Cold War Plausibility Check: "Finlandized" Turkey and Iran

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
Turkey during the Cold War had joined NATO, around the same time as Greece did while Persia/Iran under the Shah was staunchly pro-Western (despite having Mossadegh's democratic election back in 1953).

Because of their geographical position, was it possible that Turkey and Iran could have been "Finlandized" in the same way Finland was? Both nations shared a border with the USSR, but Turkey had a good chunk of the Armenian population on its territory while a short lived Persian SSR was formed (which was mainly a second Azeri state) inside Persian territory.

Could the "Finlandization" of those states be achieved? For Persia/Iran, the easiest PoD (though still difficult to achieve) is Mossadegh remains in power but does not go overboard with the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which IOTL became known as BP), but for Turkey to be Finlandized, it's very difficult.
 

Ship

One thing you would definitely need to keep Turkey neutral would be to not have Stalin start demanding the return of provinces taken by Russia after the Russo-Turkish war which Turkey regained in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
Richard Harrow said:
Could you elaborate on what you mean by Finlandize? I don't get what you mean.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

How Finland remained neutral despite having pro-Russian policies simply because it doesn't want to piss off the Bear.

Ship said:
One thing you would definitely need to keep Turkey neutral would be to not have Stalin start demanding the return of provinces taken by Russia after the Russo-Turkish war which Turkey regained in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War.
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When did Stalin demanded for this piece of territory? He might also need to find a way to appease the Armenians inside the Soviet Union if he can't demand those provinces.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
And this was the result of Finnish territories actually being ceded to the USSR though, like the area around Vyborg/Viipuurii and some additional Karelian territory.
 
Plumber

Plumber

Yes, but it would need to be done literally at the start of the Cold War, as Stalin's attempts to do so were one of the catalysts for the Cold War happening in the first place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Straits_crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_crisis_of_1946

Truman stood up to Stalin successfully in both crises, ensuring that the USSR dominated only the area it had won military victories in WWII. But he needn't have become President. The other two finalists for VP, Jimmy Byrnes and Henry Wallace, were roughly equally pro-Soviet with Truman in 1945. But they all became disillusioned the more they interacted with the Soviets (Truman quickest, Byrnes second, and it took until the Korean War for Wallace to finally come around.) Now, given that both men resented Truman for taking a job they thought they deserved, they probably would have come around to reality a lot quicker had they been in the Oval Office. But perhaps not as quick as Truman. A "compromise" tilted in Stalin's favor in both crises is enough to push Turkey and Iran into Finlandized territory.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
Plumber said:
Yes, but it would need to be done literally at the start of the Cold War, as Stalin's attempts to do so were one of the catalysts for the Cold War happening in the first place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Straits_crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_crisis_of_1946

Truman stood up to Stalin successfully in both crises, ensuring that the USSR dominated only the area it had won military victories in WWII. But he needn't have become President. The other two finalists for VP, Jimmy Byrnes and Henry Wallace, were roughly equally pro-Soviet with Truman in 1945. But they all became disillusioned the more they interacted with the Soviets (Truman quickest, Byrnes second, and it took until the Korean War for Wallace to finally come around.) Now, given that both men resented Truman for taking a job they thought they deserved, they probably would have come around to reality a lot quicker had they been in the Oval Office. But perhaps not as quick as Truman. A "compromise" tilted in Stalin's favor in both crises is enough to push Turkey and Iran into Finlandized territory.
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What kind of compromise are we talking about here?
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
Plumber said:
Probably an end to Soviet insistence on administering the Straits, as well as the dissolution of the Kurdish and Iranian Azeri statelets. Basically OTL but with the condition that Turkey and Iran be neutral.
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That could certainly work though. But with a Finlandized Turkey, this might have an effect on Greece since I don't know if they'll end up joining NATO like OTL, or would Greece somehow end up being neutral as well?
 

birdboy2000

Banned
MarshalBraginsky said:
That could certainly work though. But with a Finlandized Turkey, this might have an effect on Greece since I don't know if they'll end up joining NATO like OTL, or would Greece somehow end up being neutral as well?
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Greece fought a civil war between communist and anti-communist forces at the Cold War's beginning. (Unlike Finland, whose civil war was a generation earlier.) I don't think neutrality is in the cards.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
birdboy2000 said:
Greece fought a civil war between communist and anti-communist forces at the Cold War's beginning. (Unlike Finland, whose civil war was a generation earlier.) I don't think neutrality is in the cards.
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So in this case Greece would still be a NATO member should the anti-communist forces win.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
MarshalBraginsky said:
So in this case Greece would still be a NATO member should the anti-communist forces win.
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Yes. The government would still be extremely anti-communist, a recipient of US aid in the civil war, and the KKE had been supported by the Warsaw Pact states on its border (along with Yugoslavia) so it would also still view the Warsaw Pact as an existential threat, regardless of how the USSR treated Turkey and Iran. So the reasons why it joined NATO OTL still apply.

A KKE-led Greece might actually be more likely to be neutral - both because they had received Yugoslav support along with Warsaw Pact support, and because communist regimes not installed by the Red Army had a very strong tendency to break with Moscow. That said, I don't think this PoD would impact the civil war's outcome, so an anti-communist Greece in NATO would still be the result.
 

BlueTrousers

Given the longstanding Greco-Turkish hostility, a strongly anticommunist Greek government might actually mpanage to push a Finlandised Turkey entirely into Moscow's orbit, on the principle that it's as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb. That would make the Black Sea virtually Soviet internal waters, and make the Cypriot situation extremely delicate.

A Finlandised Iran would of course make the oil situation more precarious in the 50s and 60s. Not so sure about the 70s, depends what the butterflies do to Israel and its neighbours. It's very hard to see such an Iran getting involved in something like OTL's Iran-Iraq War, though, which should calm things down a lot in that timeframe. There again, an Islamic revolution can't be entirely ruled out, and if that happens all bets are off.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
A Finlandized Iran might be achievable if Mossadegh was more level headed, but given the territorial ambitions that the USSR had in mind, Finlandizing Iran might be a lot harder.

On the other hand, an anti-communist Greek government might also compromise Turkey's neutrality, especially if the Cypriot situation isn't resolved. Pushing Turkey into the Soviet orbit kinda kills the idea of Turkey being 'Finlandized', as Finland itself wasn't pushed into the Soviet orbit when Norway joined NATO.

Also, given the memories of the Armenian Genocide and the fact that Armenia itself is a part of the Soviet Union (as well as Azerbaijan), a Soviet renunciation of the territories that are under Turkish control that was a part of the Tsarist Empire might force Stalin to rethink about the fate of Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh, lest he wants to deal with a bunch of pissed off Armenians plus their compatriots that are inside Javakheti (a part of the Georgian SSR), and the potential fallout from pissing off the Azeris.
 
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