Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
Due to the dominance of the CUP and the Army in the political history in Turkey you are not getting that. Fractionalization predates independence. If did not have it in colonial times you are not going to have it going forward (Oman, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, UAE, Saudi). Thecplaces in the ME that are fractionalised were so during colonial times. Turkey lacks that background.
Any communist regime (which I think unlikely) in Turkey is largely going to be CUP sourced, sp already building on existing unitary foundations.
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I also need to caution those assuming that the next round of Greece-Turkey wars ATL will be started by Turkey. Based on large-n studies in the post 1815 period , it is actually the multiple war winners that on average initiate wars. In this case that is Greece.
That said there is iron, zinc , copper , lignite etc in central Anatolia.
Yeah but those squabbling factions could eventually be united by a charismatic leader who thinks the Greeks are ultimately the most important enemy because they put Turkey into its situation and starts saying the lost territories in Anatolia need to be retaken and the Greeks put back to their Classical borders when Lacedaemon and Athens and Troy were around...
Having your neighbours be dictators or in constant civil war is generally not a positive thing for you.
Also, what groups? Especially with the Kurds gaining independence post-war Turkey is going to have hardly any minorities. Only differences are going to be ideological ones, not ethnic and religious. And ideological differences are way easier to move past (making someone convert culturally or religiously is way more difficult than making them convert ideologies).
Probably ideological differences first and foremost yeah.
I do wanna say wanting to keep Turkey down requires Turkey to be not great shape tho which is why I said 'have it be ittl ME'. There are still many ways for Turkey to be broken down, not just the nationalistic angle. For example I could see the communists and nationalists be brutal to each other.
Nationalists and Communists can certainly be brutal towards each other but one side will probably achieve dominance sooner or later.
With Ethno-Religious stuff even with one group dominant over others the other groups always remain in the picture.
A sufficiently effective communist regime could break all effective resistance like China and North Korea, similarly for a sufficiently effective rightwing regime breaking communists.
However no matter how much you oppress an Ethno-Religious group they will remain a problem unless something like Jews in various Arabic countries moving to Israel (leaving said states without a significant Jewish community) or a successful (cultural or actual) genocide happens.
The thing is, due to Kemal more or less ordering that $@$# Topal Osman to kill off the original Turkish communists, there are no communists in Turkey. Contrary to popular belief the soviets did not make parties out of thin air.
I find it interesting that people take for granted more Greek-Turkish wars TTL. There might butif Greece is part to an alt-NATO, or European collective security establishment anyway, why an attack into Ionia would not trigger the collective security guarantees in place? If Greece is not and finds itself in a position not dissimilarto Israel, why it would not seek a nuclear deterrent itself? Of course TTL the last question likely applies to Turkey as well...
Sure. Though I will point out again, that statistically on average it is the repeat war winners that initiate wars. I could see factions in Greece at some point pushing for a preventive war. Especially if it seems to them that Turkey is catching up (which in reality might just be Turkey rebuilding).
What people were taking for granted was that the ITTL leadership of Greece is taking more greco-turkish wars for granted. They don't know that Europe will (probably) be almost entirely peaceful for the next 50 years, and probably never return to the level of war that was common in the early 19th or 20th centuries. With the effort it took to drag the US into WW2, they also have no reason to believe that America will come over across the Atlantic to help fight in Anatolia. They would probably trust more in Britain or France, but they can tell that those two are burning their candle on both ends to fight the war.
There's also the fact that Greece might not be entirely welcome in Nato, as they've always been hesitant to include countries with active territorial disputes. If Greece is a founding member, and possible war with turkey is on the table from day 1, NATO or its equivalent might be an organization with a very different mission and philosophy than the one we know.
This was very much my point when I was discussing taking land. There may be no further Greco-Turkish wars. Knowing what we know if the future their probably won’t be because of NATO. But the Greek government doesn’t know that. They don’t have the luxury of assuming such a thing. Since 1912 the Greeks have fought in 5 wars, 4 against Turkey, and the last three started by Turkey. I’d have to do the math to get the exact percentages but since the Balkan wars Greece has be at war almost 50% of them time, normally against Turkey.
The Greek government has to assume that this isn’t over yet. They have no reason not to. And this peace is their best chance to make sure Turkey isn’t back again in a decade.
Edit: added a period for clarity.
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Neither was responding to the original question and in the case of the first seems to be diverting from answering.
Cause, my original question wasn't that nor that I stated that that Turkey wouldn't be able to industrialize. Nor that it'd be lacking from all of the resources that it would be needed, for at least kickstart, their industrialization.
But, that the postwar Turkish State (assuming that it wasn't divided in occupation zones/different States) rebuilding/industrialization efforts wouldn't only make more harder by the loss of at least some of their richer regions in Western Anatolia.
But, that, when discussing the postwar situation the mentioned territorial losses in the West, IMO, at least, they should be included/considered along with the possible ones in Eastern Anatolia. Given that for evaluating their post war situation couldn't be disregarded the loss of the mineral resources to be found there, ones that otherwise would have been available.
A quick Google images search will get you maps of the main agriculture production areas of Turkey and raw resources. It will quickly show that excluding regions already lost (Thrace) or 100% to be lost (SE Anatolia), the majority of agricultural production is in the central anatolian quidaratetal. Which also has some exportable resources.
So Greece's best bet is indeed to cut of Turkey from Western Capital markets (something that realistically can only last to the 1970s). The problem is that while Greece might not care about reparations, other Allies will, and that is an incentive to extend credit to Turkey.
One possibility would be to use reparations to finance the resettlement of the population from any territory actually annexed by Greece. I pretty much doubt the Americans and US public opinion would be OK with the Greeks just kicking out hundreds of thousands of people Soviet style.
Which would short of echo how Karagats became part of Turkey OTL. I short of wonder what would be considered a fair compensation amount. Per capita income was below $100. Something around $500?
Yeah I agree with that assessment, and I think the Greeks would be able to pull this off.
I'm pretty sure a lot of areas in the ME could have been places of industrialisation but it never materialised bc of various reasons, and I could see turkey go through something similar. For example mismanagement of public resources and funds would make investors not want to invest in the country at all
Is something like agricultural resources good for the country?
We know the Ankara region has never recovered from the 1920s and there's a lot less ppl around there to do anything like industrialisation. The fact that Turkey would be dominated by agriculture post WWII doesn't bode well for a middle class to be created too. Just look at argentina as an example.
They were OK with the Czechs expelling several millions of Sudetenland Germans.
You can instead look to Greece as an example. Which got a middle class from the descendants of the scores of small peasant freeholders its political classes made certain to secure even arguably at the cost of capital accumulation that large land holdings would have had ensured. Unlike Greece, or for that matter the US, Argentine agriculture was dominated by karge landowners which the grand majority of the peasantry being landless. It may have worked out for a time economically wise. But I would be willing to argue that many of Argentina's problems the last century stem from this.