Who should Constantinople have been given to after WWI?

Who should Constantinople have been given to after WWI?


  • Total voters
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Declare it new Byzantium.

1920: Byzantium works with Greece, France, Italy, and Armenia to carve up Turkey. Northern Turkey annexed.

1921: Byzantine annexes Armenia when Armenians fear Soviet conquest. Soviets back off. Armenians idolize new Emperor.

1935: Bulgaria remilitarizes due to immense fear of Byzantine.

1941: Germany wipes out Bulgaria that tries to stand with Britain, Greece, and Yugoslavia while Byzantine laughs and annexes Greek share of Turkey.

1944: Britain offers Byzantine entire French and British Middle East Mandate and all of Italian Turkey and Libya to get Byzantine’s potent military on the Allies side. Byzantine utilizes Jets, Helicopters, Rockets, and Ak-47 style guns as their fully motorized army blitzes through Europe. Devastated by German occupation and fearing the Soviets, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, and Yugoslavia welcome Byzantine annexation.

1945: Syria, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, and the rest of Turkey are annexed. Jews understand they will not get their own country, but move to Israel anyway after watching Emperor of Byzantine speak.

1950: Public schools mandatory nation wide and require Greek as language.

1955: All tropical disease in empire eliminated with Byzantine science and widespread public campaign.

1956: Egypt acts out in Suez Crisis, gets annexed by Byzantine as punishment.

1960: Widespread Western immigration to Byzantine, widespread Orthodox and Coptic refuge populations move to Byzantine.

1961: Byzantine King starts affair with Jackie Kennedy.

1965: Wall built to keep Persians out

1973: Byzantine starts oil shock crisis over a soccer game. Hold global economy hostage for years.

1990: Cold War over, Byzantine among the victors.

2000: Byzantine base on moon

2005: In new age of communication and the internet, Byzantine’s superior aesthetics enable them to overtake the US as dominant country in global pop culture and media.

2010: Byzantine sends men to Mars

2019: Byzantine has population fully fluent in Greek and almost all speaking it as language of the home. Byzantine’s King has a 97% approval rating, and is widely regarded as the most respected head of state in the world. GDP per capita is $100,000. The EU, Russia, Persia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Algeria live in constant fear of Byzantine, while secretly wanting to get invaded, captured, and taken to Byzantine. The United States has a treaty with Byzantine allowing Byzantine military access throughout the US as a sign of good faith.
 
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Snip.

It is also the historic Turkish capital. The Turks reconstructed the city which had been completely ruined following 1204. They have a "moral claim" to it just as much as the Greeks.

Snip.

Just focusing on the bold. I absolutely hate this argument. It states that I have the right to kill someone and take their stuff, provided I do something 'better' with it. As long as I do that, my conquest is justified.

This is the exact argument that was used to justify European imperialism in the Americas and Africa. "The natives aren't properly using the land. Therefore we can go and take it from them."
---

I don't see a Free City/International Zone being feasible in the long term. It would only survive provided it got continuous support from a Great Power(s), which I don't think is sustainable. What happens if another world war kicks off?

To me it comes down to Greece and Turkey. I voted for Greece.

Now Greece is not the Byzantine Empire. But Turkey is also NOT the Ottoman Empire. They are both nation-states based around the ethnicity/culture that happened to be the ruling ethnicity/culture in their respective earlier Empires. Turkey is to the Ottoman Empire as Greece is to the Byzantine Empire. Now Constantinople (note the name) belonged to the Byzantine Empire and was then taken by the Ottomans at the muzzle of a cannon. So now, in 1919, with both the Byzantines and Ottomans gone, I consider Greece to have the best claim on the city.

Now if there were absolutely no Greeks, or only a token amount with the rest being overwhelming Turkish, I'd be inclined to ignore the above and say for humanitarian reasons for it to go to Turkey. But there is a large Greek populace in the city, and there has always been a decent-sized Greek populace since the Ottoman (not Turkish) conquest in 1453. So never mind on that.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
A lot of the Internet has a hatred of Turkey, some justified (the Armenian Genocide) and others... less so (like this thread). It is common for the Internet to make ridiculous claims like saying the Megali Idea was a remotely acceptable idea.

