DBWI: Ottoman Empire joins WWI

Germany was pressuring us to join the Great War on the side of the Central Powers, but luckily, the sultan refused. We stayed neutral, and struck oil soon after the war ended. We used the money to modernize, and reformed into a constitutional monarchy.

WWII came along, and we stayed neutral again. It ended, the Allies won, and the Jews got their own country somewhere in Africa (Madagascar, maybe?). After the war, we got a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and detonated a nuclear bomb as a deterrent against Soviet expansion. Using our newfound power, we managed to reconquer all of the lands in Africa and Asia that we had historically controlled.

Now, communism has fallen, we have a large military and population, and we are prospering from our oil. There was a group of extremists called Al-Qaeda who attempted to attack the USA in 2001, but we quickly caught all of them, and the remaining ones fled to Arabia.

How do you think things would have been different if Germany had convinced the sultan to join the Central Powers?
 
The empire is doomed in this situation, the European powers didn't respect it enough to give it a deal where it survives post war. Kemel Pasha was a good general and his work in reforming the Ottoman army was commendable but I doubt even he could hold the Allies back for long. Especiall since Greece may join in if they can get control of Istanbul and Izmir (I care but naught for Greek Revanchists who try and use the ancient names for them no one uses anymore).

Now if the Central powers win, then you have an interesting scenario start playing out with how the Ottomans are treated. Although the Central powers may not treat them any better than the Entente treated poor beleagured Russia.

OOC: Can we please not do the "pin the zion on the Afro-Eurasia?
 

whitecrow

Banned
Germany was pressuring us to join the Great War on the side of the Central Powers, but luckily, the sultan refused. We stayed neutral, and struck oil soon after the war ended. We used the money to modernize, and reformed into a constitutional monarchy.

WWII came along, and we stayed neutral again. It ended, the Allies won, and the Jews got their own country somewhere in Africa (Madagascar, maybe?). After the war, we got a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and detonated a nuclear bomb as a deterrent against Soviet expansion. Using our newfound power, we managed to reconquer all of the lands in Africa and Asia that we had historically controlled.

Now, communism has fallen, we have a large military and population, and we are prospering from our oil. There was a group of extremists called Al-Qaeda who attempted to attack the USA in 2001, but we quickly caught all of them, and the remaining ones fled to Arabia.

How do you think things would have been different if Germany had convinced the sultan to join the Central Powers?
Well, first of all personally, I wouldn't call the formation of the Islamic Unity League to be the same as "reconquering all of the lands in Africa and Asia that you had historically controlled" (OOC: I can't see this happening short of ASB. If the USSR and USA are anything like in out world, they would tell the Ottomans that colonialism in 20th century is a no-go. Not to mention that European states like U.K. and France might frown upon the Sultan annexing Mediterranean and African states in their sphere of influence). Sure, the Ottoman Empire has a lot of pull there due to its wealth but the African and the independent Arabian states joined the international organization on their own and can leave any time, just like the members of the European Union.

Secondly, had the Ottomans joined and fell after WW1, I think the world would be a much better place. Groups like Al-Qaeda you mentioned? They are a dime a dozen nowadays. All thanks to the sultanate overtly and covertly supporting Muslim extremism to destabilize Soviet control in Afghanistan and their Central Asian republics. Did you know that the leader of Al-Qaeda was an Ottoman agent that trained and lead the Afghan mujaheddin against the Soviet in the 1980s? Just shows you that you reap what you sow: the sultans encouraged fundamentalist fanatics and now the same nutcases are yelling that the sultanate has become lax and corrupt, a puppet of the capitalist anti-Muslim USA (the Great Satan) that should be wiped from the face of the Earth. How is that for irony? Additionally, if the Sultans did not crack down on all proponents of secularism, feminism, nationalism and anti-monarchism as "communist agitators" during their own Red Scare, the state of women and the poor in the region would not be so appalling. And don't even get me started on the income gap between the rich and the poor in the Empire or the treatment of the Jews in Palestine.

In short, it is a tragedy that Mehmed V did not suffer the same fate as Wilhelm II.
 

Cook

Banned
Germany was pressuring us to join the Great War on the side of the Central Powers, but luckily, the sultan refused.
Actually that is not entirely correct; the pressure for an alliance came in late June, early August 1914 initially from Enver Pasha and was actually rejected by the Germans on the advice of their Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Gustav Von Wangenheim. While Wangenheim did forward Enver Pasha’s offer of an alliance to Berlin, he attached a note to it containing his own assessment of Ottoman military weakness and cautioned that such an alliance would be prejudicial to a swift resolution to the negotiations that would inevitably conclude the conflict.

