How's the Start?


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Wait, Japanese-Filipino War? Wha- Ho- Wh- Is the Philippines equal to that of Japan that they could wage war against Japan? Also, Oooof. Sinking a ship, even if it's accidental, wouldn't do a nation any favors.
indeed sinking is harmful to relations!
Hmm, let's see...
[1] America intervening in another country's civil war. Nothing new there. Especially since it's practically right next door.
[2] A politician resigning over fraud allegations. Nothing new there.
[3] Japanese-Filipino War. Now there's something new. No American occupation in whatever version of WW2 in this timeline means no Article 9. Means war is still on the table as a means towards international relations.

Comparing the populations of the two countries, about the same. Japan has 20 million more but that's not an overwhelming advantage. Assuming the Philippines industrialized and has a comparable GDP and thus, higher military budget, and since we know the Americans are having trouble keeping them as a colony, so earlier independence.

Yeah, I'll say that it's plausible.

[4] Ottoman navy deploying in SEA. Even bigger divergence! So, they're a true blue water navy. Do they have a base in the region or are they renting out one from one of their allies in the region?
The Ottomans have their own bases in the Persian Gulf from where they are deployed
I guess in this time line, the balance of power has always been fair closer than this one, so the US and Philippines would have incentive to push their enemies to the ground than avoid the risk of WW3.

Though if I had to speculate, does the Philippines in this time line end up incorporating bits of the other Island nations? As in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia had plans of one grand super state to unite against the various greater power and their colonial masters trying to come back dominate them, it fell through for a lot a reasons, religious and ethnic issues of who be a minority, concerns of who would hold ect.

Still the Philippines did try and take Sarawak from Malaysia in 1967 in a operation that failed horribly and caused the Moro insurgency to come back.
Given Indonesia was in massive civil war/colonial war against the Dutch for a couple of years, Malaysia here thanks to China being more powerful would crackdown on their Chinese minority far more and likely cause that insurgency to last longer.

I would not be surprised if the Philippines had a few years to annex a decent portion of both and states willing to back it for various reasons, such as creating a enemy for Japan that's loyal to them, countering China and just even creating a ''Christian'' Bulwark against the Ottomans being a nation in a region with lot of states in their cultural sphere and allied to them.

That the USA would try to intervene in CAR is expected.
The Philippines is definitely stronger ittl
1. I'm expecting America being a full on warmongering country than it is/was (idk) now.
2. Like every other politician it's not surprising.
3. I'm making a guess here that the Philippines are doing what America has been doing and they ruined their diplomatic relationship with the Ottomans so that won't end well for them in the long run.
4. What going on with modern Russia, are they still a monarchy or what it is otl.
no spoilers!
That carrier there looks to have a ski-jump so the Ottoman carriers are not US/French style CATOBAR ships but instead probably STOBAR. The carrier there looks to me like a Kuznetsov/The Chinese modifications to that or maybe Vikrant but I am not sure.
It's based on the Vikrant more than anything else
Would the Ottomans be the equivalent of OTL France or UK in terms of naval strength?
the world is around 10% more militarized than our own. I would say the Ottoman Navy is what the Japanese Navy otl would be if they had an offensive focus
Lol, I thought that was a Hijri calendar.
they are similar
 
notice
Alright, sorry guys, but i have to go back to Nepal right now, due to festival season arriving. As a result, until September 26, i will not be uploading a chapter. Sorry for the inconvenience guys!
 

ahmedali

Banned
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Enjoy the festival

Your schedule is great

Who will be stronger in this alternative reality (USA or Russia given that the empire is still alive and the Soviet Union has not been established?


Will we see this party rule Russia (it is a Russian royalist party with Soviet characteristics)


Will we see a breakthrough between the Americans and the Ottomans, or will it be very hostile?
 
I would argue that its more likely there be a multi-polar world in terms of significant powers in this TL than there being 2 or 1 superpowers.
 
