Ottoman annexation of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iranian Azerbaijan in the event of a central power victory
- Thread starter walmart
- Start date
There are still Armenians living in Turkey today, around 50,000 to 70,000 in Istanbul itself. And there's anywhere between 20,000 to 100,000 Armenians working illegally in Turkey. And you're supposing that all the Armenians living in territory now captured by the Ottomans are going to meekly stick around to be killed instead of fleeing further into the Caucasus or Iran.
Certainly some Armenians will be able to escape, but with a large majority of the Armenians dead and the rest scattered, it will most likely mean the end of the Armenian culture. They will live in exile and probably slowly assimilate into the culture of their host countries, until a couple of generations later there will be basicly be no Armenians left.
The power that was actively trying to eradicate them was also defeated, just like the Ottoman Empire was. How do you think Europe’s Jews would’ve fared in a world where Nazi Germany won? Also consider that Jews were far more spread out than the Armenians were, and had more options of neutral/allied countries to escape to.
Nazi Germany had their shit together a lot better than the Ottomans in organizing ethnic minorities who were being targeted. Much of Ottoman Asia was highly rural and or mountainous. I'm not saying it's gonna be the Great Escape, but I don't think the Armenians are gonna be at risk of a complete genocide when Christian rights in the Empire were already a major deal beforehand.
Osman Aga
Banned
1. In theory yes. Realistically... very hard... I try to make a short TL
- Ottomans regain Kars and Batum + Yerevan. The rest is part of a newly created Azerbaijan.
- Iran is unstable and the deposition of Ahmed Shah Qajar results in some revolutionary movements in Iranian Azerbaijan. Ottomans intervene to restore Ahmed Shah but are content with Iranian Azerbaijan. It becomes the South Azerbaijan Republic... this part is crucial... if Turkey annexes the South while the North has no intention to join, it could create an uneasy relationship. If the North and South unite, it becomes bigger and maybe harder to annex Azerbaijan at all. This part requires some luck... like Turkey annexing the North first the South second. But the existence of Azerbaijan may also depend on how much Germany supports them post-Central Power victory
- Assuming it did... the early years are a bit uneasy. Armenian insurgency in the rural area while the South of Azerbaijan have some groups sympathizing with Iran. Turkey will enforce a stricter Turkification policy. Forbidding Persian in Southern Azerbaijan etc.
2. At first nowhere. The Ottomans were not pushy on sending Armenians away and it is not realistic to send a few 100 thousands of people away from the new area. Accomodation is necessary. Post war, the Armenians will be more likely to immigrate to the Americas and probably Russia. Turkish will likely replace Armenian as language every new generation while still holding on their Armenian and Christian identity. The relationship will be uneasy but not catastrophic. Eastern Anatolia will have more Armenians than OTL as a share will return
3. The Ottomans are economically better off as well as ethnically. Extra population of Turks means more attempts to Turkify areas like Mosul and Aleppo from its existing Arab population. This too will create tensions though Turkification policy will not last. The Ottoman Empire will federalize and accept Arabic as an official language in the Levant and Iraq.
4. Assuming Iran loses it in 1925-1926 due to Reza Khan's power grab, Iran will be unstable for a long while and may become a Republic earlier with or without the Qajars returning post-Reza Khan. This Iran will likely assimilate most of its Turkic population that remains in Iran. For a long while it will be unfriendly to Turkey though accept at some point the loss of Azerbaijan.
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Osman Aga
Banned
I doubt that. If we assume this new Turkey had around 1 million (900k-1,2 million) Armenians left from the old state + new territories, they won't easily disappear. Linguistically it would be replaced by Turkish (or Arabic, depending on the area). But even if half of the remaining 1 million Armenians leave Turkey between 1925-1946, they will still have a population of around 2-4 million by 2020 and still consider themselves Armenian and Christian. Most of their identity will remain in tact except for language but even that is not guaranteed.
I do expect a large immigration until the 1960s at least. But by then differences are overcome and Turkish-Armenian relations in Turkey will be like Bulgarian-Turkish relations in Bulgaria.
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Roughly that number was exterminated in 1915-18. To use Justin McCarthy's own numbers, given his well attested pro-Turkish bias and Armenian genocide denial, the Armenian population of Anatolia before the war was 1,465,000 of which he estimates 584,000 died during the war. In the same paper he finds the estimate of Raymond H. Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian of an Armenian population of Anatolia of 1,720,634 reasonable... then goes to say that "None of the conclusions drawn in this article on Armenian population would be upset if the slightly higher figures in these patriarchate statistics were true, with the exception of the number of Armenians who were lost during the World War I period, adding approximately 250,000 to the death toll." A quarter million more deaths doesn't sound like "slightly off" to me but I digress. Point is that by McCarthy's own numbers between 584,000 and 839,000 Armenians died in a period of 4 years. By his own numbers (table 5 in the paper) only 70,000 Armenians were left in Anatolia by the end of the war with 810,000 becoming refugees.
To go by the 1926 Soviet census the population of Armenians in the Transcaucasian federative Soviet republic (Armenia +Azerbaijan +Georgia) was 1,332,593 . Given there is no reason to believe the Young Turk triumvirate suddenly alters its policy of genocide, if you extrapolate again from McCarthy's numbers you are looking at that population being exterminated and driven off by the end of 1922 with something in the order of 530-650,000 killed outright and the rest fleeing.
McCarthy's paper on the population of Ottoman Armenians here:
The Soviet 1926 census here:
1926 Soviet census - Wikipedia
Osman Aga
Banned
Roughly that number was exterminated in 1915-18. To use Justin McCarthy's own numbers, given his well attested pro-Turkish bias and Armenian genocide denial, the Armenian population of Anatolia before the war was 1,465,000 of which he estimates 584,000 died during the war. In the same paper he finds the estimate of Raymond H. Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian of an Armenian population of Anatolia of 1,720,634 reasonable... then goes to say that "None of the conclusions drawn in this article on Armenian population would be upset if the slightly higher figures in these patriarchate statistics were true, with the exception of the number of Armenians who were lost during the World War I period, adding approximately 250,000 to the death toll." A quarter million more deaths doesn't sound like "slightly off" to me but I digress. Point is that by McCarthy's own numbers between 584,000 and 839,000 Armenians died in a period of 4 years. By his own numbers (table 5 in the paper) only 70,000 Armenians were left in Anatolia by the end of the war with 810,000 becoming refugees.
To go by the 1926 Soviet census the population of Armenians in the Transcaucasian federative Soviet republic (Armenia +Azerbaijan +Georgia) was 1,332,593 . Given there is no reason to believe the Young Turk triumvirate suddenly alters its policy of genocide, if you extrapolate again from McCarthy's numbers you are looking at that population being exterminated and driven off by the end of 1922 with something in the order of 530-650,000 killed outright and the rest fleeing.
McCarthy's paper on the population of Ottoman Armenians here:
The Soviet 1926 census here:
1926 Soviet census - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Conclusion?
How do you get far worse than genocide?
The Nazis were better organised is not the best defence.
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You come back from a longer period of ethnic cleansing and a much higher peak volume of deaths during the genocide?
Both groups went through intense trauma. The belief that people would be allowed to bear witness in the event of an Ottoman victory is a bad joke. It doesn't matter if they are less efficient, they would have time on their side.
Ranking genocides and it is recognised now by much of the world as such, like some Satanic Top of the Pops, is also something that is a joke in extremely poor taste.
Your assumption that the Ottomans have all the time in the world to exterminate the Armenians, let alone the energy, funds or manpower has no basis behind it. A post-WW1 Ottoman Empire is going to be heavily in debt, trying to pacify these regions, possibly dealing with the Arab and Greek populations as well, maybe even the Kurds.
And no, its not a joke in poor taste. The fact that you want to make a equivalency between 800k dead Armenians and 6m dead Jews is bewildering. Both were terrible, yes, but one of them is literally the genocide that comes to mind when people think of the word genocide.
Either way, I'm not interested in carrying on this discussion with you any further. Adieu.
The Armenian Genocide is not butterflied and it might be even worse that OTL
What is the manner of the CP victory and have the Ottoman fronts been the same as OTL? That makes a big difference in how likely they are to annex additional regions as well as what will happen to the people inhabiting those regions.
Iran wasn't officially a belligerent in the war, so a formal annexation of Iranian Azerbaijan by the Ottomans is very unlikely. On the other hand some form of Ottoman influence in the region is possible, but the Russian Revolution and Civil War would certainly complicate matters in northern Iran.
This seems more likely, with the Ottomans displacing the Russian influence and with Iranian Azerbaijan being inside their sphere of influence. More so since OTL there were clashes in the North of Iran between Ottoman and Russian units.