Surviving Wilsonian Armenia

yourworstnightmare

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Cuāuhtemōc, a problem was that the Armenians didn't have a majority in any of those vilayets and only amounted to 27% of the population in one of the six vilayets, the least populated one, so any attempts at a compromise based in reality is immediately going to get very unpleasant for one side.
And there were even less Armenians left on the Ottoman side of the border after the war. The Armenians couldn't take that territory and wouldn't even try (they didn't OTL).
 
After my brief statement, two ideas come to my mind:

1. Extermination must be, at least, partially avoided, because the chaos preceding the proclamation of DRA, and the refugee crisis made OTL Armenia a rump state since its inception. Maybe with an earlier POD, well before 1900, Russo-Turkish border should have be moved west, making the total area of Russian Armenia bigger and the Armenian population under the Tsar higher. If this had happened before, the Caucasus campaign frontline could have reached a bigger area of Western Armenia…. a better starting point for trading territory for population, when hostilities with the Ottomans resumed.

2. I stress the importance of breaking Russo-Turkish rapprochement for the sake of Armenians… Is it possible, after a peaceful settlement + population exchange, etc.. a Armeno-Turkish rapprochement?. For instance, a mutual non-aggression pact in case of invasion by the Soviets. IMHO, DRA should be in a stronger position for achieving it.
 
1) This will not cause the Armenian population under the Tsar to grow unless the Armenian population within the Ottoman Empire relocated en masse as part of the change, which defeats the case for future population/territory exchange.

Such border changes will have consequences as the British become alarmed over Russian advances, straining the Triple Entente, or the Ottoman Empire will have to find some association(with Germany) to modernize the Ottoman armed forces. The latter adds a new member to the Central Powers earlier in the war while costing Greece and Serbia the gains of the Balkan Wars.

Zealot, you apparently still think that a premise which requires large-scale successful territorial aggression on the part of the Armenians, to be followed inevitably by the violent removal of the large majority of the population in this area, could by any stretch of the imagination be classified as a mere trade of territory and/or population, while somehow also ignoring that every last aspect of territory or population traded will invariably favor one side.



2) No. Period. End of subject. Once Armenia seizes territories in a war of aggression from Turkey and driven out or murdered the large Turkish majority the prospects for rapproachment are nil.
 
Maybe if things in Turkey go bad enough and the Armenian leaders decide on a pretty nice policy towards minorities they could win some Turks in the area on side?
Of course, to get the Armenians to do that particularly after the genocide would be rather ASB so we need a lot of changes there....

Or perhaps they agree to be more accepting of Kurds than the Turks; maybe the Ottomans pull some nasty crap against the Kurds during the war?
You really have to look beyond the Armenians and find them willing allies in the regions they`re to be occupying.

Again though given the age we`re speaking about it would require remarkably forward thinking people so would sadly be heading towards ASB.
 
1) This will not cause the Armenian population under the Tsar to grow unless the Armenian population within the Ottoman Empire relocated en masse as part of the change, which defeats the case for future population/territory exchange.

Such border changes will have consequences as the British become alarmed over Russian advances, straining the Triple Entente, or the Ottoman Empire will have to find some association(with Germany) to modernize the Ottoman armed forces. The latter adds a new member to the Central Powers earlier in the war while costing Greece and Serbia the gains of the Balkan Wars..



Well, I was just thinking about a few hundred kms…. let’s see…..IOTL Russia got Kars oblast in Russo-Turkish Wars, moving the border west, which was accepted by the treaty of Berlin (they actually had moved deeper into Ottoman Armenia, till Erzurum, but they had to retreat by signing the treaty), thus it was considered only a small territorial gain by the Russians at the expense of OE. UK was more concerned about the gains of Russia and her allies in the Balkans, where the clash of interests was more apparent.
So, with an earlier POD, perhaps in another of the several preceding Russo-Turkish wars, the Russians could have already gained, for example, Kars area, thus making it possible Russian gaining a considerable portion of Erzurum vilayet plus some Pontus coastline after 1877 war and the subsequent Berlin Conference (I need some help from the experts in this matter). The logical consequences in TTL:

1. A bigger chunk of Ottoman Armenia in the hands of Russia, with the possibility of extra Armenian populations after relocation of some Armenians from Turkish side (not mass migration, but population displacements like those which happened OTL in the colonization of Kars )

2. If the Russo-Turkish border at the outbreak of WWI is near Erzurum in TTL, Russians will advance even deeper in Ottoman Armenia during Caucasus campaign, resulting in more Armenians saved from the Turkish reprisals at least before the Russian Revolution. I don’t know, but I imagine that no other big consequence will derive from this border change.
 
