Supposing, for whatever reasons that make the most sense, that the Ottoman Empire remains neutral in World War I, what if any effect does this have on the history of the Middle East and WWI itself?
Neutral Ottoman Empire in WWI?
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Not thinking of the consequences, just the 'how'.
Take the German crew off the Goeben before they can go sailing to bombard Russian ports comes to mind.
Take the German crew off the Goeben before they can go sailing to bombard Russian ports comes to mind.
Ottomans neutral which means that Palestine and Syria are still ruled by the Turks. No Ataturk to reform the army - does this mean that the Italians invade Syria rather than Ethiopia in 1936? Especially if the British start meddling in Iraq.
After all the Italians fought the Turks for Libya and the Dodecanese in 1912
After all the Italians fought the Turks for Libya and the Dodecanese in 1912
WWI: Allies still win in 1918. While fighting in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Africa tied down enormous numbers of Entente troops, I don't think switching them to the Western Front would have produced a breakthrough earlier.
Middle East: still going to be hard for the Ottomans to keep the empire in the long run. Nationalist movements elsewhere would be known of, and imitated, in the Middle East -- there would still be an Arab revolt. It might well be crushed this time since Britain would not get involved, and the Ottomans could send their best general (Ataturk) to put it down. The rebels would try to get help from Nejd, Asir, Yemen and Egypt. They might get some.
The Zionist movement had already existed for years; in the Ottoman period, European Jews had been buying up property in Palestine and moving there. The local Ottoman authorities had even helped them when they evicted Arab tenants to allow the new owners to take possession. There would eventually be a serious backlash, and again all sides in the conflict would seek regional allies.
Middle East: still going to be hard for the Ottomans to keep the empire in the long run. Nationalist movements elsewhere would be known of, and imitated, in the Middle East -- there would still be an Arab revolt. It might well be crushed this time since Britain would not get involved, and the Ottomans could send their best general (Ataturk) to put it down. The rebels would try to get help from Nejd, Asir, Yemen and Egypt. They might get some.
The Zionist movement had already existed for years; in the Ottoman period, European Jews had been buying up property in Palestine and moving there. The local Ottoman authorities had even helped them when they evicted Arab tenants to allow the new owners to take possession. There would eventually be a serious backlash, and again all sides in the conflict would seek regional allies.
Big boost for the Allies. The campaigns against Turkey sucked up enormous resources - Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and the Caucasus.
When Turkey entered the war, it closed the Straits to Russian trade - Russian exports, mainly grain, and Russian imports, including arms and machinery, which mostly passed through the Black Sea ports. The Russian economy will be stronger, and also the Russian army.
(I'm not sure what the rule was on military goods passing through the Straits, but I think even they're nominally barred, the Allies could bully Turkey into not enforcing the rule.)
Bulgaria will not join the CPs either, I think.
OTOH it will be even harder to get the cooperation of Greece than OTL; I'm sure at least some Greeks were happy to be on the side against Turkey.
Overall though I think the Allies win in 1916 or 1917. The U.S. never enters the war.
For the Middle East - Turkey remains supreme in the area. The Armenians don't get massacred, I think. The Saudis stay in Nejd and don't get Mecca. Arab nationalism is held back for a generation. Probably in the 1920s, Turkey goes ahead and formally conquers the rest of Arabia.
Turkey remains backward - no Kemalist reforms, or a very limited program. OTOH, Turkey does not get trashed in the war - OTL Turkey had one of the highest proportional casualty rates of any country, and that doesn't include the losses in the Greco-Turkish War.
The big question is how long can Turkey stay like that. If Turkey hangs on long enough, it becomes the Godzilla of oil production: all of Saudi Arabia's oil plus Iraq's plus Kuwait's.
No Balfour Declaration; will Turkey allow additional Zionist immigration? How much? Almost certainly not enough to create a Jewish state, and the Zionists won't be crazy enough to fight Turkey.
Wahhabism remains a noisy problem in Arabia and insignificant elsewhere. It never gets the enormous petrodollar flow that has paid for so much radicalizing missionary work. The Sultan remains the Caliph; what effects that has on Islamic doctrine Idunno.
However, one should note that Islamists like Sayyid Qutb were radicalizing in the 1940s, with no Saudi help.
The Middle-East is more stable and prosperous than IOTL for one.
