Baby Kata
Banned
Probably requires a couple of conditions, not sure how to make them plausible
1. Kemal's Turkey utterly crushed by the Greeks, Western Allies, Kurds, and Armenians, to the point where the Turks can have whatever imposed on them with no ability to resist.
2. China too weak to respond if the Soviets invade Sinkiang. (This was probably true IRL)
3. Stalin willing to ethnically cleanse/uproot tens of millions of people. (This was definitely true IRL, and please don't mistake it's inclusion in this post as an endorsement of ethnic cleansing, which it is not.)
The basic idea is that Stalin would have conquered Sinkiang from China in the early 1920s, and then merged it with all of the Soviet Central Asian republics to create a "Soviet Republic of Turkestan", with its capital in Samarcand. Of course, this area had large Tajik, Chinese, Russian, and Jewish populations who had no interest in being Turkic.
That's where the Turks of Asia Minor come in. If Kemal had been utterly crushed, it is entirely probable that Greece, Armenia, Assyria, and Kurdistan would have divided Asia Minor amongst themselves, and attempted to ethnically cleanse the Turks, like in the Balkans. Stalin could have arranged with them to move all the Turks (about 11-12 million, some would obviously die in a forced relocation like this, let's say 10 million lived and made it to Central Asia) to this new Soviet Russia.
Stalin could have then attempted to create a "Turkestani" identity amongst all the various Turkic peoples in this Mega-Turkestan, akin to a "Yugoslav" or "Indian" identity out of the many South Slavic groups and South Asian groups.
Do you think it would have worked?
What would this state be like, demographically?
Here's a map of the idea.
1. Kemal's Turkey utterly crushed by the Greeks, Western Allies, Kurds, and Armenians, to the point where the Turks can have whatever imposed on them with no ability to resist.
2. China too weak to respond if the Soviets invade Sinkiang. (This was probably true IRL)
3. Stalin willing to ethnically cleanse/uproot tens of millions of people. (This was definitely true IRL, and please don't mistake it's inclusion in this post as an endorsement of ethnic cleansing, which it is not.)
The basic idea is that Stalin would have conquered Sinkiang from China in the early 1920s, and then merged it with all of the Soviet Central Asian republics to create a "Soviet Republic of Turkestan", with its capital in Samarcand. Of course, this area had large Tajik, Chinese, Russian, and Jewish populations who had no interest in being Turkic.
That's where the Turks of Asia Minor come in. If Kemal had been utterly crushed, it is entirely probable that Greece, Armenia, Assyria, and Kurdistan would have divided Asia Minor amongst themselves, and attempted to ethnically cleanse the Turks, like in the Balkans. Stalin could have arranged with them to move all the Turks (about 11-12 million, some would obviously die in a forced relocation like this, let's say 10 million lived and made it to Central Asia) to this new Soviet Russia.
Stalin could have then attempted to create a "Turkestani" identity amongst all the various Turkic peoples in this Mega-Turkestan, akin to a "Yugoslav" or "Indian" identity out of the many South Slavic groups and South Asian groups.
Do you think it would have worked?
What would this state be like, demographically?
Here's a map of the idea.