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I was on a tour of the Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople last month and the tour guide remarked that the Ottoman Empire considered siding with the Central Powers in the Great War but decided against it in the face of financial difficulties and internal rebellions.

Seeing that the Treaty of Versailles broke up the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, would the same thing have happened to the Ottomans had they joined the losing side?

I mention this because the Ottoman Empire's decision to stay neutral during the war only delayed the inevitable. The Turkish Generals led by Mustafa Kemal were gaining influence and wanted to make the empire closer more secular while reducing Sultan Mehmed VI to a figurehead ruler.

It would be Mehmed's alliance with the Wahhabists and the al-Saud clan in Arabia that triggered the Ottoman Civil War (1922-1924). The Wahhabists advocated a harshly theocratic form of Sunni Islam and sought to unite Arabia as an Islamic caliphate. The Hashemites were the traditional guardians of Islam's most holiest sites which included Mecca and the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and viewed the Wahhabists/Saudis as the enemy.

The Hashemites formed an anti-Turkish, anti-Wahabbist alliance with the Kurds, Armenians and the Arab tribes in Babylonia and Syria.

With the Ottomans tearing itself apart, the Greeks decided to seize their opportunity. Having won Salonika in the Balkans War, they decided to take back Constantinople and the province of Anatolia.

The Treaty of Bethlehem awarded Constantinople, Anatolia and Cyprus to the Greeks resulting in the re-birth of the Byzantine Empire. The Hashemites took control of Nejd and Hedjaz (merged in 1948 as the Kingdom of Arabia), and Palestine. The treaty also created the nations of Kurdistan, Babylonia, Syria, Armenia (which included northern Cilicia), Palestine, and Albania (protectorate of the Byzantine Empire).

Lebanon (majority Christian) became a Byzantine protectorate until 1944 when it achieved full independence.

The Turks were lucky to have a country left after that war.

What would a broken up Ottoman Empire have looked like if it was not neutral?
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