Effects of an Successful Ottoman Partition

[GameBawesome]

After WWI, the Ottoman Empire was planned to be partition during the Treaty of Sèvres. The partition plan was to roughly look around this:

However, this never occurred, as the Turks under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, fought the Turkish War of Independence and won the war, establishing the Republic of Turkey, and the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate and Ottoman Caliphate.

What if, the Turkish War of Independence failed? Be it important leaders like Mustafa Kemal Pasha, etc died earlier or failed? And if there was no Turkish War of Independence and the Ottoman Empire was successfully partitioned, what could be some of the effects that could happen?

 

[Tsar Constantine I]

I'm guessing this would mean a larger Armenia and Greece with them keeping the territory on this map. Also an Independent Kurdistan would exist, Syria might be larger, and the rest of Anatolia would be returned to Turkey after Decolonization. I could see the Zone of the Straits turning into an Independent Republic of Constantinople. Turkey would probably be way less secular, developed, and modernized since without Ataturk winning the War of Independence I doubt Kemalism gets much traction and probably instead gets replaced by more traditionalist, political ideology and also losing important territories would obviously make it poorer and weaker.

 

[GameBawesome]

Well, I don’t know if this was dead or not. But I’ll allow it to get revived

 

[JamesBond88]

If those borders hold for any amount of time there’ll be a very revanchist Turkey. It being aligned with other revanchist powers in a WW2 scenario would practically be a given. Probably akin to Bulgaria in terms of motivation. The countries surrounding Turkey(Armenia, Greece, and whatever Kurdish polity the Anglo-French prop up) would cling to each other and the Great Powers for dear life when the Turks get reorganized.

Additionally, barring some very unsavory behavior, there’ll be substantial Turkish populations within the borders of the partitioned territories. How those people are treated will substantially impact events going forward. Suppression will motivate pan-Turkish nationalism in the Turkish state as the 20’s roll in.

I don’t know enough about the history of the area in this period, but an enlarged Armenia and Georgia will probably affect Soviet involvement in the Caucus. Not sure what butterflies it’d cause, but I could see independent states resisting Soviet encroachment if they had enough diplomatic and material support from the other powers.

 

[Tsar Constantine I]

I don't think Turkey would join the Axis in WW2 because Italy would be one of the colonial powers that they would hate. But maybe they try to seize back their old lands by force if the Allies don't stop them which would probably lead to genocide of minorities in their partitioned territories like you said. Or they're granted their lands back after WW2 is over.

 

[AltoRegnant]

Greece will be a majority Turkish region, which will mean either very bad times or war. What that entails, I don't know. But it can't be good.

 

[Kohlticus Euraleth]

Greece will be a majority Turkish region, which will mean either very bad times or war. What that entails, I don't know. But it can't be good.

No it wouldn't. It would end up with a much larger number of Turks than it had IOTL but not anywhere near a majority. Eastern Thrace and the Smyrna Zone had about a million people combined, of which about 75% was Turkish, while the rest of Greece had just shy of five million of which 80% or so were Greek.