Effects on WW1 on Cilicia instead of Gallipoli

[Beefhammer]

I don't know what they mean, but the Cilicia area did indeed house the only *rail* link between Asia Minor/Istanbul and Mesopotamia. There were no rail lines connecting the two regions further inland or further east. So if they meant Mesopotamia as written, it was still an accurate statement, even if you found it geographically counterintuitive that a point so close to the Mediterranean coast would be a rail chokepoint to the latter region.

I was saying that taking Cilicia and Adana wouldn't cut off Mesopotamia as decisively as it would the Levant and the Hejaz.

 

[raharris1973]

I was saying that taking Cilicia and Adana wouldn't cut off Mesopotamia as decisively as it would the Levant and the Hejaz.

That's true, lots of (bad) roads and foot tracks left over, definitely.

 

[ECavalier]

So why couldn't this same troop mix have been used in Alexandretta instead, with the French assured that the French troop contribution ensures French political control of the immediate Alexandretta region and surrounding regions of Syria and Cilicia in the postwar?

Unlikely to have the time to dig out my copy of A Line in the Sand until the weekend so take this with a pinch of salt. To my knowledge French troops were outnumbered more than 5:1 by imperial troops at Gallipoli and were completely excluded from the planning of the actual landing. I think that ratio was even worse at the start when the French were one under strength division deployed as a distraction on the other side of the Dardanelles. Bearing in mind also that one of the original selling points of the straits campaign was that there would be no need for landings.

And powers interested in territory did not always veto their allies operating on it. After all, didn't Russia want postwar control of Constantinople and the straits from the moment of Ottoman entry into WWI? But the Russians didn't veto, yell 'hell no!' or throw a wet blanket on the Gallipoli operation, which if successful, would have put Britain in control of the this desired territory and national windpipe. So powers' attitudes on these sorts of things seemed remarkably inconsistent.

To my recollection Britain had already made the dramatic reversal of promising Constantinople to Russia by the time of the landings. Whereas Sykes-Picot wasn’t even ratified till after it was evacuated, so post-war control of the Middle East was still very much up in the air at the time they’d be deciding on an Alexandretta landing. I’d also add that whilst Russia desired Constantinople it had zero influence in the region whilst France had economic interests in greater Syria and a longstanding excuse to interfere in the area as protector of Catholic missions.

TLDR: whilst France ended up contributing troops to Gallipoli it was a small proportion, forcing the straits was supposed to be possible without this and Russia had already been promised Constantinople in 1915 whilst Britain and France continued to squabble over the Levant until after the end of WWII.

 

[Truenorth14]

I am wondering how no Gallipoli would affect Australia and New Zealand if at all?

 

[Coulsdon Eagle]

Most likely destination is Egypt, then Palestine & Syria, before someone sends some of them to the Western Front. Possibly some end up in East Africa?

 

[Raferty]

So this would massively complicate Ottoman defenses in the Levant and Iraq and would be something of a problem, but I don't know if they fall apart in those areas quickly - the Allies only had the successes there late war once the Ottomans had suffered through attritional defeats and collapsed of internal morale and public order.

As far as a breakout in Anatolia, uh, no. The terrain is just awful for that.

But better than Galliopli? Well, in hindsight, yes. But Galliopli was meant as a decapitation strike to end the war in one go, and as a result, I see why they chose that instead

 

[Helmuth48]

I recently completed this map of Cilicia, showing the construction of the Baghdad railway:

At times, over 35,000 workers were employed in the construction of the line, often under extreme and dangerous conditions. "The railway stands for the suffering of Armenian forced laborers." The mountain sections in particular caused considerable difficulties, which repeatedly presented the construction engineers, such as Heinrich August Meißner, with major challenges. The crossing of the Cilician Gates and the Taurus Mountains in Asia Minor are the greatest achievements of this railway construction. The route through the Taurus rises to a maximum height of 1,478 meters. In addition to 37 tunnels over a length of twenty kilometers, which had to be blasted through the rock, bridges and viaducts, including the Gavurdere Viaduct, had to be built.

For the Ottoman Empire, the railway was decisive for the war because it was the only way to ensure that the southern front on the Suez Canal was adequately supplied with troops and weapons and to effectively combat the Arab insurgents.

In 1914, only 1,094 kilometers had been completed. The gaps, mainly due to the unfinished tunnels through the Taurus Mountains, were bridged by narrow-gauge field railroads with a track gauge of 600 mm, which meant reloading all goods each time.

From October 1915, in the course of the Armenian genocide, the railway served as a means of transportation for the systematic deportation of Armenians from their settlement areas towards the Syrian Desert. The construction of the railway was delayed due to the expulsion of Armenian experts and workers; there was also a lack of Armenian doctors in the health service.

