a pair of turkish delight WIs

WI: Kemal Ataturk had been killed at Gallipoli? What would Turkey look like today, other than being smaller and bording a massive armendia which hods much of northeastern turkey?

or,

WI: Lawrence of Arabia had been able to get the Arab republic established in 1917, with a capital at Dimashq. This republic, iirc, was slated to include all ethnic Arab lands (syria, iraq, jordan, palestine, egypt, and the arabian penninsula.)

1: The proposed borders were completely intolerable, so some nationalists would arise. Likely Greece would keep the Aegean coast, but Turkey would eventually return to control of most of Anatolia. It'd be interesting to see who got Constantinople.

2: It'd collapse in conflict between the Saud and Hashemite factions, which would allow the Turks to perhaps take back part of Syria/Anatolia.

From the title it could be a WI turkish delight was a more popular candy.

God_of_Belac said:

1: The proposed borders were completely intolerable, so some nationalists would arise. Likely Greece would keep the Aegean coast, but Turkey would eventually return to control of most of Anatolia. It'd be interesting to see who got Constantinople.

2: It'd collapse in conflict between the Saud and Hashemite factions, which would allow the Turks to perhaps take back part of Syria/Anatolia.

Click to expand...

The proposed borders were hard to accept, agreed. Sometimes, however, it takes to have the right man in command to sort out things. W/o MK, the Turkish army could have dissolved. Constantinople would be an international city, the Greeks would get smyrna and the coast, plus Pontus. Armenia would be a nation. The Italian would get Adana and the S/E Turkey. The rump Turkish state would possibly become a mandate of the LoN.

I agree that the Arab Republic would dissolve almost immediately, in a blood bath

The Arab Republic would dissolve differently from OTL, though. Saudi Arabia like it is OTL, but Greater Syria and Iraq would be united, especially if the Hashemites lost fast enough to allow them to not get bogged down in the south, so they could stand up to other challenges.

The rump Turkish state was so untenable that it wouldn't even make a workable mandate. It'd be like another Balkans until some other war broke out and the Turks could get a better shake. More likely, come WWII when Italy attacks Greece and Germany takes it over, the positions in Adana and Smyrna convince Hitler to head for the Middle East, and he takes the Iraqi oilfields and that's the end of everything.

Mustafa Kemal was only one of many talented leaders available, and eventually everyone rallied behind him, as he was the most politically talented. If not, it would have been someone else. I'm always amazed that everyone just takes for granted that Mustafa Kemal was the only person in the whole Ottoman Empire who had any idea what he was doing. Most of his post-WWI military accomplishments were the work of other men, as he was busy with the political situation. In particular, Ismet Inonu was a critical military leader, as were a large number of others.

The Greek occupation of Smyrna was hopeless; they simly did not have the military or economic resources to hold the city, and the Turkish majority in the hinterland would not have tolerated Greek rule, which was genocidal in nature. Pontus was never offered to the Greeks, nor would it have been remotely possible for them to acquire it.

The Armenians had no chance whatsoever of holding onto any part of Turkish Anatolia, as by the end of WWI, there were no Armenians at all in the region. In OTL, the Armenian invasion was so feeble that the Kemalists didn't even bother to fight it (left defense to local militias) until the Greeks were checked.

Istanbul would have gone to the Turks, as Mustafa Kemal was if anything more cautious than other leaders and the Entente didn't have the political will to fight it out.

What type of government followed is much more up in the air, as a secularist republic was very much Mustafa Kemal's vision. More likely underanyone else, I think, would be a constitutional monarchy.