As we know from OTL the actual post WWI Middle East was based on the findings/conclusions of the King-Crane commission ( here is a cool interactive map I found about the original commission: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/622809257200320513?buttonSource=viewLimits), it's not identical to the OTL post war boarders but the influence is obvious. There were of course other proposals regarding the future of the region proposed during and after the war, the most famous being the promised united Arab kingdom for which the Arab revolters fought. Basically the question is; what other partitions might be plausible, and what would happen if their implementation was attempted? To keep things simple try and keep pod's after the ottoman entry into the war.
DBWI: Alternative Partition of the Ottoman Empire.
- Thread starter Vylon Disigma
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- dbwi middle east ottman screw ww i
Deleted member 109224
OOC: It's a Double-Blind What If. In the context of the thread, the King-Crane commission is to be treated as OTL. OOC meanwhile means "out of context", ergo we're breaking the fourth wall of sorts. IC meanwhile means "in context", ergo we're playing along with the idea of the thread.
IC: The alternative proposed agreement was the Sykes-Picot agreement, in which Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, and Mosul were to go to France whereas Iraq, Palestine, and southern Syria (east of the river jordan, south of the Yarmouk River) would be British.
I don't think the Zionist Cause would have been successful without the King-Crane Commission. The British already began backtracking on the whole "Jewish Homeland" idea before it was decided that the mideast was to be governed by a series of American Mandates. Without Hashemite support via the Faisal-Weizmann agreement for a Lebanon-style autonomy within the Syrian Kingdom I doubt the Jews would have been able to resist Arab conquest.
Armenia and Kurdistan may have just ended gobbled up by their neighbors without the US mandates. Without the US troop presence, the Soviets may have pushed on Georgia and Azerbaijan. I don't think we'd have seen the series of independent states in the mideast if the British and French were administering the Arab Kingdoms as Mandates. The US was interested in setting up stable countries and then getting out ASAP as isolationism kicked in in US politics. Britain and France would have been more interested in domination of the region.
I wonder if Turkey would have been able to reacquire the international state, Dodecanese, and Cyprus if it weren't a democratic secular republic.
You have to realise that French interests in the Middle East were completely shunted by the King-Crane commission. Despite having the country which had suffered the most from the war on the side of the Western Allies, it got the short end of the stick at all of the peace treaties.
The formation of the Continental Coalition of France, Italy and Germany against the Anglo-Saxon powers postwar shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.
The formation of the Continental Coalition of France, Italy and Germany against the Anglo-Saxon powers postwar shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.
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BigBlueBox
Banned
France got the Saarland. That’s good enough. It’s also the reason why the Continental Coalition collapsed when the new German government decided Alsace-Lorraine, Saarland and South Tyrol were more valuable than unprofitable colonies or some fantasy of “lebensraum” in Eastern Europe.
@DracoLazarus
While not a surprise and a quite unfortunate, French interests in the region, especially according to the sykes-picot agreement, have essentially no hope of being realised, the document was quite dead by long before the end of the war. Even for the short period after its signing that it was assumed to still be important it was in the business of confusing actual military operations, frenchmen in Cairo always trying to veto or modify operations that might give the arabs too much influence in Syria. This of course is was just not going to fly with the Men actual fighting and dying there, namely the Arabs, the Americans and the British, who had quite different views on syria.
@Jackson Lennock
I think you're quite right, if the british were operating the the more southern mandates they would be treated the same they treated the georgia and azerbaijan mandates (i.e. like colonies)
, which as you point out would certainly not exist without the americans soldiers present. France is not going to be operating any mandates in the region without significant numbers of french troops present, which is going to take a massive shift in strategy.
Which is to say Sykes-Picot is not in my view anything close to a plausible alternative to King-Crane
While not a surprise and a quite unfortunate, French interests in the region, especially according to the sykes-picot agreement, have essentially no hope of being realised, the document was quite dead by long before the end of the war. Even for the short period after its signing that it was assumed to still be important it was in the business of confusing actual military operations, frenchmen in Cairo always trying to veto or modify operations that might give the arabs too much influence in Syria. This of course is was just not going to fly with the Men actual fighting and dying there, namely the Arabs, the Americans and the British, who had quite different views on syria.
@Jackson Lennock
I think you're quite right, if the british were operating the the more southern mandates they would be treated the same they treated the georgia and azerbaijan mandates (i.e. like colonies)
, which as you point out would certainly not exist without the americans soldiers present. France is not going to be operating any mandates in the region without significant numbers of french troops present, which is going to take a massive shift in strategy.
Which is to say Sykes-Picot is not in my view anything close to a plausible alternative to King-Crane
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also @BigBlueBox You’re going to have a hard time convincing me that south tyrol is enough to motivate even Germany's top man himself.
Deleted member 109224
Would the Europeanization of Turkey have been successful without heavy American influence and different borders that included more Asian lands?
The Turkish absorption of Greece east of the Axios River, the east Aegean islands, Dodecanese, and Cyprus might have played out differently if not for the reforms involving minority rights and Greek regional autonomies in Turkey.
Granted, a large part of Turkey's cultural transformation had to do with the effect of the the wave of expulsions post-war. The Armenian expulsion of all their muslims (regardless of whether they were Georgian, Azeri, Kurdish, etc) to Turkey, Serbia and Greece deporting the Albanians to Turkey, etc. The Turkish heartland suddenly became a lot more diverse.
The Turkish absorption of Greece east of the Axios River, the east Aegean islands, Dodecanese, and Cyprus might have played out differently if not for the reforms involving minority rights and Greek regional autonomies in Turkey.
Granted, a large part of Turkey's cultural transformation had to do with the effect of the the wave of expulsions post-war. The Armenian expulsion of all their muslims (regardless of whether they were Georgian, Azeri, Kurdish, etc) to Turkey, Serbia and Greece deporting the Albanians to Turkey, etc. The Turkish heartland suddenly became a lot more diverse.
OOC: The King-Crane Commission, you know the plan for the Middle East that was based on "objective" criteria making it so much better than Sykes-Picot and the ultimate San Remo treaties, seems pretty darn brazenly greedy compared to the others. Depending what version of King-Crane is adopted, the US could get 5 mandates! Covering 85% of the Ottoman Empire's pre-war territory!