I agree that a landing at Alexandretta would be very interesting. Cutting off the Baghdad railway makes supplying the Ottoman forces in the Levant and Iraq seriously difficult, forcing the Ottoman Empire to withdraw from these regions sooner. However, an advance by the Entente to the northeast to make contact with the Russians is virtually out of the question. The mountainous terrain with no significant infrastructure makes this impossible. The interior will therefore remain in Ottoman control.

The question, therefore, is how far the Entente forces can advance from Alexandretta. Or is there a chance they will be driven back into the sea? IMO, if the Entente manages to take well-defensible positions in the Amanus Mountains and along the Pyramus River, this campaign is already a success.

 

[ArtosStark]

However, an advance by the Entente to the northeast to make contact with the Russians is virtually out of the question.

Agreed with this. However, there was, IIRC, a road connection (though poor) through what became Syria to Northern Iraq. If the British were to advance out of Egypt after Cilicia is secure, and sweep up those garrisons left under supplied by the cutting of the rail line, they could, in theory, then move Northeast and end up meeting the Russians. Not sure it would be any faster than OTL’s slow move up the Tigris and Euphrates so the Russians might not still be there when you do, but it might be possible.

 

[Beefhammer]

Bump

 

[Merrick]

This has been discussed previously on the forum a few times. The big downside of the Cilicia/Alexandretta plan, as @Disraeli's Ghost pointed out upthread, is that it's not a knockout blow. Suppose everything works as well as possible - the landing is a success, the Entente forces rapidly secure Cilicia before the Turks can reinforce and cut the Baghdad railway. Turkish forces facing the Entente in Palestine and Mesopotamia now have a severe cramp in their supplies, and the Turks will find it hard to concentrate strong forces to retake Cilicia. That's fine if the threat of losing Baghdad and Jerusalem brings the Turks to the armistice table, but what if it doesn't?

The Levant plus Transjordan plus Syria plus Mesopotamia plus Kurdistan looks impressive if you're painting the map, but to the Turks it's all de-facto colonial territory - dirt-poor, underdeveloped and inhabited by non-Turks. The Turkish heartland is in Anatolia, and getting over the Taurus mountains from Cilicia into Anatolia proper makes Gallipoli look easy. If you have another army or two spare (not the one you used at Alexandretta, that's holding the Taurus line against the main Turkish army), you can spent the next several months grinding down the isolated Turkish garrisons in the South, and claiming miles upon miles of Middle-Eastern desert, which is worth little to the Turks and less to you. And at the end of it all, you're still no closer to your objective, which was to knock Turkey out of the war and open the Straights. At which point you have to stop and ask yourself - why are we committing all these resources to capturing peripheral Ottoman territory, when the real enemy is Germany?

Gallipoli offered a clear road to victory - force the Dardanelles, get to Constantinople, make the Ottomans throw in their hand. Cilicia, on the other hand is basically an admission that there's no Big Win in sight and the best that can be obtained is operational successes against the weakest of the Central Powers. That's not what anyone in London or Paris, "Westerner" or "Easterner" wanted to hear.

 

[Comte de Geneve]

Dardanelles is high risk vs ultimate reward. Cilicia is low risk vs moderate reward. If the goal is to help Russia, then the Dardanelles is necessary. If the goal is to damage the Ottomans and isolate their fringe territories, then Cicilia makes sense. IIRC the goal was to help Russia. QED.

 

[Merrick]

That said, even limited success in Cilicia is likely to turn out better for the Entente than OTL's failure at Gallipoli. But it may not be that much better. Instead of throwing themselves at the Gallipoli ridges, the ANZACs find themselves stuck in a static attritional battle in the Taurus. The Turkish forces in the South are short of supplies, but they still have to be eliminated, which will take a lot of men and resources (the logistics are horrible - notably the railway/water pipeline across the Sinai hasn't been built yet), quite likely more than Gallipoli OTL (if it ends up cancelling the Battle of Loos, that's another win for the Entente). Gradually the Turks get pushed out of Mesopotamia and Syria, with the forces advancing from the south linking up with the Cilicia beachhead sometime in mid-1916. And then the Entente have to work out what they do next. Linking up with the Russian via Kurdistan, Armenia and the Caucasus is a logistical non-starter. The Taurus line can be held with relatively few troops, but advancing is hard. Cilicia II - the Gallipoli Gamble?

Does this change the Arab Revolt? Probably not a whole lot - for the Arab nationalists, jumping the now-unsupported Turkish garrisons in the Hedjaz is a no-brainer.
Does it forestall the Armenian Genocide? Probably not - the major Armenian areas are still under Turkish control and will be for some time, and even if the Turks make a quick armistice, they may still turn on the Armenians in the aftermath.
What does Bulgaria do? Do the Bulgarians see the Ottoman army heavily engaged in both Cilicia and the Caucasus and decide that a quick stab at Constantinople might pay off? Or do they use the Ottomans' troubles as a way to squeeze a better offer out of the Central Powers? The Central Powers still have the advantage that apart from Thrace, all the territory Bulgaria wants is currently held by Serbia or Greece, so they can make promises without selling allies.