This straddles the 1900 divide. Presuming at some point, Turkey has an unforuntate turn of events. Greece obtains Thrace, Cyprus, Dodecanese, and a Megali portion of Ionia. Imperial Russia obtains a coastal strip of Anatolia from the Bosphorus to Dardanelles. Do you think they can avoid a revanchist war with Turkey? Would Turkey have to be destabilized further; bereft of Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, and Kurdish territories to keep them from striking back?
Greek Ionia, Russian Marmara, No Revanchism
- Thread starter PuffyClouds
- Start date
Russian Istanbul alone is going to be an international powder keg of dissent. Foriegn powers would not be thrilled at all, I expect. I could almost see a Franco-Anglo-German coalition showing up to tackle that.
Second Crimean War, perhaps?
Second Crimean War, perhaps?
Isn't Istanbul Proper on the European side? So it would return to Greece as Cosntantinopolis in this situation.
As far as I can tell, in the 1877/8 Germany still was quite cool with an idea of Russian Istanbul (couple years earlier it was even more agreeable but then Alexander II intervened on France' behalf...) , France did not care too much and the only Great Power that saw a problem was Britain in a not quite easily understandable fear of the Russian naval dominance in the Eastern Med (how exactly this could happen with Russia not having ANY navy in the Black Sea only the British politicians could tell), which seems to be the case of a mutual misunderstanding because Russia wanted control over the Straits to guarantee that the foreign navies are NOT going to penetrate the Black Sea (experience of the Crimean War demonstrated that agreements with the Ottomans are not a good guarantee).
But the relevant question is how exactly Russia would be able to maintain control of Istanbul and the Straits? It would need either to build a powerful Black Sea fleet with a lot of the transport ships VERY fast (where are the money?) or to occupy the whole coastal territory from Bessarabia to Istanbul, cutting Walachia/Romania from the sea and making Bulgaria (which is still Ottoman-owned) a part of the Russian Empire.
I'm afraid that an idea of Russia conquering Istanbul with a sole purpose to return it to Greece belongs to the XVIII when Catherine II was planning to re-create a Greek/Byzantine "empire" for one of her grandsons.
They most certainly cannot avoid a revanchist war without some sort of mega-alliance backing them up—the loss of face, prestige, and Turkish-majority regions is going to incentivize whatever nation emerges from the rubble in Anatolia to work ceaselessly to get them back.
Moreover, it isn’t just the Turks that will be feeling irredentist—the Bulgarians will be wanting to get their hands on Thrace along with their pre-existing claims on Macedonia.
Moreover, it isn’t just the Turks that will be feeling irredentist—the Bulgarians will be wanting to get their hands on Thrace along with their pre-existing claims on Macedonia.