The Overlooked Minorities of the Ottoman Empire c. 1923
The Overlooked Minorities of the Ottoman Empire c. 1923
The Ottoman Empire at the beginning of 1923 was (still is) a multi-ethnic nation, filled to the brim with many ethnic groups, of varying languages, and varying religious identities as well as a lot of linguistic variations. While the main ethnicities of the Empire - Turkish, Arab, Greek, Armenian, Slavs, Albanians, Pontic Greeks, Assyrians - get all the attention, this small study will shed light on the situation of these small and peculiar minorities of the Ottoman Empire.

1. The Old Italians

Numbering only 7,861 according to the 1922 Ottoman Census, the Old Italians are Ottoman citizens who trace their heritage not to the Kingdom of Italy, but to the Venetian Republic, Bourbon Kingdom of Sicily, and the Republic of Genoa. These maritime and trading powers at their height controlled the Mediterannean as its naval masters. And as a result, many traders settled throughout the Middle East to further their mercantile and trading apparatus. The Old Italians are the descendants of these traders and merchants who settled within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Most of these people still follow the Catholic Church and profess Catholic Christian ideals. Unfortunately, the centuries have diluted the linguistic varieties that these people may have once had, and only small isolated communities of Old Italians in Saruhan speak the old Italian tongues (mainly Genoese and Venetian) anymore. Most of the population today speaks Turkish and Arab as their first languages, for their ancestors shed their linguistic identity generations ago. Yet despite that sad fact, the 1922 Ottoman Language Committee created on the initiation of Sultan Abdulmejid II is trying to compile the old Italian dialects and standardize them, to preserve the language at all costs. Despite the dire situation of their language, their culture however, remained exquisitely alive, with Old Italian Quarters in Saruhan, Tripoli, and Benghazi feeling more like the artistic rendition of the Venetian and Genoese Glory days rather than 20th century Ottoman Empire. A small community, but they will continue to endure.

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A painting from the 1400s depicting the Italian Quarter in Smyrna

2. Dom People

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Dom women in the 1890s

The distant cousins of the Roma People, the Doma people, like the Roma left the Indian Subcontinent and migrated to the Middle East. Unlike the Roma who spread into Europe, the Dom stayed in the Middle East. Unlike the Roma again, sadly the Dom has not been nearly as successful in maintaining their culture. Years of soft assimilation led to most Dom people identifying as either Arab or Kurdish in national censuses. Nonetheless, with a population of around 20,000 people, this small community, mostly concentrated around Eastern Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia, is very unique compared to other minorities of the Empire. Domari, the language that these people pre-dominantly speak, is not a standardized language, and most villages have different writing systems, making writing impossible to interpret between two Dom of different villages. As a result of this long differing history, the Dom people have a unique oral tradition, passing down their tradition, culture (most famous is their singing and dancing techniques) through the oral method alone. The Dom people, though small in numbers, were the most fervent supporters of the 1908 Revolution in the Ottoman Empire, despite the rural and arch-reactionary nature of rural eastern Anatolia. As a result, Dom people have found success in recent years. Nary a dancing theatre in Constantinople is complete without a Dom master dancer, and the Dom culture, long oppressed under Abdulhamid II, neglected under Abdulaziz and Abdulmejid I, is undergoing a masterful renaissance within the Ottoman Empire.

