I wouldn't put France and Austria on the same level. True, Italy had some disputes with France such as the "economic war" at the turn of the century and the colonization of Tunisia, but France wasn't a "traditional enemy" of Italy. There wouldn't even be a kingdom of Italy without the french support.
True, but as you point out, there had been a strong Italo-French rivalry about colonial, economic, and strategic matters during the 1880s and 1890s, including a couple war scares. And the long-standing presence of Italy in the Triple Alliance was in an anti-French sense. As for French support to Italian unification, it mostly went sour when Napoleon III started to support the Pope against the Italians: as one Italian politician commented, "Mentana killed Magenta".
Italy never actually fought France, but during WW2, not even when Rome could not be added to the kingdom thanks to Napoleon's protection.
True, but in the 1860s, Italy felt, and was, a bit too weka to fight France alone.
Italy didn't even join Prussia during the 1870 war, when doing so could have delivered to the italians both Rome and Savoy (which is, by the way, a good POD to have an Italy firmly entrenched in Germany'side during WW1, in my opinion).
Well, indeed that was a rather wrong turn of Italian foreign policy. It was probably related to the lukewarm proof that Italy made in the 1866 war, but surely a decent Italian performance in 1866 and/or partecipation in the Franco-Prussian war would have built a very strong Italo-German strategic partnership, to the huge long-term benefit of both powers. Besides other economic and strategic benefits, they would have likely avoided shackling themselves to an alliance with the Habsburg zombie, which would have likely collapsed in no long time, or gone to burden France with its defense, whereas Germany and Italy could have found a far better third partner in either Britain or Russia.
So I find equiparating France and Austria a bit extreme.
Admittably. But my whole point was that Austria and France are the powers that Italy has several reasons to treat as long-standing rivals, not Turkey (and the point is equally true as it concerns the Ottomans, whose long-standing enemy was Russia, not Italy).
Also, if Italy AND Bulgaria join the CP it's awfully hard to imagine the Ottomans won't be interested in British proposals regarding the territory seized in wars of aggression from the Ottomans within the last 24 months.
Germany can counter with proposals of returning the territory seized by Russia and Britain in the Egypt, Cyprus, Kars,
Ardahan and
Batum, and raise the ante with promises of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Khuzestan. Not to mention the perspective of greately weakening the traditional Russian enemy by expelling it from the Black Sea.
Not to mention the fact that most likely a variant of OTL would play out where Turkey joins the CPs after Italy, but before Bulgaria.