The German rejection embittered Enver, who was always one for extremes, and turned the Germanophile into a bitter hater of Germany. Consequently when the Kaiser later got wind of the proposal that his government had rejected and tried to take the Turks up the alliance ,the lead member of the Triumvirate was no longer so keen. That and the news that the campaign on the Western Front hadn’t resulted in another swift German victory as in 1870, instead bogging down in an inconclusive stalemate, meant that the offer was no longer on the table; Turkey preferring to wait on the sidelines to see how things eventuated.

The initial offer to Germany and the later rejection were both decisions made by the cabinet of the government of Young Turks; even by 1914 the Sultan’s position in government was that of little more than a figurehead. Which was a good thing; Mehmet V ascended the throne in 1909 having spent the entire sixty-four years of his life under house arrest, confined to the Kafes; he knew nothing about the world beyond the palace walls and many accounts indicate that the lack of intellectual stimulation had left him a half-wit.
 
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The empire is doomed in this situation, the European powers didn't respect it enough to give it a deal where it survives post war. Kemel Pasha was a good general and his work in reforming the Ottoman army was commendable but I doubt even he could hold the Allies back for long. Especiall since Greece may join in if they can get control of Istanbul and Izmir (I care but naught for Greek Revanchists who try and use the ancient names for them no one uses anymore).

Now if the Central powers win, then you have an interesting scenario start playing out with how the Ottomans are treated. Although the Central powers may not treat them any better than the Entente treated poor beleagured Russia.

OOC: Can we please not do the "pin the zion on the Afro-Eurasia?

OOC: Seconded, and can we please not do any of this "Ottoman Empire survives to the present" stuff, either? It is just not plausible with an after 1900 POD.

IC: Umm....what? The Ottoman Empire was dissolved in 1949, guys. You're thinking of the Turkish Union; Yes, the Sultan is still technically on the throne, as per the Ankara Agreement, but he's even more of a symbol than the king of England! He has no real power, at all.
 
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OOC: Seconded, and can we please not do any of this "Ottoman Empire survives to the present" stuff, either? It is just not plausible with an after 1900 POD.

OOC: What? Of course it could survive. It might have to completely reform, giving more rights to the Arabs or whatever, but there's no reason the Ottoman Empire would collapse if it didn't join WWI. They have a perfect opportunity here to benefit from the war by remaining neutral, and then, if WWII does indeed roll around, they have the oil monopoly.
 
OOC: What? Of course it could survive. It might have to completely reform, giving more rights to the Arabs or whatever, but there's no reason the Ottoman Empire would collapse if it didn't join WWI. They have a perfect opportunity here to benefit from the war by remaining neutral, and then, if WWII does indeed roll around, they have the oil monopoly.

OOC: I'm sorry, but why do you think the Ottoman Empire was called the "Sick Man" of Europe, even in the 19th Century? Too many problems were going on, and it's kinda lucky that they survived to 1922 as is IOTL, and no way would it be able to survive in it's original form beyond perhaps 1950 or so, maybe, without a POD before the beginning.
It just cannot be done without radical changes, and changes that would basically change the country so much that most wouldn't recognize it as the old Ottoman Empire anymore at that.

IC: Anyway, I've also been wondering what could have happened with Arabia. Now, IOTL, the Saud family did control the area from the sale of Arabia to Britain in 1924(the Ottoman Empire was in desperate need of some serious cash at that time, and Britain promised closer ties with them; Britain still had money to burn and it paid off quite well for both powers; the Ottomans didn't have to deal with the Saud family's various machinations and the Brits ended up getting all the oil they could possibly want...while sharing some with their new friends in Istanbul, of course.), through the days of independence in 1948, and until 1953, when the Rashidis were placed into power after the success of the Green Revolution.

My question is, with an earlier dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, what could have happened to Saudi Arabia? Would it still have been sold to Britain? And would the Saudis have remained in control of the area to this day(I hope not. They were terrible rulers.)?
 
oOC: uh, don't try and hijack the thread...especially when everyone else has formed the consensus that the Ottoman Empire has survived. Not to mention the Ottomans did have a turnaround by 1913, and had recaptured Edirne, and we're on their way back to stability until the Great War. Hell, it's pretty much a consensus on the forum that they'd survive without WWI; really only the Austrians wouldn't IMO.
 

Okay, I had just written a really long and informative post that vanished all of a sudden. I must have hit a hotkey or something.

Basic points were: 1) Nobody here subscribes to the 'Sick Man' theory. It has been debunked on this very site numerous times, or at least proven to be vastly overblown.