3. The Turkmen

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Flag of the Turkmen of the Empire

Though Turkic in ethnic origins, calling a Turkmen a Turkish person is considered a grave insult, so do be careful! Though the Turkmen are listed as either Turkish, Kurdish, or Arab in Censuses throughout the Empire, make no mistake, these peoples are very unique in their heritage and culture. In a way, these people are the heirs of the Seljuk Turks, having first settled in the Mesopotamian Basin under the rule of Abu Ja'far ibn Ahmad al-Qadir and Tugrul Bey in the 1060s. Though a Turk, Azeri or any Turkic person would be able to understand the Turkmen's language (with varying levels of difficulty), the Turkmen Language is unique in the fact that it is a perfect mixture of Iranic and Arabic dialects mashed into a Western Oghuz Turkic dialect. Their culture also puts heavy emphasis on horse riding, and fathers take their sons to learn the art of horse riding from the moment their children are capable of riding a horse. As a result, the Turkmen provide the cream of the Ottoman Cavalry and have done so for centuries on the end. And though the era of cavalry is coming to a rapid end due to modern warfare, the Turkmen's horse riding culture continues to endure, as they now work in connecting isolated villages in the desert with the metropolitan part of the Empire, providing an invaluable aid to the development process of the Empire. With Mosul as their main home, they remain a powerful, but often overlooked minority within the Ottoman Empire.

4. The Ajam Iranians

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The banner of the Ikhanate was adopted by the Ajamics in 1876 as their ethnic flag

Numbering between 100,000 to 400,000 people depending on which census or which data you refer to, the Ajamics are the Persians of Mesopotamia. Once the rulers of Mesopotamia in ancient Antiquity, led under the glorious Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid Empires, ever since the Arab conquest, the Persians increasingly became a minority. Thoroughly Islamicized by the time the Ottomans conquered Mesopotamia in 1638, this ethnic group retained its cultural, traditional, and linguistic diversity and uniqueness. More uniquely, the language spoken by the Ajam Iranians is a direct continuum of Early Modern Persian (dating back to the 7th century) and more interestingly, has more loanwords, and more conjugation from Middle Persian (the language of the Sassanids) than the standardized Persian spoken in Iran. This has led to some tensions between Iranian Nationalist and Ajamic Cultural Groups, as both consider themselves the (Islamic) heir of the Sassanid Empire. Linguistically, it is undoubtedly true that the Ajamics share more in common with the Sassanids, though the Iranians are also undoubtedly the direct national state continuation of the Sassanids. The Ajamics in Ottoman history has shared a unique history. A Georgian observer in the 1640s observed during one of the Ottoman campaigns in the Caucasus that the Ottoman Engineers were almost entirely filled to the brim with 'Mesopotamian Persians', which is the old denotation of the Ajamics. Their unique language, suppressed by local Arabic bands and militias remained unstandardized, but under the 1923 Language Law, a new standardization scheme is underway under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire.

5. The Cappadocian Greeks

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A Cappadocian Wedding in 1902, Kayseri

The Cappadocian Greeks trace their history several millennia back, and like the Pontic Greeks share a unique heritage of their own that differentiates them from normal Ottoman Greeks. Numbering somewhere around ~200,000, the Cappadocian Greeks are the heirs of Alexander the Great within Southern Anatolia. The language that Cappadocians speak, whilst somewhat intelligible with Modern Greek, is considered to be a direct continuation of Byzantine Greek with Turkish characteristics involved. Unlike most of the other Greek language systems, the Cappadocian sound system includes the Turkish vowels ı, ö, ü, and the Turkish consonants b, d, g, š, ž, , (although some of these are also found in Greek words as a result of palatalization). [1] Though linguistic isolation from the rest of the Greek linguistic sphere has led to several other dialects of Cappadocian arising. In 1913, under the direction of Grand Vizier Ali Kemal, Cappadocian Greek was compiled, and standardized, with the aid of Greek linguistic experts from the Kingdom of Greece, and ever since 1915, the standardized version of Cappadocian Greek is taught in Cappadocian schools. Culturally, their greatest heritage is that the Cappadocians have kept ancient Anatolian cuisine culture alive, as the ancient Anatolian dishes, usually consisting of mixtures of Spanakopita, Madimak and Pastirma mashed together, was preserved by the Cappacodians. Perhaps the most famous Cappadocian Greek in the Ottoman Empire c. 1923 would be none other than Leonidas Kestekides. Becoming world-famous in 1910 during the 1910 Belgian Fair for his unique recipes of Chocolate, he returned to the Ottoman Empire in 1913 after an invitation from Konstaniyye Confectionaries became too good for him to pass up. In 1915, during the Balkan War, Kestekides set up the Leonidas Confectionaries, which produced chocolate and other confectionaries to be distributed to the troops at the front to keep their morale high. As a result, among the other parts of the Empire, sweet chocolate has become a stereotype for Cappadocian Greeks within the Ottoman Empire.