The Megali Idea was completely just in it's mildest forms. Greece annexing Eastern Thrace, Ionia, Constantinople, and Cyprus is completely fair. The more extreme versions of the Megali Idea (i.e. Greece annexes all of Asia Minor and repatriates all Turks to Central Asia) are not fair/good/acceptable, but the milder versions (the ones that were tried in OTL) were completely fine.


It's important to note that the Greek population in Constantinople (and pretty much everywhere else in the Ottoman Empire) grew faster than the Muslim population in the 19th century, so if we're talking about historical trends, no, it shouldn't go to Greece. The 1478 Ottoman census shows that the city (~150,000 inhabitants at that time) was 60% Turkish, 11% Jewish, and only 21.5% Greek.

There were no Ottoman censuses until the 19th century, according to Wikipedia.


It is also the historic Turkish capital. The Turks reconstructed the city which had been completely ruined following 1204. They have a "moral claim" to it just as much as the Greeks.

It was still stolen, and not originally theirs. If Britain had moved its capital to Bombay, would that make it rightfully theirs?

And no, "it was originally theirs" (six hundred years ago) isn't how politics works. Again, should Granada be given to Morocco?

Was Granada ever the capital of the Moroccan state and the cultural center of Morrocandom?


If the city and environs of Cracow had been 60% German for five hundred years, yes, a German state should get it.

If you said 90%, I'd agree. 60% isn't a big enough majority to justify overlooking all other concerns.

If I moved into your house and took your daughters as concubines, a few generations later would I then be able to claim that your house was rightfully mine since "Hierosolymitans" were the majority and "Intransigent Southerners" were the minority?


Most Turks are descended from Islamized Greeks and Anatolians. Certainly they have a far stronger claim to the area than Spaniards have to Granada, where the 1492 inhabitants were outright expelled.

Virtually all Asia Minor Turks are genetically mixed between Central Asians and the indigenous people of Asia Minor. You won't find any "pure Turkic" or "pure Anatolian" people there, just like you won't find any "pure Anglo-Saxon" or "pure Brythonic" people in England.


I'm not sure what bizarro timeline you come from where 1) the tiny Devshirme elite were so many that they made a huge impact on Turkish DNA and 2) the Devshirme were subject to rape.

The Turks were well-known for stealing European women for breeding purposes. Look at the family tree of the Ottoman Sultans for an example.


And where are the non-Greeks of Salonik today? The Great Powers should just as well (according to your logic) intervened in the Balkan Wars to prevent the ethnic cleansing of the many Muslim majorities in the eastern Balkans.

The Jews of Salonica were murdered by Hitler - Greece had nothing to do with it, and in fact, the Archbishop of Athens tried his hardest to protect Greek Jews. As for the Muslims, they were seen by the native Greeks as occupiers, and were thus repatriated to what was left of the Ottoman Empire, just like Lebensraum settlers were repatriated back to Germany proper in 1945.

Yes and that worked so amazingly well. In fact, it worked so amazingly well that we should do it again! Let's start off by giving England, I mean, Britannia back to the Welsh! The English can fuck off to Denmark or wherever they came from!

I mean, the Jewish state of Israel currently controls all of Jerusalem, and Jews are a majority of Hierosolymitans today, so...


I think if you come from the standpoint that 400 years is long enough to immunize against revanchism, then I am sure you also ardently support Portugal's claim to Goa

I actually do. The Indian invasion was completely illegal and unjust, unfortunately the Soviet Entity prevented the international community from doing anything about it. The Western Allies should have cut off relations with India because of it.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Rightful historical capital? Greece has never owned Constantinople. 1/3 of the population=1/3 of the vote, that is, not a majority. The population exchanges were horrible events that should not have occurred, but Greece had no right to Turkish majority territory. An argument can be made for Cyprus certainly.

The Byzantine Empire was the medieval Greek state.

A demographic majority is one factor that matters, but it isn't the only thing.

