That is all logical and valid under ordinary diplomacy. It can all be chucked aside by a aggresive Greek leadership striking some sort of coup post WWI. Ataturks post 1919 government got away with a similar action due to the exhaustion of the Brits, French, and Italians, who one by one gave up on countering the Turkish fait accompli. If the Greeks were able to occupy the demilitarized zone surrounding the Sea of Marmarra a step ahead of the erstwhile Allies the other may find enforcing the treatys, or even writing them not worth the effort.
Greece with Cyprus and Constantinople?
- Thread starter abc123
- Start date
That is all logical and valid under ordinary diplomacy. It can all be chucked aside by a aggresive Greek leadership striking some sort of coup post WWI. Ataturks post 1919 government got away with a similar action due to the exhaustion of the Brits, French, and Italians, who one by one gave up on countering the Turkish fait accompli. If the Greeks were able to occupy the demilitarized zone surrounding the Sea of Marmarra a step ahead of the erstwhile Allies the other may find enforcing the treatys, or even writing them not worth the effort.
abc123
Banned
Especially if the Greeks are old and important allies and if they limit themselves on western side of Straits only...
The genocide had already started, but still it didn't prompt anyone of contemplating such a massive population exchange, partly because its scale wasn't well known at the time. If it does come to light, things will change indeed. As for reprecussions for Istanbul/Constantinople, I don't think it would change anything, as the genocide was already underway either way. Not to mention that the Turkish national movement didn't have any too special feelings for Istanbul at the time, since it was seen as the seat of the Sultan who destroyed the country and brought the foreigners in; it's one of the reasons Ataturk chose Ankara as the capital instead of it.
It may well happen as you say it, but we can't know for sure. But I would imagine that the Asian part of Constantinople would also be ceded along with the rest of the city, probably in a north-south line west of Izmit/Nicaea or near Gebze-Sile, purely for practical reasons.
The Armenian one started between February and April of 1915, depending on who you ask. The Greek one practically started in the summer of 1914 but took some time to involve very large numbers.
Well, Greeks never intended to take over Asia Minor, but only the Zone of Smyrna. Before Smyrna, people thought that Greeks in Turkey and Muslims in Greece would stay where they were with guarantees etc. But the events that followed clearly showed to everyone that could not happen. Rationally, as you say, they shouldn't expect this to happen, but they did.
The irony is that even without a 1914 POD, the OP is feasible: IOTL, in April 1919, the British experts who were tasked with examining the Greek claims, Arnold Toynbee and Harold Nicholson, actually proposed that instead of Ionia, Thrace with Constantinople be given to Greece, and the new Greco-Turkish border drawn along the Bosporus, Marmara Sea and the Dardanelles, citing geographical, military and even ethnological concerns (IIRC, Greeks were a plurality in Eastern Thrace relative to Bulgarians and Turks).
The proposal did find some favour among the British delegation, and might also have satisfied the Americans and the Italians, who coveted Smyrna for themselves. The one who most opposed it was Venizelos, who on the one hand preferred Smyrna and its economic potential as the main export centre for the entire Anatolian hinterland to Constantinople, and also probably believed that with the continuing "inevitable" decline of the rump Ottoman state, the city would fall to Greece either way. In the event, what scuppered the proposal was the Italian withdrawal from the Peace Conference for a few days, which opened the way for Greece to be given a mandate for Smyrna in May.
If the Italian delegation had not acted as a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, it is conceivable that history might have taken a different course. Venizelos allegedly once boasted that he was "the only Greek who could turn down Constantinople", but if the choice was made public, one wonders what public opinion might think.
As for a population transfer, Venizelos had proposed it as early as 1914, when the first wave of persecutions against the Greeks of Anatolia was launched by the Ottoman government (pre-World War I).
The proposal did find some favour among the British delegation, and might also have satisfied the Americans and the Italians, who coveted Smyrna for themselves. The one who most opposed it was Venizelos, who on the one hand preferred Smyrna and its economic potential as the main export centre for the entire Anatolian hinterland to Constantinople, and also probably believed that with the continuing "inevitable" decline of the rump Ottoman state, the city would fall to Greece either way. In the event, what scuppered the proposal was the Italian withdrawal from the Peace Conference for a few days, which opened the way for Greece to be given a mandate for Smyrna in May.
If the Italian delegation had not acted as a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, it is conceivable that history might have taken a different course. Venizelos allegedly once boasted that he was "the only Greek who could turn down Constantinople", but if the choice was made public, one wonders what public opinion might think.
As for a population transfer, Venizelos had proposed it as early as 1914, when the first wave of persecutions against the Greeks of Anatolia was launched by the Ottoman government (pre-World War I).
abc123
Banned
In wikipedia I have found that the population of Constantinople in 1924 was about 500 000 ( 1,5 mil. before the war ), so if we take that allmost all Turks will go during population exchange, and say 1/3 of Greeks from Asia Minor will settle in Constantinople, that leaves us with about 700-800 000 population after the exchange. Also, population of Athens-Pyreus area grew from about 600 000 in 1920-s to about 3-3,5 millions today. Considering that the Athens was the capital, let's say that Constantinople grows only half as quickly, so let's say about 2 millions today, maybe 2,5 mil. if immigration of say White Russians or Armenians happens.
