Could the ottoman empire have survived and avoided the armenian geoncide?

Sure, maybe, a larger nation is used to having ethnic minorities, no big deal.

Plus, an established nation usually doesn't have big gaps in its laws and practices.

So, maybe. It's well worth a re-roll of the dice.
 
WWI caused both of those, so yeah?

Ottomans go to war with Russia due to horrible delusions from horrible leader, horrible planning gets horrible numbers of people killed in the Caucasus Mountains, horrible leader blames horrible defeat on Armenians, culminating in horrible genocide. Ottomans lose war and lose entire empire.

So, easiest way to prevent that is to kill Enver Pasha (because making him competent is too hard). Just have the Armenian who saved him from the Russians not do that and you can probably mitigate the genocide. Killing him before he tried to get buddy-buddy with Germany and keeping the Empire out of the war would probably save it (no Arab Revolution due to British support, no partition due to not being on the losing side) and would actually make it even bigger once Russia falls into Revolution (just seize land then).

TLDR: kill Enver Pasha
 
WWI caused both of those, so yeah?

Ottomans go to war with Russia due to horrible delusions from horrible leader, horrible planning gets horrible numbers of people killed in the Caucasus Mountains, horrible leader blames horrible defeat on Armenians, culminating in horrible genocide. Ottomans lose war and lose entire empire.

So, easiest way to prevent that is to kill Enver Pasha (because making him competent is too hard). Just have the Armenian who saved him from the Russians not do that and you can probably mitigate the genocide. Killing him before he tried to get buddy-buddy with Germany and keeping the Empire out of the war would probably save it (no Arab Revolution due to British support, no partition due to not being on the losing side) and would actually make it even bigger once Russia falls into Revolution (just seize land then).

TLDR: kill Enver Pasha
So...should a TL like this exist?
 
WWI caused both of those, so yeah?

Ottomans go to war with Russia due to horrible delusions from horrible leader, horrible planning gets horrible numbers of people killed in the Caucasus Mountains, horrible leader blames horrible defeat on Armenians, culminating in horrible genocide. Ottomans lose war and lose entire empire.

So, easiest way to prevent that is to kill Enver Pasha (because making him competent is too hard). Just have the Armenian who saved him from the Russians not do that and you can probably mitigate the genocide. Killing him before he tried to get buddy-buddy with Germany and keeping the Empire out of the war would probably save it (no Arab Revolution due to British support, no partition due to not being on the losing side) and would actually make it even bigger once Russia falls into Revolution (just seize land then).

TLDR: kill Enver Pasha

The Ottomans out of WWI saves the Turks but it also saves the Romanovs. Without the Turkish blockade and the Caucus front, the Russians should win the war no later than 1916

So we have a post war world with the British, French and Russians the victors. Now there's little chance that this alliance could last with the German threat removed. This helps the Ottomans as they are in a good position to play the Russians off against the British.
 
The Ottomans out of WWI saves the Turks but it also saves the Romanovs. Without the Turkish blockade and the Caucus front, the Russians should win the war no later than 1916

So we have a post war world with the British, French and Russians the victors. Now there's little chance that this alliance could last with the German threat removed. This helps the Ottomans as they are in a good position to play the Russians off against the British.

They can still shut the straits and claim it's to avoid their use militarily. They could actually try to leverage that into aid from the Allies to modernize the empire if they get a shrewd negotiator.
 
I don't really believe that the term 'avoid' is applicable in this scenario: the Ottomans were the culprits, the perpetrators of a monstrous and horrendous crime. To frame the atrocities as a quaint accident that the primary executioners could have 'avoided' undermines the suffering and trauma suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of Istanbul.
 
I agree that with the Ottomans remaining neutral, they'd be still there - at the end of WWI.
Now the really interesting question would be if they can keep the empire together even absent that external pressure. They had been picked at the edges by all comers, and they were creaking along in any case. So, I wonder.
Especially if we assume that with the Russians faring better, WWI is one or two years shorter, then colonial powers like Britain, France, and Italy might be less war-weary, cash-strapped and manpower-depleted; Czarist Russia itself would still be in the game, too.
 
