Little Turkeys in Europe (alternate Yugoslavia)

Read this idea in another thread:

First off, Slovenia (plus Istra and Trieste, and maybe little bits of Croatia as punishment for the pro-Nazi Ustase) becomes one of those ridiculously wealthy, totally neutral Alpine states. Slovenia was a card-carrying member of the Alpine Elite as late as 1917, and they absolutely hated the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Without Tito, they would be allowed to go their own way.

It's also very likely that the Muslims in Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania would see Kemalist Turkey as the model for how to build their state. I could see the Turks pushing to have all of this lumped into a single nation, probably called "The Republic of Yugoslavia".

This state, in turn, would be a wonderful inspiration for Syria/Lebanon/Palestine when they get their independence. I wonder if the Turks would try to carve out the boundaries of Syria/Lebanon/Palestine so that all the Muslims were in one nation and all the Jews and Marionites were in another. Considering how the Turks handled the Armenians, I don't see this going much better than in OTL.

The remainder of slavic lands -- call it the Kingdom of Serbocroatia -- would be a very, very tempting target for the Soviets to try to turn into a puppet state.

The remaining non-slavic lands -- Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria -- never much liked the Russians. They never much liked each other, either. Working out their differences would be a task on par with the EEC's task of warming the French and Germans to each other. The result? A bipolar European Union, with two "cores" of original members.

How plausible is the stuff I bolded? It does seem intriguing to have a domino effect carry the Turkish model of government into the Balkans, and then into the Levant. And then Turkey even continues to meddle there as if they were still Ottomans. I'm kind of skeptical of the idea, really, but I think it's worth discussing about.
 
1. Slovenia wasn't a separate political entity prior to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and no reason to suppose it would become one. The Germans and the Hungarians split the country in two, the nationalist movement failed, and the Slavs were emigrating at impressive rates. If I may grossly dramatise it, without WW1 and the resultant rise of Yugoslavia, Slovenia has about as much of a chance as Lusatia.

2. Bulgaria is most certainly a Slavic nation and for most part they had no problem with Russia or Russians at all, considering how the Russians won them their statehood. Their foreign policy differed because the Powers put a hostile German on the throne (for that exact purpose, if I may add), the Russian miltitary government before that wasn't that fantastic either, but most of all because of its location between Turkey and Romania made it weaker Romania's natural enemy and vulnerable to stronger Turkey.

3. Montenegro's muslims are relatively few and the identity of the state is far more fundamentally Orthodox than Serbia's. They had a prince-bishop ruling them for most of their history, ffs.

Basically, it's an intriguing idea but I think the quoted poster's understanding of the local situation needs to be a bit better.
 
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Just as a clarification, we're talking about a late-WWII to post-WWII timeframe here for the POD.

Ah, read the original thread now. I disagree with the plausibility rating of the premise, to be honest...but one can look at Greece for examples of a Western-occupied Eastern Europe.

To do that the Yalta and Tehran agreements would have to be completely different, or the West would have to blatantly break those agreements. To achieve the former, the best bet is to have an ASB called Hans come and help the Germans for a few months in '41 and then lose interest.
 
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