Post-WW1 Turkey Federalizes

The De Bunsen Committee's suggestion for the devolution of the Ottoman Empire following the Great War was not takes as a policy by the Britain and to an extent its allies for the restructuring of power in the Middle East. Instead the Powers went forth with the mandate system that as we all know utterly screwed up the region ofthe Middle East.

This calls for the decentralization of the Ottoman Centralized state into a federalist system whereas, though the Entente would take snippits of OE territory but the large majority would have the restructuring which would include four basic "Eyalets" or states which were Anatolia, Armenia, Palestine-Levant, and a Jazireh-Iraq (Arabia+Iraq). I suppose this is sort of like a Ethnic System, not unlike the Yugoslavia, where it seems that the Turks are here, Jews-Palestinians here, Armenians here, and Arabs there.

The set up would have given Turks control of Foreign Policy matters and Britain would have helped correct flaws to the modernization proccess within the OE as well as allow the Turks and various peoples help themselves.

The Brits would be in favor in that it would require less military prescence on their part in the region. This could allow for a Yugoslavic situation or allow the Middle East to pan out more naturally.

Would the problems of the Middle East be as similar as they were today?
 
Does Britain still make the Balfour Declaration? Because while this would solve a lot of issues, it'd still leave one big one.
 
This arrangement invites for Turkey to be the one maintaining hegemony in the federation as opposed to the Arabs or Armenians, as was the situation with the Serbians in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Additionally a lack of accommodation in this arrangement for the other major ethnic group- the Kurds- would probably leave room for agitation by an outside power.

And the Jewish issue would be troublesome too. Like Wolf said it would matter if the Balfour declaration was made, and how the Arabs would react to it in the event it was, and whether this federation would be made to accept such a mandate from the Allies.

Additionally with the Arabs in the peninsula and Iraq sitting on a valuable resource- oil- it would be very hard to keep nationalist sentiment from flaring up and attempting to secede, inevitably leading to violence, similar to what we have been seeing in Sudan. Really one of the UK's motivation in this region was access to the oil fields, and it would be easier for them to maintain them by playing the groups against one another rather than having one single entity controlling it.
 
The problem with the De Bunsen committee is, it did its work in 1915. From a 1915 perspective, a federalized Ottoman Empire almost made sense. But by 1917 or 1918, with the British deep in Mesopotamia, Arab nationalism on the rise, and all sides embittered and radicalized by years of war, it was no longer a plausible outcome.

It could perhaps come into play in a TL where (say) Gallipoli succeeded and the Ottomans collapsed in 1916 -- although even then, I suspect it would be hotly disputed.


Doug M.
 

Don Grey

Banned
To the OP

I think this is very dangerous. As the country would not be stable. Your basicaly forcing every one to go with there ethnic group at the same time be apart of a greater group.

Foriegn nations will pick at it constantly and use the ethnic groups against each other. And how will you do this excapes me entirly. For example armenia. How will the border of it be drawn. Is it greater armenia which is utterly ludicrise even before the relocation they were still 1/6th of the pop in the regions they wanted. And armenia proper is apart of imperial russia or soviet russia by this time.

Your giving the turks control of foriegn policie. Which is going to piss everyone else off since you have basicaly divided the ottoman empire into diffrent ethnic countries. Whats to stop them from leaving to run there own foriegn policies and whats going to happen to the ethnic minorities left in the other nations when they leave. No by nationals state has been able to stay together with out trouble. And now you have created a tri-national state to say the least because i just use the turks armenian and arabs with out mentioning all the others so i can get to the point.
 
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