When there is a large (1/3) minority with a stronger historical/ethical claim, that absolutely matters.
 
Why are we discussing "giving" it to anyone?

Greece would not be strong enough to hold it unaided, and no power would benefit from guarding it for them, so isn't this whole discussion a bit pointless?
 
I absolutely hate this argument.
The point is that Istanbul isn't a Greek city that's just been occupied by the Turks. It was barely a city at all in 1453, and the city of 1914 was predominantly an Ottoman, Turkish construction. Even today, the most visited attractions of the city are almost all Ottoman constructions. The city of 1914 was no longer the Konstantinoupolis of the Byzantines and hadn't been for centuries (arguably ever since 1204), it was the Kostantiniye/Istanbul of the Ottomans.

So any argument that "the historic Greek capital that was occupied... by the Turks during their imperialistic era" is a bit tenuous, and that's an understatement.

They are both nation-states based around the ethnicity/culture that happened to be the ruling ethnicity/culture in their respective earlier Empires.
I'm glad you realize that, and I'm sure you also realize was Constantinople was majority Turkish by a significant majority, and had been for five hundred years.

I'd be inclined to ignore the above and say for humanitarian reasons for it to go to Turkey. But there is a large Greek populace in the city, and there has always been a decent-sized Greek populace since the Ottoman (not Turkish) conquest in 1453. So never mind on that.
I find disregarding a five-century-Turkish-majority for a claim five centuries dead to be absolutely morally appalling.

The Megali Idea was completely just in it's mildest forms. Greece annexing Eastern Thrace, Ionia, Constantinople, and Cyprus is completely fair.
No, Ionia was almost completely Turkish according to the Ottoman hearth censuses of the early Suleiman period. Its Greek populations were Ottoman-era immigrants looking for better economic conditions (cf. Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768, "Lane wrongly assumed that the Greek presence in western Anatolia had been continuous for three thousand years. As we have seen, the Turkish (first Seljuk, then Ottoman) conquest of western Anatolia had reduced areas of significant Greek population to just two, both of them far from Smyrna -- the area around Trabzon and a scattering of villages in Cappadocia... Greek migration to Smyrna was the result of developments [in the seventeenth and later centuries]." Edinburgh University Press, 2015). The Ionian Greeks of 1914 are as native to Ionia than the Turks of Salonika in 1914 are native to Salonika, any claims to the contrary are either unfounded assumptions based on a poor understanding of Greeks under Ottoman rule, or willful Greek propaganda.

I'll grant Cyprus, but only with some way of preserving the rights of the Turkish minority, which the OTL Greek state has not been very capable of.

There were no Ottoman censuses until the 19th century, according to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is clearly the most reliable source.

There was a hearth census of Istanbul itself in 1478, which showed that there were 16,324 taxable households in Constantinople, and hearth censuses in the provinces in the 1520s, which showed that the European provinces were 19% Muslim, that there were four Muslim-majority provinces in Europe (Vize and Gallipoli, both in European Turkey, and Silistra and Chirmen, now in Bulgaria) at this early date, and that the Anatolian provinces were almost totally Muslim excluding an Armenian and Pontic Greek minority. (See Sugar 1974, Southeastern Europe Under Ottoman Rule). The hearth censuses also tell us that most Ottoman European cities were majority non-Christian in the period:
  • Edirne: 82.1% Muslim
  • Salonika: 54.3% Jewish
  • Larissa: 90.2% Muslim
  • Serres: 61.3% Muslim
  • Monastir: 75% Muslim
  • Skopje: 74.8% Muslim
  • Sofia: 66.4% Muslim
So under Ottoman rule, the patterns were that the cities were Muslim and Turkish and the countryside was Orthodox and Greek/Slavic. Istanbul was no exception.

The hearth censuses are fundamental to any discussion of Ottoman demography in the 1500s, and you can't really talk about Ottoman populations without knowing at least vaguely what they say.

If Britain had moved its capital to Bombay, would that make it rightfully theirs?
If Bombay was majority English and had been that way for the past five hundred years, then sure.

