AHC: Ottoman Empire finishes WWI with these borders:

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Here's the challenge, have the Ottoman Empire finishing its participation in WWI, and keeping post-war, most of the Fertile Crescent, losing only its provinces directly connected to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to British Empire forces. Borders illustrated in blue in the graphic below.

You can vary the overall WWI settlement as much as you want, but double your points the better the Entente does in Europe. The Ottomans can also be in through the end of the war, or exit it early.

ottoman-empire-in-1900.gif
 
Maybe through having Austro-Hungarian emperor Karl I’s attempted peace offer in 1917 succeed in ending the war. With the war in the Middle East stopped at half-point, perhaps the ottomans can keep the Fertile Crescent minus Kuwait and the Hejaz.
 
You'd have to have the Entente win less convincingly than in OTL - near stalemate I'd warrant. If the Entente does better than just over the line of victory, then the French are going to push for strong influence in Syria and Northern Iraq for Oil interests, the Russians are going to push for the Turkish Straits and the Italians and British are going to be generally imperially meddlesome. Whereas if the war is a stalemate then the Europeans would focus their peace efforts on terms with Germany and Austria-Hungary - with only Britain gaining the Hejaz as a sort of limited spoils.

The acquisition of Kars province is stumping me though, I'm not sure how to reconcile both that gain and the loss of territory elsewhere. If the Ottomans had done well enough to claim Kars at the end of WWI why was it not strong enough to retain Hejaz and Basra - that's my only problem at the moment.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Easy POD. You need an minor Entente win, probably USA does not enter war. Negotiated peace.

  • You get the Kars region by having Enver Pasha follow the German advice and not attack in the winter of 1917. This gives you a stable front in the east for most of the war, and once the Tsar falls, you get Kars. The extra corp or so not lost to the Russia has units transferred to Iraq as the war progresses and stabilizes the Front.
  • Or we can just have the Germans do a better race to the Sea. Since Flanders is more threatened, the UK sends less troops to Iraq than OTL. And Kars is occupied after Russia goes communist.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Simple--have Germany defeat France late in World War I and then have Germany use its occupation of Belgium and northern France as bargaining chips to get Britain to withdraw from most of its WWI conquests in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk still gives most of Kars Oblast to the Ottomans.
 

ben0628

Banned
The Ottomans held those exact borders more or less up into late 1917. Perhaps Russia falls a year earlier leading to a massive German Offensive in 1917 instead of 1918 and they can knock out France before the US can get involved. Or Greece stays neutral and Gallipoli never happens which means the Ottomans could probably deploy another 200,000 soldiers perhaps more to either Kuwait or the Levant.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
It seems to me the outcome of the OP is leaving the Ottomans a true empire, but the British get to further protect their dominance of of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf from other powers, which could be enough for London to consider it "a win" for them in the region.
 
Top