I agree that with the Ottomans remaining neutral, they'd be still there - at the end of WWI.
Now the really interesting question would be if they can keep the empire together even absent that external pressure. They had been picked at the edges by all comers, and they were creaking along in any case. So, I wonder.
Especially if we assume that with the Russians faring better, WWI is one or two years shorter, then colonial powers like Britain, France, and Italy might be less war-weary, cash-strapped and manpower-depleted; Czarist Russia itself would still be in the game, too.
Which means the Ottomans need to play out their neighbors into attacking each other, but it will be getting harder as oil is discovered there. So yeah, they must do something with that oil eventually.
 
They can still shut the straits and claim it's to avoid their use militarily. They could actually try to leverage that into aid from the Allies to modernize the empire if they get a shrewd negotiator.

The Ottomans played a waiting game at first. Bargained with both sides and then threw their lot in with the Germans. Picked the wrong side and got nothing

The Ottoman objectives against the Entente were rather far reaching (Egypt, the Caucuses, Cyprus) but there were other important concessions they could have gotten

A big one was the end of the capitulations- special rights to foreigners that they had been forced to concede over the centuries. The Entente wouldn't budge but the Ottomans unilaterally cancelled them in September 1914 and the Entente did nothing. Coupled with some debt relief and the Ottomans would have gotten a lot from neutrality.

Then they could have sat back and waited. IF the CPs start to win, they could have come in later. That wouldn't have happened but that's their best game
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The Ottomans out of WWI saves the Turks but it also saves the Romanovs. Without the Turkish blockade and the Caucus front, the Russians should win the war no later than 1916

So we have a post war world with the British, French and Russians the victors. Now there's little chance that this alliance could last with the German threat removed. This helps the Ottomans as they are in a good position to play the Russians off against the British.

Turkish blockade happens even with a neutral Ottomans. It was a part of the defensive mobilization plan.
 
Turkish blockade happens even with a neutral Ottomans. It was a part of the defensive mobilization plan.

The straits aren't closed until September 27 to merchant ships. So the blockade doesn't have to happen The Ottomans have choices- they just made bad ones
 
I don't really believe that the term 'avoid' is applicable in this scenario: the Ottomans were the culprits, the perpetrators of a monstrous and horrendous crime. To frame the atrocities as a quaint accident that the primary executioners could have 'avoided' undermines the suffering and trauma suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of Istanbul.
I respectfully disagree.

Many people who participate in genocide are otherwise very 'normal' people. It's absolutely a what the fuck . . . moment. This was true with the genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia in the '70s, and Nazi Germany.

If we look at things like bystanders who don't easily and comfortably speak up, then we might be starting to find about ways to prevent genocide. I mean, I view it like first aid. If people just have the skills, it gets the odds much more in our favor. In the Nazi Holocaust, the persons who were righteous gentiles and took risks to protect Jewish persons often acted for reasons hard to explain even to themselves, just like the people who passively went along.
 
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It might be better to phrase this as "what would allow the Ottoman Empire to survive WWI while preventing the Armenian Genocide"? Certainly we don't have to assume any sort of "Prussian Militarism"-type thesis to say that it was preventable. Different decisions in Istanbul could have stopped it, or put the Ottomans in a position where they never seriously consider it.
 
I disagree that preventing WW1 will necessarily prevent the Armenian Genocide. The actual causes of the genocide are much deeper. You can change how the genocide is conducted and the scale (arguably changing whether it is a genocide or an ethnic cleansing, but I don't think that distinction matters for this discussion) but unless you find a way to prevent Turkish nationalism and the Ottoman state seeing religious minorities as dissident you aren't going to change the fundamental cause.
 
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