Was Granada ever the capital of the Moroccan state and the cultural center of Morrocandom?
No, but Seville was the Almohad capital, Andalusia was the cultural center of the western Islamic world, and Andalusian locations like Murcia (birthplace of Ibn Arabi) are clearly more important to Islam than to Christianity.

If I moved into your house and took your daughters as concubines, a few generations later would I then be able to claim that your house was rightfully mine since "Hierosolymitans" were the majority and "Intransigent Southerners" were the minority?
If you stole my rundown house, rebuilt it according to your style, and then your descendants lived in it for the next sixteen generations or so, then yes, my descendants would be inclined to accept that your descendants were the rightful owner of the house.

As for the Muslims, they were seen by the native Greeks as occupiers, and were thus repatriated to what was left of the Ottoman Empire, just like Lebensraum settlers were repatriated back to Germany proper in 1945.
"Lebensraum settlers" -- what a terrible way to talk about a population which, as early as the 1520s, outnumbered the Greeks of Salonika. (Ottoman hearth census: Salonika 54.3% Jewish / 25.2% Muslim / 20.2% Christian). Salonika was their home, the home of their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers. They were not even remotely like Lebesraum settlers.

Some more questions. By what rights were the 13,000 Dönme of Thessaloniki expelled? Were they -- a thriving Jewish-Muslim syncretic community of bankers and businessmen, descended entirely from kabbalistic Jews -- "occupiers" too? Occupying what?

I mean, the Jewish state of Israel currently controls all of Jerusalem, and Jews are a majority of Hierosolymitans today, so...
I'm not gonna really touch this because it gets much too close to current politics, but I'd like you to consider the Muslim perspective for once.

I actually do. The Indian invasion was completely illegal and unjust
This sounds hypocritical, but maybe just me.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
The point is that Istanbul isn't a Greek city that's just been occupied by the Turks. It was barely a city at all in 1453, and the city of 1914 was predominantly an Ottoman, Turkish construction. Even today, the most visited attractions of the city are almost all Ottoman constructions. The city of 1914 was no longer the Konstantinoupolis of the Byzantines and hadn't been for centuries (arguably ever since 1204), it was the Kostantiniye/Istanbul of the Ottomans.

So any argument that "the historic Greek capital that was occupied... by the Turks during their imperialistic era" is a bit tenuous, and that's an understatement.

Hagia Sophia...


I'm glad you realize that, and I'm sure you also realize was Constantinople was majority Turkish by a significant majority, and had been for five hundred years.

Constantinople was majority Turkish in 1420, when it was still the capital of Byzantium? Are you sure about that?

I find disregarding a five-century-Turkish-majority for a claim five centuries dead to be absolutely morally appalling.

Because 60% is hardly an overwhelming majority, and the fact remains that it was the center of the Hellenic world until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. To Greeks, having Constantinople ruled by Turks was like a dagger in the heart.

No, Ionia was almost completely Turkish according to the Ottoman hearth censuses of the early Suleiman period. Its Greek populations were Ottoman-era immigrants looking for better economic conditions (cf. Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768, "Lane wrongly assumed that the Greek presence in western Anatolia had been continuous for three thousand years. As we have seen, the Turkish (first Seljuk, then Ottoman) conquest of western Anatolia had reduced areas of significant Greek population to just two, both of them far from Smyrna -- the area around Trabzon and a scattering of villages in Cappadocia... Greek migration to Smyrna was the result of developments [in the seventeenth and later centuries]." Edinburgh University Press, 2015). The Ionian Greeks of 1914 are as native to Ionia than the Turks of Salonika in 1914 are native to Salonika, any claims to the contrary are either unfounded assumptions based on a poor understanding of Greeks under Ottoman rule, or willful Greek propaganda.

And it was almost completely Greek in the Byzantine Era. What's your point? Populations ebb and flow, and by 1920, Greeks had enough of a majority in Ionia to justify at least Smyrna and the surrounding area. OTL's Smyrna Zone was a bit ambitious, but Smyrna and it's environs would have been reasonable.

I'll grant Cyprus, but only with some way of preserving the rights of the Turkish minority, which the OTL Greek state has not been very capable of.