6. The Crimean Tatars

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The Famous Insignia of the Giray dynasty, which became the symbol of Crimean Tatars

Formed out of the ethnogenesis of Scythians, Alans, Sarmatians, Central Asians, Kipchaks, Cumans, Khazars, Goths, Pechenegs, and Old Bulgars, the Crimean Tatars were once the rulers of Crimea, Kuban, and the Sea of Azov. The Giray Dynasty also led the Crimean Tatars to their greatest cultural, military, and linguistic height. However ever since Crimea was annexed in the late 1700s by Russia under the rule of Catherine of the Great, the Tatars are an ever-diminishing minority within their ancestral homeland. More importantly, when in 1783 Crimea was annexed, the nobility of the Tatars fled to the Ottoman Empire, followed by their old feudal levies and families, creating a visible minority within the Ottoman Empire. This migration of nobles was followed by a steady flow of Crimean Tatar Nationalists fleeing Russification into the Ottoman Empire. While around ~2.5 million people in the empire share Crimean Tatar ancestry, only ~60,000 actually identify as Tatar according to the 1922 Census, however. Nevertheless, unlike the other diminished minorities of the empire, Crimean Tatars remained extremely politically active in the Empire. The Deputy Speaker of the Ottoman Senate, Ahmed Tevfik Pasha is a Crimean Tatar by birth, having been born to a Crimean Tatar father who was descended from the Girays. 4 Deputies in the Chamber of Deputies profess Crimean Tatar origins, and the Ottoman Empire, against Russification of Crimea, remains as a bastion of the Crimean language. Exiled Crimean Tatar Nationalists mostly flee to the Ottoman Empire bolstering the Crimean Tatar Community within the Empire.

7. The Circassians

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The Circassian Banner

The Circassian Genocide was perhaps one of the largest genocides committed by the Russian Empire. After the Genocide, only ~100,000 Circassians were left in Russia, when just before the genocide, their numbers totaled 1.6 million. Many were killed, many children were forcefully taken from their parents and raised as Slavs, never knowing their Circassian heritage. Many more fled Russia. Most of the Circassians fled to the Ottoman Empire. With more than a million people in the empire sharing Circassian Ancestry, and with ~120,000 - ~500,000 identifying as Circassian, the Ottoman Empire is literally speaking, the last haven of the Circassians. The Adyghe populace of Circassians assimilated easily into the Empire, though they retained their identities. Circassians were elevated to high positions in the Ottoman Empire. One of the Empire's most successful Grand Viziers under Tanzimat, Koca Husrev Mehmed Pasha was a Circassian by birth, and many instrumental leaders in the Empire, such as Ahmed Niyazi Bey (leader of the 1908) revolution have Circassian origins. The Circassian language, much-maligned in Russia, is openly taught within special Ottoman schools for the Circassian populace of the Empire, and the 1922 Ethnic and Linguistic Laws that was implemented by the LU after their victory in the 1922 Ottoman General Elections, has led to a cultural renaissance of Circassians within the Ottoman Empire.

