Latest POD for Russia to capture Constantinople?

As the title says. Of course, the capture of the city might be a long time after the POD, but what would be the latest time that history would have to start diverging from how it developed in OTL?
 
Probably not exactly what you're looking for, but if Russia had avoided the Revolution, they likely could have pressed for and gotten the Straits as an occupation zone after WWI. How they react to Ataturk will be more complicated.
 
Probably not exactly what you're looking for, but if Russia had avoided the Revolution, they likely could have pressed for and gotten the Straits as an occupation zone after WWI. How they react to Ataturk will be more complicated.

Do you mean avoiding the October Revolution, or also the February Revolution?
 
Do you mean avoiding the October Revolution, or also the February Revolution?
In principle the Kerensky government was committed to continuing to support the Allies, but it's far too rickety (and their major offensive was a disaster), so I'd prefer avoid both. Russia needs to still be a powerful enough player on the Allied side to make its demands stick, in the face of Allied skepticism and Turkish rebellion, which I'd think would require the Russians to hold together better. Probably the best POD is a less disastrous Tannenberg Campaign: if they manage to avoid having their armies crushed invading Germany (but still have their offensive halted, so Turkey is willing to join the Central Powers), then the Eastern Front looks much better for them (with Austria-Hungary still in retreat as OTL, but without a German advance threatening to cut off the Russians pursuing them).
 
An interesting alternative would be if Russia was able to make an alliance with Germany rather than Britain and France. Then, if war broke out, Russia could have consentrated more on fighting the Ottomans (assuming that they were allied with Britain and France). I think such an alliance would have been a better choice for both Russia and Germany. For Germany it would have been a huge advantage to avoid having to fight both Russia in the east and Britain/France in the west at the same time. Russia could more easily fight a war without ending in a revolutionary situation.
 
An interesting alternative would be if Russia was able to make an alliance with Germany rather than Britain and France. Then, if war broke out, Russia could have consentrated more on fighting the Ottomans (assuming that they were allied with Britain and France). I think such an alliance would have been a better choice for both Russia and Germany. For Germany it would have been a huge advantage to avoid having to fight both Russia in the east and Britain/France in the west at the same time. Russia could more easily fight a war without ending in a revolutionary situation.

This seems easiest to me. Turks side with Britain and France and press on Russia and Bulgaria. This scenario gives Russia an opponent that they stand a much better chance against. I see the Ottomans mostly holding effectively till the end of the war, especially since there won't likely be any shenanigans in the Arabian peninsula without the English pushing for it. This may end out even worse for Armenians, though. If the Central Powers win in this scenario, Russia will probably annex further south of the Caucasus, and will not lose the peace as easily as the Greeks when the Turks strike back.
 
This seems easiest to me. Turks side with Britain and France and press on Russia and Bulgaria. This scenario gives Russia an opponent that they stand a much better chance against. I see the Ottomans mostly holding effectively till the end of the war, especially since there won't likely be any shenanigans in the Arabian peninsula without the English pushing for it. This may end out even worse for Armenians, though. If the Central Powers win in this scenario, Russia will probably annex further south of the Caucasus, and will not lose the peace as easily as the Greeks when the Turks strike back.

But would Russia make a genocide against the Armenians? Of course, one problem would be that Britain might decide to send part of its fleet to the Black Sea and Constantinople to aid the Ottomans.
 
No, but Armenians would almost certainly work against the Ottomans during the war. If things are going poorly for them, they won't need much more than an excuse to start doing what they did OTL. TTL could see Russian armies liberating camps as they advance south. Armenia ends out a protectorate of the Russian Empire or as a few oblasti within it.
 
No, but Armenians would almost certainly work against the Ottomans during the war. If things are going poorly for them, they won't need much more than an excuse to start doing what they did OTL. TTL could see Russian armies liberating camps as they advance south. Armenia ends out a protectorate of the Russian Empire or as a few oblasti within it.

But they might avoid the genocide, so this would clearly be an improvement compared to OTL.
 
Key word is might. That depends on the Russians advancing more quickly than OTL. I'd like to hear from an expert on this front to see if that's likely under these circumstances. All I'm saying is that if they don't advance quickly, and the Ottomans are feeling pinched politically and militarily, things are going to get really bad before they get better.
 
1916 or 1917. The British manage to capture Gallipoli, and it gets the Ottomans out of the war, establishing a permanent British naval presence in the Dardanelles and leading Russia to withdraw from the war in protest, allowing Paris to fall to the Germans, France to leave the war, and, Russian re-entry against an embarrassed, humiliated, and discredited Porte in an alliance with the Central Powers.
 
IMHO the British will never give Constantinople/Istanbul to the Russians, allies or not in WWI. You might see some sort of "Berlin" like situation with a joint occupation with zones (think British, French, Greek, Russian) after WWI but IMHO this would be temporary like Vienna was after WWII. A more likely situation is you end up with the Greeks getting the European part, and the Turks the Asian part especially if the British throw some weight behind Greece, Greece having both sides is possible as well with a small amount of hinterland - with some of the Greek population expelled from Anatolia ending up expelling Turks from some of the hinterland as well as both sides of the Dardanelles.

Preventing Russian control of the straits was a long standing British policy, and I can't see them giving much up to Russia after WWI assuming the Bolsheviks don't take over in which case the odds are below zero. In WWI there is simply no way Russia can take Constantinople and present a fait accompli.
 
IMHO the British will never give Constantinople/Istanbul to the Russians, allies or not in WWI. You might see some sort of "Berlin" like situation with a joint occupation with zones (think British, French, Greek, Russian) after WWI but IMHO this would be temporary like Vienna was after WWII. A more likely situation is you end up with the Greeks getting the European part, and the Turks the Asian part especially if the British throw some weight behind Greece, Greece having both sides is possible as well with a small amount of hinterland - with some of the Greek population expelled from Anatolia ending up expelling Turks from some of the hinterland as well as both sides of the Dardanelles.

Preventing Russian control of the straits was a long standing British policy, and I can't see them giving much up to Russia after WWI assuming the Bolsheviks don't take over in which case the odds are below zero. In WWI there is simply no way Russia can take Constantinople and present a fait accompli.
Which is why I have Russia making an earlier separate peace with the Central Powers in the wake of a British victory at Gallipoli and going after the Ottomans.
 
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