Greece was no worse to Turks than Turkey/Ottoman Empire was to Greeks...and the Turks started the whole thing by invading Greek/Byzantine Anatolia.

Wikipedia is clearly the most reliable source.

*facepalm*

There was a hearth census of Istanbul itself in 1478, which showed that there were 16,324 taxable households in Constantinople, and hearth censuses in the provinces in the 1520s, which showed that the European provinces were 19% Muslim, that there were four Muslim-majority provinces in Europe (Vize and Gallipoli, both in European Turkey, and Silistra and Chirmen, now in Bulgaria) at this early date, and that the Anatolian provinces were almost totally Muslim excluding an Armenian and Pontic Greek minority. (See Sugar 1974, Southeastern Europe Under Ottoman Rule). The hearth censuses also tell us that most Ottoman European cities were majority non-Christian in the period:
  • Edirne: 82.1% Muslim
  • Salonika: 54.3% Jewish
  • Larissa: 90.2% Muslim
  • Serres: 61.3% Muslim
  • Monastir: 75% Muslim
  • Skopje: 74.8% Muslim
  • Sofia: 66.4% Muslim
So under Ottoman rule, the patterns were that the cities were Muslim and Turkish and the countryside was Orthodox and Greek/Slavic. Istanbul was no exception.

Salonica was mostly Jewish, and the Jews were not expelled in the 1920s...they were there until Hitler deported and exterminated them during WWII against Greece's will. You can't blame Greece for something they did not do.

So what if the cities had a Muslim majority? The Muslims were only there as part of an imperial occupation...many if not most were natives who had converted during the Ottoman days...they tied their fates to the Ottoman Empire. When the Empire was doing well, they benefited, but when the Empire was defeated, they had to leave, just like Nazi Collaborators were punished when the Nazi Empire was defeated.


The hearth censuses are fundamental to any discussion of Ottoman demography in the 1500s, and you can't really talk about Ottoman populations without knowing at least vaguely what they say.

But this thread is about the 1900s, not the 1500s.


If Bombay was majority English and had been that way for the past five hundred years, then sure.

Okay, I'll come into your house, take your daughters as my concubines, teach your grandchildren to love my people and hate yours, and then in a couple generations, we will annex your house.


No, but Seville was the Almohad capital, Andalusia was the cultural center of the western Islamic world, and Andalusian locations like Murcia (birthplace of Ibn Arabi) are clearly more important to Islam than to Christianity.

Cracow was a major Austro-Hungarian city as well, that doesn't mean Austria should have kept it after their defeat in WWI...

If you stole my rundown house, rebuilt it according to your style, and then your descendants lived in it for the next sixteen generations or so, then yes, my descendants would be inclined to accept that your descendants were the rightful owner of the house.

Constantinople (I refuse to call it by the "I-word") was still a glorious Hellenic city in 1453...the Turks looted it, and then rebuilt it, but they wouldn't have had to rebuild it if they hadn't looted it in the first place. Imagine if your neighbor were to beat you a bloody pulp, and then drove you to the hospital and paid your medical bills. Is he virtuous for fixing the problem he created in the first place?


"Lebensraum settlers" -- what a terrible way to talk about a population which, as early as the 1520s, outnumbered the Greeks of Salonika. (Ottoman hearth census: Salonika 54.3% Jewish / 25.2% Muslim / 20.2% Christian). Salonika was their home, the home of their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers. They were not even remotely like Lebesraum settlers.

What exactly did the Muslims of Salonica expect, after treating Greeks like second-class citizens in their own homeland for 400 years?

Some more questions. By what rights were the 13,000 Dönme of Thessaloniki expelled? Were they -- a thriving Jewish-Muslim syncretic community of bankers and businessmen, descended entirely from kabbalistic Jews -- "occupiers" too? Occupying what?

I know nothing about that, and thus, will not comment on it.


I'm not gonna really touch this because it gets much too close to current politics, but I'd like you to consider the Muslim perspective for once.

