Chapter 64 - The Mediterranean At War
The Mediterranean At War
The Soviet intervention in Turkey was generally far less successful than the Soviets had hoped. The Turkish Army in Thrace was entirely prepared for a Soviet intervention and what remained of the Bulgarian People's Army totally dissolved when they faced far more Turkish military resistance than expected, followed up by a ferocious Turkish counterattack. Turkish Communists who rose up in Istanbul were brutally crushed, as far-right death squads combed the streets of Istanbul, executing actual and suspected Communists. What remained of the non-Turkish population of Istanbul fled the country entirely, something that should have outraged the West had they not remained silent simply out of realpolitik shared opposition to the Soviet Union. Fearing that Bulgaria's large Turkish population would prove to a "fifth column", what was left of the Bulgarian civilian Communist government (under perhaps the most hardcore rump Stalinists as the most mainstream elements were still trapped in Sofia) issued an order to "liquidate Bulgaria's Turkish communities", an order that horrified most of the Bulgarian officer corps. Although there were several reported war crimes against Bulgarian Turks, the majority of the Bulgarian People's Army refused to comply, and local Soviet commanders quickly countermanded the orders, which made it very clear to most Bulgarian troops that there was no real Bulgarian Communist government anymore. However, war crimes against Turkish-Bulgarian civilians was quickly amplified by Turkish government media outlets, crushing sympathy for Communism.
Ironically, where the Turkish Communists were most successful was in Eastern Turkey, in largely non-Turkish areas, where the Turkish military hadn't built up strong defenses. Soviet forces, combined with several Turkish Communist refugees from Istanbul, had been able to lead a detachment of troops from Yerevan to Van to Nusaybin, which caught the Turks by surprise because they had been expecting the Soviet detachment to hit Kars. However, Soviet commanders had been told that Communizing Turkey was actually a pretty low priority goal (it was seen as largely impossible). Although a Federal People's Republic of Turkey was declared, it had a tiny population, was largely nestled in the mountains of Turkish Kurdistan, and had a remarkably small ethnic Turkish population (although the top Communist brass was largely Turkish, the population was largely Kurdish). The Soviets were searching instead for access to the Mediterranean - and President Afif al-Bizri of Syria gave them the idea of creating a Yerevan to Van to Nusaybin railroad. Al-Bizri, although close to Syria's Communists, was not a Communist himself. He viewed a railroad link to the Soviet Union as an easy way for the Soviets to subsidize Syrian development (as they'd have to build railroad links from Northeastern Syria to the ports). In addition, the nearby Federal Turkish People's Republic would be a convenient place to exile politically inconvenient Communists and Kurds to. In addition, chaos in Turkey allowed the Syrian Army to march into Hatay, which outraged the Turkish Army, who nevertheless could do nothing about due to pressing concerns elsewhere.
Although Western observers saw the Soviet-Turkish War as a huge blunder for the Soviet Union due to the alienation of Turkey into the Western sphere, the complete destruction of Turkey's Communist movement, the collapse of the Bulgarian People's Republic, and even more bad press for the Soviet Union, it would prove a pivotal blow against the Western empires for one simple reason. Direct Soviet access to the Mediterranean meant that Soviet arms could freely be shipped to Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, allowing the Soviet Union to open three new fronts against the West (though some arms were already being shipped from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt, they could largely only supply guerrillas near the less populated Red Sea coast). French and Algerian police officers were blown away at how sophisticated the weaponry available to both FLN and PCA guerrillas quickly became in a matter of months. The extremely innovative French Army was the first army in the world to pioneer the use of helicopters to rapidly transport troops from one city to another in order to hunt down FLN-PCA guerrillas. However, the introduction of widespread Soviet ZPUs, easily transportable anti-aircraft autocannons, proved to be utterly catastrophic for the French Army. After several French helicopters were downed with all hands lost, the French Army was forced to use helicopters less, which heavily limited their vaunted mobility. In addition, French troops soon began to dread helicopter rides - not because they were uniquely deadly, but because you could be shot down without being able to fight back. French troops weren't afraid of deadly firefights, but they were afraid of deaths out of their own control.
Similarly, Soviet aid tipped the scales of the Tunisian Civil War towards the Republican forces of Habib Bourguiba, which began to worry the French simply considering that FLN-PCA forces were beginning to freely operate out of Tunisian territory due to the Tunisian royalists losing ground. The independence agreement for Morrocco and Tunisia required both countries to patrol against FLN-PCA infiltrators, but Tunisia was losing its ability to do so. Despite having only withdrawn from Tunisia two years ago, the new French government, much against the personal intuition of De Gaulle, made the judgment that a peaceful solution in Algeria could not be won unless the French got Tunisia under control again. French conscription was further extended as the government declared a new military deployment to "restore" peace in Tunisia, a fact that delighted Soviet planners, who saw another chance to bleed France until they withdrew from Finland and Yugoslavia.
Finally, the Egyptian crisis continued to worsen. British forces, largely cooped in the cities in hopes that would protect them from retaliation strikes, were not protected as bombings regularly terrorized Cairo and Alexandria. South African forces were the most effective in fighting insurgents, but they also tended to have a blase approach to civilian casualties, further alienating the rural population from Britain. Worst of all were the Israelis, whose General Staff freely concluded that the British hold on Egypt was extremely tenuous. As a result, the Israeli Army was ordered not to defeat the insurgents (which they saw as ultimately impossible), but to "as permanently as possible damage Egypt's future war capacity." This inspired far more Arab enmity than anything done at home. At the time, Arab Israelis actually enjoyed fairly robust civil rights and the Israeli government went to great pains to include local Arabs into government. Israel was driven not by anti-Arab sentiment, but rather extreme ruthlessness, greatly exacerbated by the combination of Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's Jewish purge. One Israeli officer, remarkably knowledgeable about Maoism due to being an actual Communist before Stalin's Jewish purge, claimed that it was necessary to "deny the Communist Egyptian rebels a Revolutionary Base Area", in order to justify the Israeli Army systematically destroying every piece of rural infrastructure they could find, from roads, to railroads, to irrigation. Mines were laid on pretty much every imaginable military and commercial though-fare upon claims that it was necessary to interdict rebels, but the Israelis so indiscriminately laid mines, several Israeli officers admitted later that the goal was really just "send Egypt back to the Age of Pharaohs."
The results of this policy significantly worsened the British war effort. A severe famine broke out, forcing Royalist Egyptian, British, Israeli, and South African forces to dedicate effort to aid relief (ironically, the #1 source for Egyptian famine aid relief...was Israeli civilian donations), sending refugees fleeing into the cities and others fleeing into the hands of the rebels. Worst of all, it became difficult to differentiate refugees from guerrillas, allowing the rebels to sneak far more bombs into Egyptian cities, which indiscriminately targeted colonial troops, local civilians, and refugees. The Egyptian War drew the anger across the world, both not necessarily against the same side - Communist nations plastered pictures of starving Egyptian refugee children on their newspapers - anti-Communist nations plastered pictures of blown-apart Egyptian refugee children on their newspapers.
Last edited:
