PC/WI: Turkey joining the Axis?

How likely or possible was it for the Republic of Turkey to join the Axis in WWII? And what effects might this have had on WWII in Africa/Middle East and and Russia?
 
How likely or possible was it for the Republic of Turkey to join the Axis in WWII? And what effects might this have had on WWII in Africa/Middle East and and Russia?

Turkey i think had to weak an army to fight properly in the Middle East and Thrace, they didn't really have much of a chance against the Soviet Union.

More info in the morning.
 
Turkey i think had to weak an army to fight properly in the Middle East and Thrace, they didn't really have much of a chance against the Soviet Union.

More info in the morning.

A Soviet occupied Turkey? :eek: That'll give Washington heartburn come the Cold War. I imagine they'd spend any expense to keep the KKE from gaining control in the Greek Civil War.

Interesting how that effects naval planning with Soviet access to the Mediterranean being much easier than OTL.
 

Cook

Banned
A situation that could have resulted in Turkey joining the Axis is if Stalin tried to revise the Treaty of Kars by force.

The Soviets signed the Treaty of Kars in 1921, giving up their claim to the Kars region in Eastern Anatolia in return for a stable border in the Caucasus at a time when the Soviets were being threatened along all of their borders and was politically and militarily weak. All of the treaties signed at the time renouncing land claims or acknowledging the independence of former subject states were seen by the Soviet leadership (Particularly Stain) as being of a purely temporary, tactical nature designed to buy the time necessary to secure the Bolshevik government in place.

The 1939 invasion of Finland and June 1940 invasions of the Baltic States, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were allto regain previous Tsarist Russian territories lost at the end of the First World War. Sending troops into Artvin, Ardahan, Kars and Igdir would be entirely consistent with this policy and would have the extra benefit of strengthening the Soviet Union’s position in the Trans-Caucasus against any possible attack on that front towards Baku.

If the Soviets had attacked Anatolia and seized the eastern province in 1940, the Turks may have joined Barbarossa for the same reason that the Finns did, purely to regain lost land, and been unwilling to go beyond their old borders. The Turks became an observer to the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1941, so them becoming a full member is not out of the question.

It is worth noting that the Soviet Union did try to overturn the Treaty of Kars in late 1945 and massed military forces on Turkey's eastern border threatening to invade. It was only pressure from the British and Americans that prevented this.
 
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