Muslims already have their two holiest cities - Mecca and Medina. Jerusalem is the holiest city to Jews and only the third holiest city to Muslims. Jews have endured unspeakable horrors...let them have Jerusalem.


This sounds hypocritical, but maybe just me.

Goa was an integral part of Portugal.
 
Hagia Sophia...
Topkapı? Blue Mosque? Süleymaniye? Kapalıçarşı?

Constantinople was majority Turkish in 1420, when it was still the capital of Byzantium? Are you sure about that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounding

To Greeks, having Constantinople ruled by Turks was like a dagger in the heart.
People other than Greeks might also have an opinion on the fate of Istanbul, namely the non-Greek 70% of the population.

the Turks started the whole thing by invading Greek/Byzantine Anatolia.
So can I take this to mean that you're in favor of expelling the English back to Denmark? After all, the English started the whole thing by invading Welsh/Brittonic Britain.

*facepalm*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

The Muslims were only there as part of an imperial occupation...many if not most were natives who had converted during the Ottoman days...they tied their fates to the Ottoman Empire. When the Empire was doing well, they benefited, but when the Empire was defeated, they had to leave, just like Nazi Collaborators were punished when the Nazi Empire was defeated.
The Ottomans were not Nazis. The end.

But this thread is about the 1900s, not the 1500s.
You were the person who started bringing in history from the freaking Byzantines to support what you call a Greek "moral claim" to Istanbul.

But of course, this thread is about the 1900s. In that case, I'm glad we can agree that Istanbul should go to the majority population of the city throughout the 1900s, namely the Turks.

(I refuse to call it by the "I-word")
Lmao

Imagine if your neighbor were to beat you a bloody pulp, and then drove you to the hospital and paid your medical bills. Is he virtuous for fixing the problem he created in the first place?
The Ottomans did not create the problem. Constantinople was in ruins following the Fourth Crusade.

What exactly did the Muslims of Salonica expect, after treating Greeks like second-class citizens in their own homeland for 400 years?
Non-Muslims were the middle class in the late Ottoman Empire and actively had a higher standard of living than most Muslims did, which contributed to the significant support for the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the 1910s (not that the cleansings themselves were justifiable in any way). You're being misleading about the actual position held by Greeks immediately prior to the Balkan Wars.

In any case, I'm wondering if you'd support a forcible removal of all non-Natives in the US? They've been the majority for less than 300 years (the Natives were the majority in 1700), and their treatment toward almost every Native people was far more horrendous than the Ottoman treatment of Greeks. Surely they deserve to be dragged back in chains to Europe and Africa.

Goa was an integral part of Portugal.
And Istanbul wasn't?

Populations ebb and flow
"Istanbul was majority Turkish for near-five hundred years" "Moral claim!!!!!"

"Izmir was majority Turkish as late as the 1760s (per Richard Chandler), its Greek majority in the 1920s was barely a hundred years old" "Populations ebb and flow"

Do you see the hypocrisy here?
 
Would have the city be given to Greece yet (depending on the ATLs involved) Russia is given a stake (via a military base akin to Tartus naval facility in OTL, Russian compound in Jerusalem in OTL or something else, etc) in return for protecting Greece from a revanchist Turkey.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Topkapı? Blue Mosque? Süleymaniye? Kapalıçarşı?

Let's say America conquered Haiti and built a YUGE statue of President Trump. Does that mean Haiti should belong to America now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounding[/QUOTE]

Okay

People other than Greeks might also have an opinion on the fate of Istanbul, namely the non-Greek 70% of the population.

I guarantee you that the Armenians of Constantinople would have much preferred being ruled by their longstanding ally and brother (Greece) to being ruled by their genocidal tormenter (Turkey).


So can I take this to mean that you're in favor of expelling the English back to Denmark? After all, the English started the whole thing by invading Welsh/Brittonic Britain.

The difference is that there was never a Welsh nationalism that claimed all of Britain, nor a large non-migratory Welsh population in England.


OK.

The Ottomans were not Nazis. The end.

They were the prototype for Nazism. Before he started the Holocaust, Hitler said "Who today remembers the fate of the Armenians?"