On the other hand, Athens will be smaller without so big numbers of Greeks from Asia Minor who settled there ( about 1/3 of them ).
On the other hand, Athens will be smaller without so big numbers of Greeks from Asia Minor who settled there ( about 1/3 of them ).
abc123
Banned
Highly unlikly IMO.
To get this result, you need weak Turkey ( after defeat in WW1 and Civil war ), weak Bulgaria ( after WW1 ), Britain and France exhausted and not too willing to enforce their interests about the Straits ( again after WW1 ), Russia weak or isolated ( again after WW1 ), Greece important enough for UK to give them cyprus and not make too much fuss about Constantinople ( again after early Greek entry in WW1 )...
Last edited:
Well, in OTL Turkey, the public broadcaster is based in Ankara, while the Turkish film industry is sometimes called Yeşilçam, named after a street in the district pf Beyoğlu in Istanbul.Err, I fail to see why is that so important?
Most probably Constantinople would have become the capital and seat of government. The national discourse at the time was that Constantinople was the nation's capital for 2 thousand years, and under occupation ready to be liberated. It had a huge symbolic meaning in the mind of the lay Greek. As for Athens, it was chosen as capital because of it's glorious ancient Greek past but it never had the same national meaning as Constantinople to the average Christian Orthodox Greek.
It could well end up being BOTH.
Constantinople would be a powerful attraction to a Greek government of that day. But it would also be a very vulnerable seat of government, with a presumably large non-Greek population, and being in easy reach of Turkish artillery and naval assault. In this respect, it would be not unlike the status of West Jerusalem before 1967. The Israelis wanted the latter as their capital, but much of the day to day government was carried on in Tel Aviv.
In this respect, Athens could end up as a co-capital, even if unofficially.
This sounds, alas, too much like the Venizelos I know.
But the Nicholson plan made a certain amount of sense. Perhaps because he knew that Greece would have an easier time consolidating a hold on Eastern Thrace than it would any foothold in Asia Minor. It could also make more strategic sense for control of the straits to be shared.
That could backfire in 1941, of course, with German guns on the Bosporus, but....
katchen
Banned
Benito Augustus
Or more than likely, Mussolini simply uses the Greek upgrading of it's King to Autokrates as an excuse for Mussolini to overthrow King Victor Emanuel and proclaim himself Caesar and Augustus of a revived Western Roman Empire since he had leanings in that direction anyway.
katchen
Banned
British guns on the Dardenelles?
And unlike Gibraltar, Gallipolli is big enough to turn into a Free Port ala Hong Kong. Wedged between Greece and Turkey, Gallipolli could become a thriving industrial metropolis and entrepot' and a true jewel in the British Crown, with a mixed population of Greeks, Turks, British, Maltese and likely Jews and Arabs and Bulgarians as well.
Not if the British got a Gibraltaresque presence at Gallipolli in return for giving up Cyprus. Easy to sell since the British fought so hard and died for Gallipolli. And Gallipoli would guard the approaches to the Black Sea as or more effectively than Constantinople.
And unlike Gibraltar, Gallipolli is big enough to turn into a Free Port ala Hong Kong. Wedged between Greece and Turkey, Gallipolli could become a thriving industrial metropolis and entrepot' and a true jewel in the British Crown, with a mixed population of Greeks, Turks, British, Maltese and likely Jews and Arabs and Bulgarians as well.
I can't help but think of Lord Salisbury's dry remark that “much of the trouble came from British statesmen using maps on too small a scale" whenever the subject Constantinople came up in cabinet.
The whole question of Gallipoli, of course, depends on what the point of departure here really is. It's possible that the battle as we know it never takes place.
In any event, nothing I've seen suggests that the British were prepared to give up Cyprus, either to Greece or anyone else, in 1915-1920.
It would be deuced hard to keep and supply, however. It might well ease perennial British fears about Russian threats to the straits; but if the Revolution happens (and the Civil War), those fears will suddenly lessen, and with them, the need for a robust presence on the Hellespont.
Come 1941, in any case, the peninsula could not resist an earnest attack by the Wehrmacht, no matter how fortified it was. The Germans could cut off all reinforcement by overwhelming land-based air.
katchen
Banned
Well that might depend on whether the British can put a tunnel under the Dardenelles to neutral Turkey before the war starts and whether the Turks can get over their anger at losing Constantinople to Greece enough for the economic benefit of such a link to allow them to go along with this. The shallowest part of the Dardenelles is at 180 feet deep and the Dardenelles is in some places, less than a mile wide and no more than 2 miles wide. By point of reference, the Seikan Tunnel from Honshu to Hokkaido runs over 700 feet deep for over 20 undersea miles, opening in 1988 and a Gibraltar Tunnel would be about 400 feet below sea level and 15 miles wide. The Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River goes through bedrock about 180 feet below sea level. So a Dardenelles Tunnel would definitely be feasible even at 1930s era technology. And a tunnel to a neutral nation would solve at least the non-military supply problems with a British Gallipoli during WWII. And Galllipoli would be difficult for the Nazis to take by storm from land, as high a relief as it is.