria and Lebanon to 'protect our Christian allies from impending massacre' and/or a British grab for the Iraqi oil-wells by 'helping' an autonomist regime of local notables in Baghdad. Not to mention an Arab revolt aimed at taking over the Hejaz by Sharif Husain and his sons...

All round a mess as in OTL, and the Greeks in W Anatolia have no suitable natural borders to protect them even if they are the ethnic majority in Smyrna and the Greek govt can land troops there to prop up a breakaway state - backed by Lloyd George and the British navy? At the best, an 'international mandate' state in Smryna as an autonomous city might survive until the meltdown in the dissolving Ottoman empire has turned into a recidivist nationalist govt under an Ataturk-like dictator. Then we have a Turkish attempt to reconquer Smyrna, and the equivalent of a Chanak crisis - unless the new Turkish govt is based in vulnerable Constantinople and has lost the Dardanelles to an international 'peacekeeping' force and is too scared to attack Smyrna lest the Great Powers take over their capital by sea and give it to Russia. If the crisis does lead to an Allied/ Russian attack on Constantinople to save the Greeks in Smyrna or the Armenians in this 'no WW1' scenario, then I can see a rump Ottoman govt under Allied control in C as a 'free city', a rebel nationalist govt inland so the two have a civil war, and the complete loss of all of Thrace by the Turks to either Bulgaria of Greece.

In this version, there is no WW1 so Constantine I/ XII has not been deposed by the Allies and Greece is reasonably united - so would it prefer to send its army to its old capital of Constantinople and leave Smyrna to the Allies (Uk/ France) as better able to keep the inland Turks back?
 
One thing I could see helping is the Ottoman empire getting less bushwacked by Russia in the c. 19th, if only because that probably exacerbated(without their involvement mind you-I don't want to slide into "they deserved it" or even "it was Their Fault) perceptions of non-Muslim minorities as potential internal enemies or fifth columnists. Plus you have less of people reacting to memories of the Circassian ethnic cleansing. In terms of structural solutions-there are modern constitutional arrangements built around making large multiethnic confederations work(mostly oriented towards federalism and vote allocation systems that make it hard for one ethnic group to establish dominant control; South Africa, modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, post-Taef Lebanon to a very limited extent, and India are all fairly well-known examples) but it's hard to say how available or viable those models were to the Ottoman Empire in 1900 or even earlier. I think a PoD in 1870 or so would probably at least buy some time for a more durable power-sharing arrangement to work out.
 
Basically, get yourself a Tanzimat-era PoD that gets modernization and secure borders, and prepare for some fun constitutional fighting. I do wonder also if more places breaking off earlier pre-exclusionary nationalism would be helpful, since less mess and those smaller polities could possible carve out their own pan-religious and pan-linguistic ethnic identities. Be fun to see some kind of Vallahade state in Yanina develop into to a "we are all heirs of the Greeks! even if we uh mumble mumble go to a mosque on the reg."
 
Roger II, you hit the nail on the head. A POD that goes back far further than 1900 is my preference. I agree a power-sharing agreement could have been hammered out in the 1870s in Anatolia.
This may be a bit of a distraction, and going down the rabbit hole here, but what if we set up the power-sharing a century earlier even than that?
Would it be possible in 1768-1780? To summarize, could a power-sharing agreement be hammered out if the point of diversion was that Catherine the Great's attempt to break up the Crimean Horde failed, instead of succeeding. This would put Ottoman power a bit above where it was in the original timeline--and leave the Crimean Khanate intact.The likely result is Russia is less powerful, and the Balkans less likely to become independent the way they do in our timeline, since the Russo-Turkish wars were a key factor in Balkan independence movements. With the khanate around for a decade or two longer, would that be enough to allow for Anatolia to fragment? Would having the Crimean Khanate as a buffer deter further Russian growth down towards the Black Sea?
(I know this is heavily speculative and I kinda let my mind get away from me here)
 
Myabe, although IDK if ethnic lines were such that nationalism was a factor. On the flip side, it means that the social cleavages are probably different-maybe some of the Balkan groups see themselves primarily along Greek/Turk lines(rather than more fine-grained splits), there may be some lingering Alevism in the Balkans and parts of Anatolia. So maybe there's no break-up and a reform movement gets somewhere much earlier(or conversely complacency sets in in the government and thigns just fall apart harder and faster when someone does start attacking/revolting), maybe the empire takes advantage of the peace on the northern borders to re-consolidate N. Africa and Iraq* or try and pick some land off the crumbling wreck of Safavid Persia. More generally, what does "power-sharing" when the various Balkan and Caucasian nationalisms were still a largely elite affair?

*This could have interesting religious consequences given the relative youth of Karbala and Najaf as Shiite theological centers.s
 
I think you're onto something here. A Crimean Khanate would necessarily leave Ottoman hands free to attempt to expand gains in Iraq or more forcibly assert their will in places their hold had previously been regarded as in name only or weak. For example, Ottoman controlled Egypt was run by the Mamluks--their refusal to modernize and the Ottoman's slow reaction time was one of the major factors in Napoleon's brief conquest of Egypt.
So the tightening of Ottoman control over north Africa--including Egypt--could prevent Napoleon from gaining the initial successes he had there in 1798. With the easy victories he had over the Mamluk military--though little progress in holding the country, this could chart a very different course for the Napoleonic Wars. If Napoleon can't claim even a nominal triumph over Egypt, he would be likely to meet a chillier reception upon his return to France, and his dictatorship, if it occurred at all, would take a different form.
You really can't pluck one string without disrupting the whole web in alternate history, can one?
*Digression over*
The idea of unity between classes would doubtless be time-specific. As Roger II pointed out, solidarity and power-sharing would likely fall along elite lines, rather than national or ethnic ones. So perhaps, if the Khanate holds on and curbs Muscovy, the beginnings of Anatolian sense of nationality would emerge in this new timeline?
I'm not nearly as well versed in late Ottoman history as I would like to be, so consider this rampant and ill-informed speculation of the ripest type. What are your thoughts, guys?
 
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