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1) Zealot, you apparently still think that a premise which requires large-scale successful territorial aggression on the part of the Armenians, to be followed inevitably by the violent removal of the large majority of the population in this area, could by any stretch of the imagination be classified as a mere trade of territory and/or population, while somehow also ignoring that every last aspect of territory or population traded will invariably favor one side.


2) No. Period. End of subject. Once Armenia seizes territories in a war of aggression from Turkey and driven out or murdered the large Turkish majority the prospects for rapproachment are nil.



That’s right, if there’s a population exchange, it can’t favor disproportionately one side, specially the weakest one (the Armenians)… When the treaty of Lausanne was signed, the Turks had the upper hand and forced the Greeks to accept the exchange and relinquish all their territorial claims on Asia Minor. The exchange was so disproportionate (Greeks had to accept a much higher number of refugees than that of Muslims expelled) that Greece was ostensibly weakened, both economical and politically.

So, population exchange, if done in this scenario, cannot be done without substantial gains for the Turks… Perhaps Armenians can give up some area under their control in the moment of the agreement, for example Van province, and hand it over to the Turks. But I think that Armenians probably need another card to play….perhaps if the Turks needed some aid, or even neutrality from Armenians in case of conflict against someone else …. a Kurdish uprising, for example?
 
The Caucasus in the last year of The Great War and the first years immediately following were even more Machiavellian than the Balkans had been in the wars leading up to 1914. All sorts of shifting alliances were taking place. Take this for instance:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=205982

That's right, so Armenians need a combination of factors for gaining the Turkish support, or at least Turkish neutrality, when Soviets be ready for invasion
 
To summarize:

1. Russian Armenians need a more favorable territorial position at the outbreak of WWI.

2. Armenian military has to perform better against Ottoman Army during 1918 (after Russian withdrawal). It has to secure at least a frontline west of Erzurum (Russian prewar border) including Trabzon (an outlet to the sea is essential). This point is the most ASB

3. Armenia must reach some agreement with Turkish nationalists, comprising peaceful population exchange , mutual recognition of borders, and neutrality in case of attack from a third country, before the Soviets prepare to invade from Georgia and Azerbaijan. It sounds ASBish too, but it depends on the alliances Armenian leadership be able to forge.

4. Armenia must be able to defend itself from a one-front war against the Soviets
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
You might want to have a PoD that makes Russia more chaotic. If the Russian civil war makes both sides collapse into warlord cliques, then Caucasus would be relatively safe from the Russians. Still, a main problem from a large DRA might be inabilility to control their territory. A early PoD that makes most of it already Russian before the war as youproposed is necessary. DRA could survive with a 1914 PoD, but they wouldn't try to seize the Wilsonian borders due to their lack of capacity of doing so.
 
Zealot...

The premise that conquest of Ottoman territory and ethnic cleansing of the Turkish majority can be done on any basis other than a disproportionate one leaving guaranteed tensions in the future, if not one or more wars...:rolleyes:

Any and all of the Armenian expansion efforts would invariably include ethnic cleansing or murder of large Kurdish populations in the area as well so there is no chance of the Turks seeing the Kurds as enemies or the Armenians as an kind of ally against the Kurds.

The population exchanges between Turkey and Greece after WWI were part of the treaty imposed on Turkey by the Allies so don't blame Turkey for the results of a treaty they certainly never wanted.

Substantial territorial changes with no real explanation as to how they would happen nor why other powers concerned over Russian expansion would simply have ignored this development while assuming that the Turks then spent the period 1878-1914 doing nothing to improve their military position...:rolleyes:



To be blunt, a concept that requires that Armenia seize Turkish territory and drive out/murder the Turkish majority AND be able to establish a relationship based on some semblence of trust and even goodwill with Turkey...calling this ASB is an act of charity.
 
Zealot...