2) If the Ottoman Empire reformed, in what way would it cease to be recognisable? The USSR was pretty much Russia, the PRC is China, and France is France whether republic or kingdom. The Turks could federalise their empire, completely overhaul their military, and when the oil starts flowing, become a wealthy, flourishing nation, but so long as they are a Turk-dominated Arabian-orientated state with the capital in Istanbul (or Ankara, I guess) anyone who watched it go from the "Sick Man of Europe" to this oil-giant will still see it as the "Ottoman Empire". Or at least Turkey, as even in its imperial days it was referred to as "Turkey".

Without the British interfering in the Ottoman Empire as part of the war (as was their right, I guess, being at war and all (I'm not disputing that)) and inciting/funding the Arabs into rebellion, there's no reason the empire would collapse. It's like saying Austria-Hungary was doomed to failure. Even people in Austria wanted change, and whose to say those people wouldn't gain influence enough to make it?

Your assumption that the Ottoman Empire is doomed to collapse is rather narrow-minded, and antiquated.
 
oOC: uh, don't try and hijack the thread...especially when everyone else has formed the consensus that the Ottoman Empire has survived. Not to mention the Ottomans did have a turnaround by 1913, and had recaptured Edirne, and we're on their way back to stability until the Great War. Hell, it's pretty much a consensus on the forum that they'd survive without WWI; really only the Austrians wouldn't IMO.

OOC: I wasn't doing that, and in fact, I agree with eliphas8, btw, as I'd prefer not to do the "Pin the Zion on the Eurasia" thing either. But the belief that the Ottoman Empire could survive to the present day in its old form, without any significant changes, with a POD after 1900 isn't really all the substantiatable, and may be ASB at worst(if it was somewhere around 1850-60 or so, it'd be a different story, I think, but by the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire's decline was pretty much written in stone, even if it's dissolution could be put off for a while as I speculated here).
As you can probably see, the Turkish Union idea does keep the Sultan around, it's just that his power is even less than of Elizabeth II of the U.K. or Japan's Emperor Akihito.
If Orcris has any substantial opposition to the idea, it won't be a problem if he wants to exclude it from the canon. But it seems to be alright for now, and I hope so, because my idea is pretty plausible, TBH.
 
OOC: I wasn't doing that, and in fact, I agree with eliphas8, btw, as I'd prefer not to do the "Pin the Zion on the Eurasia" thing either. But the belief that the Ottoman Empire could survive to the present day in its old form, without any significant changes, with a POD after 1900 isn't really all the substantiatable, and may be ASB at worst(if it was somewhere around 1850-60 or so, it'd be a different story, I think, but by the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire's decline was pretty much written in stone, even if it's dissolution could be put off for a while as I speculated here).
As you can probably see, the Turkish Union idea does keep the Sultan around, it's just that his power is even less than of Elizabeth II of the U.K. or Japan's Emperor Akihito.
If Orcris has any substantial opposition to the idea, it won't be a problem if he wants to exclude it from the canon. But it seems to be alright for now, and I hope so, because my idea is pretty plausible, TBH.
OOC: Why would that change the name to the Turkish Union, then? There's nothing preventing the name from not changing.
 

whitecrow

Banned
OOC:...But the belief that the Ottoman Empire could survive to the present day in its old form, without any significant changes, with a POD after 1900 isn't really all the substantiatable,
OOC: Except the OP specifically said that the Ottoman Empire is not in its old for and not without significant changes:
We stayed neutral, and struck oil soon after the war ended. We used the money to modernize, and reformed into a constitutional monarchy.
 
Considering that the Russians impaled themseves on the Austro-Hungarian and German defece lines in 1917 (and that led to the Revolution in 1918 as we all know) And the Germans almost suceeded with their Autumn Offensive 1918 (just before the US finally arrived in Europe) I believe that an Ottoman army attacking russia actually might have prevented the russian blunder in 1917 - If Rusiia had less troops they would NOT have attacked so viciously. OTOH As the 1914 offensives bogged down and the sitiuation not being so bright in the east the CPs did everything to keep Italy out of the war - Trentino, an large strip of land along the Isonzo, concessions in Triest... - But if the Ottoman empire was their ally, they might have not seen the signs at the wall...

But I don't think the Ottomans were really neutral in WWI - after all you seized teh opportuunity and carved a sphere of influence out of Persia when the Russians withdrew in 1918 - even today the Persians complain about the loss of such "persian" lands as Täbriz, Kermanshah and Avaz.

And you simply took back Kars, Ardahan and Batumi in 1918 too - taking advantage of a weak russia.
 
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