You were the person who started bringing in history from the freaking Byzantines to support what you call a Greek "moral claim" to Istanbul.

But of course, this thread is about the 1900s. In that case, I'm glad we can agree that Istanbul should go to the majority population of the city throughout the 1900s, namely the Turks.

I said that a couple things should be considered.
1. Demographic majority (favors the Turks but barely)
2. Historical claims (favors the Greeks)
3. Religious/cultural significance (favors the Greeks)
4. Geographic feasibility (favors the Greeks - avoiding a Greece-Turkey land border is probably wise)

Lmao


The Ottomans did not create the problem. Constantinople was in ruins following the Fourth Crusade.

There were 250 years between that and the tragic Fall of Constantinople. Restoring Constantinople to Greece would mean that in the end, Constantine Paleologus did not die in vain. His heroic sacrifice and martyrdom would have ultimately been honored.

Non-Muslims were the middle class in the late Ottoman Empire and actively had a higher standard of living than most Muslims did, which contributed to the significant support for the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the 1910s (not that the cleansings themselves were justifiable in any way). You're being misleading about the actual position held by Greeks immediately prior to the Balkan Wars.

There were lots of wealthy Jews in Early Modern Europe, but that doesn't negate the pervasive anti-Semitism. Similarly, Christian economic success in the Ottoman Empire doesn't negate the discrimination against them.

In any case, I'm wondering if you'd support a forcible removal of all non-Natives in the US? They've been the majority for less than 300 years (the Natives were the majority in 1700), and their treatment toward almost every Native people was far more horrendous than the Ottoman treatment of Greeks. Surely they deserve to be dragged back in chains to Europe and Africa.

Amerindians are 1% of the American population. Greeks were 33% of the Constantinopolitan population. It's not even comparable.


And Istanbul wasn't?

Goa was a backwater until the Portuguese developed it. It had no significance to India when they took it, in contrast to Constantinople.


"Istanbul was majority Turkish for near-five hundred years" "Moral claim!!!!!"

"Izmir was majority Turkish as late as the 1760s (per Richard Chandler), its Greek majority in the 1920s was barely a hundred years old" "Populations ebb and flow"

Do you see the hypocrisy here?

No, since the entirety of Asia Minor was Greek for millennia before the Turks came to oppress them.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Would have the city be given to Greece yet (depending on the ATLs involved) Russia is given a stake (via a military base akin to Tartus naval facility in OTL or something else, etc) in return for protecting Greece from a revanchist Turkey.

That would have been a much better outcome than OTL's.
 
Nationalist mythologising of long-past ownership is bullshit. The Turks who lived in Constantinople in 1918 had vastly greater right to the city than any nonsense claim made by the Greek state. Obviously, the resident Greek population also had an equal right to live there. Claims about past wrongs are so weak compared to the possibility of new wrongs when all the culprits (and victims) are centuries dead. Unless you believe in intergenerational guilt, which is immoral, the Turks of 1918 were the appropriate owners of the city as they were the majority. Fantasies about the Roman Empire, a state which Greece did not even pretend to be descended from, are just that.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Nationalist mythologising of long-past ownership is bullshit. The Turks who lived in Constantinople in 1918 had vastly greater right to the city than any nonsense claim made by the Greek state. Obviously, the resident Greek population also had an equal right to live there. Claims about past wrongs are so weak compared to the possibility of new wrongs when all the culprits (and victims) are centuries dead. Unless you believe in intergenerational guilt, which is immoral, the Turks of 1918 were the appropriate owners of the city as they were the majority. Fantasies about the Roman Empire, a state which Greece did not even pretend to be descended from, are just that.

Turks were only 3/5, and Greeks were 1/3. Given Turkey's abysmal track record with Christian populations, giving it to Greece was the wiser option.

(Yes, Christian Balkan states expelled Muslims, but at least they didn't genocide them, like Turks did to the Armenians)
 
Turks were only 3/5, and Greeks were 1/3. Given Turkey's abysmal track record with Christian populations, giving it to Greece was the wiser option.