While Central and Southern Arabia were by 1914 lost causes, everything North is easily held onto; Nationalism in the Levant and Mishriq was very much fanned by Britain and later by being parts of the British and French Empires, prior to that Arab Nationalism (which even today is'nt really that big a thing) was close to non-existent, indeed a nascent Ottoman Idntity had begun to take hold in many parts of the Empire by 1914, and with the OE staying Neutral and not being invaded and divvied up their's no reason to believe it would'nt continue.
All in all I expect you'd get a situation similar to this in regards to the Ottoman Empire;
![Neutral%20OE%20Territory[1].png](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/attachments/neutral-20oe-20territory-1-png.201553/ "Neutral%20OE%20Territory[1].png")
While Central and Southern Arabia were by 1914 lost causes, everything North is easily held onto; Nationalism in the Levant and Mishriq was very much fanned by Britain and later by being parts of the British and French Empires, prior to that Arab Nationalism (which even today is'nt really that big a thing) was close to non-existent, indeed a nascent Ottoman Idntity had begun to take hold in many parts of the Empire by 1914, and with the OE staying Neutral and not being invaded and divvied up their's no reason to believe it would'nt continue.
All in all I expect you'd get a situation similar to this in regards to the Ottoman Empire;
That would seem probable - all the destructiion and bloodshed of WW I is avoided.
OTOH, Turkey does not get the benefit of Kemal's reforms, and Mesopotama and the Levant remain under backwards Turkish rule instead of modernizing Anglo-French rule.
??? The Ottomans never tried to control the Arabian heartland, but there was nothing there they wanted. In the later 1900s, they could decide to close out that blank area on the map. With motorized troops and aircraft and of course numbers they con do it in a few years.
One significant difference from that map - the boundary with Russia in the Caucasus is further west. The Russians took a good sized area from Turkey in 1878; Turkey retook it in 1917-1920.
The Empire was modernizing, and with more money I suspect it would see reforms, though perhaps retaining an Arabo-Persian script for Turkish rather than adopting a Latin Script, also no Turkish Laïcité, though it would gradually become secularized, probably somewhere between OTL Italy and Britain by now.
They backed different groups in Central Arabia and up until their dissolution controlled the Hedjaz and part of what's now Yemen.
By which point I suspect the Arabian states would all have Great power backers who would prevent them from doing that.
The borders outside of the OE on that map are all OTL and meant to show its relative position and territory rather than being AH borders for the whole region, I added Kars since I figure it's likely a Neutral OE would probably find some way to get it back/the Allies promice it to them for 'preferential' neutrality later in the war.
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BlondieBC
Banned
No, straights were closed before war was started. What you are talking about is a Ottomans joining the Entente. The benefit of the Ottomans staying out is the Russian have fewer troops on the Ottoman border, maybe Bulgaria stays out, and the British use the truly 3rd class units on the Western Front to heavy losses. While the Entente will win sooner, it is not the scenario you are indicating.
No, check the dates IOTL. In history they matter.
Second, Russia could not even feed itself in WW1, hence the revolution. There will be no significant food exports after 1914 since all those million of men and horse at the front are not farming.
A lot of it is the fact that the rail system couldn't carry the grain, as in, there was not enough rail system to carry grain, armies, and everything else. The stravation was mostly in the cities.
In the countryside the discontent was partly because they couldn't do anything with their produce (couldn't sell it, couldn't store it, a lot of it was meant for export but it couldn't get there)
So Russia's rail is to blame at least as much as the Straits closing.
Anglo-French rule was anything but modernizing, and the Ottomans were hardly the backwards power portrayed by some. The Ottomans were in fact quite contentious reformers, and the coup in 1908 had sped up the pace of reform even further. The British and French, on the other hand, instituted puppet kings with little legitimacy that took away political stability, drew up borders that left massive problems (For example, Alexandretta, which had been Aleppo's main port, was in a different country from the mid-30's onward, which ruined Aleppo economically), and judging by modifiers such as economic growth, didn't even bring much development in that area.
Arab nationalism will be there, but it won't necessarily be a force able to bring the Ottomans down. The "Turkishness" of the CUP was beginning to turn some Arabs off after 1908, but the Arabs were still loyal enough OTL to fight in much greater numbers for the Ottoman Empire than they did against it. Unless Turcophile policies reach the levels they did under Ataturk's dictatorship, I think the majority of Arabs are more likely to stay loyal to the Empire. OTL, the British and French were encouraging Arab nationalism prior to World War One, so I'm curious as to whether this would continue.
Arab nationalism will be there, but it won't necessarily be a force able to bring the Ottomans down. The "Turkishness" of the CUP was beginning to turn some Arabs off after 1908, but the Arabs were still loyal enough OTL to fight in much greater numbers for the Ottoman Empire than they did against it. Unless Turcophile policies reach the levels they did under Ataturk's dictatorship, I think the majority of Arabs are more likely to stay loyal to the Empire. OTL, the British and French were encouraging Arab nationalism prior to World War One, so I'm curious as to whether this would continue.
Which is not the same as sovereign control.
Neither of which is part of the Arabian heartland.
Which "Arabian states"? Oman, Qatar, Bahrein, and the "Trucial Sheikdoms" (UAE) were all British protectorates in 1914, and they aren't in that blank area on the map. The nearest thing to a "state" in that area is the Saudi tribal domain in Nejd, which no outside power would touch with a 10 foot pole.
Are you claiming that before the war, Turkey blockaded the Straits to trade to and from Russia? That would have been a very drastic act, almost certainly a casus belli. The Straits were closed to Russian warships, but that's a very different issue.
The ultimate fate of a neutral Ottoman Empire will depend on a few things:
1. Who is Sultan?
A powerless figurehead might succumb to turcophile policies and alienate his non-Turkish subjects to the point of rebellion. A strong younger man with vision and a mind for reform might secure the balance of Arabia and perhaps even help Ottoman prestige return by mid-century (an Ottoman empire allied to the UK/Russia might be able to get significant influence and territory in the region after a WWII analogue).
2. What is the state of internal reform?
As was mentioned previously, the Ottomans are reforming though there is pressure from conservative elements to slow this. Does the nation carry on or slow reform significantly?
3. What happens to the Armenians?
This subject is sticky even today but should the Empire be more favorable to them and even to the promises made in the Berlin agreement then history and that region might look *very* different today
4. Do the Ottomans conquer the balance of Arabia?
If they do they have an oil production capacity of untold proportions which could modernize the country rapidly, especially if the nation embraces reforms and modern education.
5. What will the policies be in Palestine?
Already addressed but bears repeating.
Overall a well-governed Empire would see much of the Middle East unified and potentially modernized under the Turks, and following the fall of the USSR you might see other Turkish states clamoring for Imperial favor (maybe Azerbaijan even seeks annexation?). Should the Ottomans decide to fight Germany in WWII the reach of the USSR might nor extend to Bulgaria or Yugoslavia either during the cold war.
1. Who is Sultan?
A powerless figurehead might succumb to turcophile policies and alienate his non-Turkish subjects to the point of rebellion. A strong younger man with vision and a mind for reform might secure the balance of Arabia and perhaps even help Ottoman prestige return by mid-century (an Ottoman empire allied to the UK/Russia might be able to get significant influence and territory in the region after a WWII analogue).
2. What is the state of internal reform?
As was mentioned previously, the Ottomans are reforming though there is pressure from conservative elements to slow this. Does the nation carry on or slow reform significantly?
3. What happens to the Armenians?
This subject is sticky even today but should the Empire be more favorable to them and even to the promises made in the Berlin agreement then history and that region might look *very* different today
4. Do the Ottomans conquer the balance of Arabia?
If they do they have an oil production capacity of untold proportions which could modernize the country rapidly, especially if the nation embraces reforms and modern education.
5. What will the policies be in Palestine?
Already addressed but bears repeating.
Overall a well-governed Empire would see much of the Middle East unified and potentially modernized under the Turks, and following the fall of the USSR you might see other Turkish states clamoring for Imperial favor (maybe Azerbaijan even seeks annexation?). Should the Ottomans decide to fight Germany in WWII the reach of the USSR might nor extend to Bulgaria or Yugoslavia either during the cold war.
Paul V McNutt
Banned
A well supplied Russia can effectively fight Germany. mMaybe a desperate Germany resorts to unrestricted submarine warfare earlier. tThe US gets involved sooner. gEven Corporal Hitler has to admit that Germany lost the war.
Not in the technical sense, but when you exert de facto control, their's not much difference.
The Hedjaz most certainly is.
You used future tense, thus by the time it would be happening the rest of Arabia would've become part of another state.
Also, Oman was never a British Protectorate, it's essentially the only part of Arabia that remained independent during the Imperial Era.
Oil was known in alot of other places other than Arabia and the Soviet Union (who's reserves I'm not sure were fully known then) at the time.
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