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Migration of Circassians into the Ottoman Empire


8. The Megleno-Romanians

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Megleno-Romanian Regions in the Ottoman Balkans in Green

Descended from an ethnic mixture of the now-extinct Pechenegs and Greeks, the Megleno-Romanians are a unique people. Boasting a population of around 40,000 to 50,000 people, the Vlachs, as the Megleno-Romanians have come to be known as, are a small yet consequential minority in the Ottoman Empire. Their language, though similar to Romanian, shows a complete lack of Slavic influence, and shows a majority Greek and Turkish influence in their Romance language. Though in the 1400s, the Vlachs became enemies of the Empire, by the 1600s they became loyal subjects, and the Empire rewarded the Vlachs with a special autonomous system called the 'Captain' System through which every Vlach village was granted a Captain chosen by the elders of the village. The Captain would thus act like a Mayor looking after the village. This system worked fine for the Vlachs but in 1877, this autonomy was abolished, and instead, the Vlachs were recognized as a formal minority of the Empire. The Vlachs are also disproportionately working in the military, becoming famed administrators within the Ottoman Army. Around 46% of all young Vlach abled-bodied men work in the military according to the 1922 census, which shows their powerful sense of military tradition. Despite their ethnic identity and awareness, however, Vlachs like to live in isolation, living in small isolated villages scattered throughout Ottoman Thessaly, Macedonia, and Albania. Most Vlachs send their children to learn in Salonika, Tirana, Skopje, or Yanya, where education in Vlach is provided for this unique minority of the empire.

Footnotes:
[1] -Taken
From Wiki
 
The grand majority of Vlachs were Greek nationalists at the time. Both the university of Athens and the National Technical University of Athens to name but a couple were built by Metsovo Vlachs. Not to mention Averoff. Post that why any Cappadocian Greek or any Greek in general would exactly want to try separating Cappadocian Greeks from the rest of the nation? Greek schools in Cappadocia, and they were many in 1911, were teaching standard Greek like any other school in the Greek world for a reason.
 
The grand majority of Vlachs were Greek nationalists at the time. Both the university of Athens and the National Technical University of Athens to name but a couple were built by Metsovo Vlachs. Not to mention Averoff.
The Aromanian Vlachs were Greek Nationalists. The Megleno-Romanian Vlachs not so much. They remained mostly neutral or pro-Ottoman regarding the issue of Greek Nationalism.
Post that why any Cappadocian Greek or any Greek in general would exactly want to try separating Cappadocian Greeks from the rest of the nation? Greek schools in Cappadocia, and they were many in 1911, were teaching standard Greek like any other school in the Greek world for a reason.
Greek Schools in Cappadocia were universally teaching the Greek alphabet. Not the language. According to Richard Dawkin's study c. 1910, Greek and British owned schools taught in modern greek whilst Ottoman Greek schools taught in the Cappadocian Dialect.
 
Once the 2nd Great War happens and Russia attacks the Ottomans (it may or may not be inevitable that'll happen... It's Russia we're talking about...), I hope Crimea and Circassians becomes independent, as well as the Caucasus.
 
Once the 2nd Great War happens and Russia attacks the Ottomans (it may or may not be inevitable that'll happen... It's Russia we're talking about...), I hope Crimea and Circassians becomes independent, as well as the Caucasus.
both are impossible really. Crimea would need to see Ethnic cleansing of the highest order to make Tatars a majority from Slavs and Circassia would need one of the largest genocides in history to make it circassian majority again. Frankly put both regions are going to remain slavic majority, which means they're going to want to remain in a slavic state (which in the absence of Ukraine is simply Russia). And the new democratic government in the OE will have little appetite for ethnic cleansing and genocide, and especially not the OE's population.
 
both are impossible really. Crimea would need to see Ethnic cleansing of the highest order to make Tatars a majority from Slavs and Circassia would need one of the largest genocides in history to make it circassian majority again. Frankly put both regions are going to remain slavic majority, which means they're going to want to remain in a slavic state (which in the absence of Ukraine is simply Russia). And the new democratic government in the OE will have little appetite for ethnic cleansing and genocide, and especially not the OE's population.
Ah ok, but what about the Caucasus? If you don't mind me asking.
 
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