The premise that conquest of Ottoman territory and ethnic cleansing of the Turkish majority can be done on any basis other than a disproportionate one leaving guaranteed tensions in the future, if not one or more wars...:rolleyes:

Any and all of the Armenian expansion efforts would invariably include ethnic cleansing or murder of large Kurdish populations in the area as well so there is no chance of the Turks seeing the Kurds as enemies or the Armenians as an kind of ally against the Kurds.

The population exchanges between Turkey and Greece after WWI were part of the treaty imposed on Turkey by the Allies so don't blame Turkey for the results of a treaty they certainly never wanted.

Substantial territorial changes with no real explanation as to how they would happen nor why other powers concerned over Russian expansion would simply have ignored this development while assuming that the Turks then spent the period 1878-1914 doing nothing to improve their military position...:rolleyes:



To be blunt, a concept that requires that Armenia seize Turkish territory and drive out/murder the Turkish majority AND be able to establish a relationship based on some semblence of trust and even goodwill with Turkey...calling this ASB is an act of charity.


Grimm Reaper……..

Any agreement concerning population transfers (or ethnic cleansing by deportation, but never by mass murder) couldn’t be unilateral, but reciprocal. And if you ready carefully my previous posts, I specify that ITTL the territory finally allotted to the Armenians would roughly be inside TTL prewar Russian borders (plus Trabzon outlet). And the Armenian population displaced in would probably be higher than Muslims out.

Latent resentment between both peoples in future?. Perhaps. Will it make impossible the rapprochement between DRA and Turkey? Unlikely. For example: After Lausanne, Venizelos made steps towards reconciliation with Turkey , culminating in the Treaty of Friendship in 1930…. Venizelos even forwarded Atatürk's name for the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize. You say that a relationship based on mutual truth after the event could be impossible….. So, for you, Greece and Turkey could never had signed any Balkan Pact, or even joined the same military alliance… Well, it’s true that Greek-Turkish relations have suffered many “up and downs”, but the treaty of Lausanne didn’t make them mortal enemies. Other reciprocal population transfers took place, for instance, between Greece and Bulgaria (Kalfov-Politis and Mollov-Kafandaris agreements after WWI), but in fact, Lausanne Convention is the model for TTL Armeno-Turkish relations.

By the way, mass deportation of Greeks from Asia Minor had already begun (and almost completed) when the Lausanne Conference was held. The Treaty and the Convention merely ratified and ended in an orderly fashion what was already taking place. It sounds ASB that the Allies imposed Turkey the removal of the Ottoman Greeks….something that many Turkish leaders actively pursued. In fact, turning a nation into an ethnically homogeneous one by destroying minorities didn’t happen by chance (and Turks weren’t the first ones to implement it, of course, it was something that Ottoman Muslims had already witnessed and endured in many recent Wars of Liberation of Balkan states), it was part of a deliberate policy which, you know, also suffered the Armenians during the Hamidian Massacres prior to the WWI.

About the Kurds, I didn’t mean a formal alliance between Kurds and Armenians against the Ottomans, but the idea that a new factor such as a Kurdish rebellion could have aided the Armenians in their struggle. Kurdish uprisings happened in OTL, and if they had taken place simultaneously to the Armenian resistance, it’s possible that the Turks had to divert troops to the Kurdistan or, in worst case, to decide which one was the worst threat. Best case for the Armenians: making an arrangement with Atatürk against the Kurds…. The less favorable situation at least will give Armenians extra time or the possibility of facing a less powerful enemy and, anyways, the Greco-Turkish war was around the corner. The Kurds are one among many options, because the region was in a complete mess, and the alliances that took place, shifted rapidly and unpredictably, as Cook has posted before:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=205982


Anyway, thank you for your comments.
 
1) The Armenian population in the area was significantly smaller than the Turkish population so any population displacements invariably harm more Turks than the number of Armenians (supposedly) helped.


2) When you follow that up with the continued pretense that the Armenians could ethnically cleanse or murder large Kurdish populations and yet build any semblence of trust/alliance with the Kurds at the same time...:rolleyes:


That you still dispute basic population figures would lead me to conclude that I've wasted my time on the subject until I had the added bonus of seeing you trying to invent a position for me on Greek-Turkish relations from the 1920s to the current date based on little other than an apparent desire to change the subject.
 
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