(Yes, Christian Balkan states expelled Muslims, but at least they didn't genocide them, like Turks did to the Armenians)

Nonsense. Greece invaded Turkey and massacred civilians, just like all the other countries in the region did when they invaded each other. Giving Greece power over Constantinople will mean massacres and expulsions. In any case, the crimes of both the Greek and the Turkish states never invalidated the rights of the actual Greek and Turkish people to inhabit their homes.

It's also worth noting that the Roman state run from Constantinople by some the distant ancestors of the Hellenic Republic were in fact just as imperialist and destructive as the Ottomans that superseded them. This was no innocent state that was overturned wrongly by the dastardly Turks. It was a willing participant in Great Power politics that ultimately lost. Which, again, does not excuse any of the crimes committed against its inhabitants. The expulsion of citizens from Constantinople in 1453 was a terrible crime - just as it would have been if the Hellenic Republic had claimed the city for itself.
 
@Hierosolyma

You have the Jerusalemite Cross as your profile pic and changed "Well-Known Member" to "Crusader," which makes me mildly uncomfortable. So do statements like "I refuse to call it by the 'I-word'", "Constantine Paleologus did not die in vain. His heroic sacrifice and martyrdom would have ultimately been honored", and so forth. It smells a little too much like Golden Dawn or the CK2 variant of ethnonationalism. In any case, here's my final statement:


Istanbul has been majority Turkish for nearly five hundred years as of 1920. Although the city's Constantinopolitan past holds meaning to the Orthodox Church and the Greek people (much as its Ottoman past is significant for its Turkish community), and the significant Greek minority should not have been expelled as was the case OTL, the right to self-determination is clear that the city ought to have been given to Turkey, the nation-state of what had been the city's majority ethnicity for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Furthermore, the extent to which you have a clearly biased perspective on the issue is disconcerting. This includes outright falsehoods stated as fact (the Greeks were never the largest ethnicity in Istanbul following at least the 1480s), the use of expressions such as "moral claim" to justify what in effect would have led to the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Turks, and morally bankrupt Godwin's Law analogies such as comparing people whose ancestors had never lived anywhere outside the Balkans since the fourteenth century to "Lebesraum settlers" and "Nazi Collaborators". With this in mind, I no longer see a point to discussing the topic with you.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Nonsense. Greece invaded Turkey and massacred civilians, just like all the other countries in the region did when they invaded each other. Giving Greece power over Constantinople will mean massacres and expulsions. In any case, the crimes of both the Greek and the Turkish states never invalidated the rights of the actual Greek and Turkish people to inhabit their homes.

It's also worth noting that the Roman state run from Constantinople by some the distant ancestors of the Hellenic Republic were in fact just as imperialist and destructive as the Ottomans that superseded them. This was no innocent state that was overturned wrongly by the dastardly Turks. It was a willing participant in Great Power politics that ultimately lost. Which, again, does not excuse any of the crimes committed against its inhabitants. The expulsion of citizens from Constantinople in 1453 was a terrible crime - just as it would have been if the Hellenic Republic had claimed the city for itself.

Greeks were 1/3 of Constantinople, they had a legitimate claim. You may feel Turkey's claim is more legitimate, fine, but Greece had a legitimate claim.
 
Greeks were 1/3 of Constantinople, they had a legitimate claim. You may feel Turkey's claim is more legitimate, fine, but Greece had a legitimate claim.

Based on what? Certainly not the democratic will of the people - that goes to the majority Turks. How else can we determine the legitimacy of a claim over inhabited territory that has been controlled by one group for half a millennium?
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Ban
@Hierosolyma

You have the Jerusalemite Cross as your profile pic and changed "Well-Known Member" to "Crusader," which makes me mildly uncomfortable.

It's the internet equivalent of cosplay. As for the cross: what do you think my username means?

So do statements like "I refuse to call it by the 'I-word'"

Humor doesn't translate well on the internet, it seems.

"Constantine Paleologus did not die in vain. His heroic sacrifice and martyrdom would have ultimately been honored", and so forth. It smells a little too much like Golden Dawn or the CK2 variant of ethnonationalism. In any case, here's my final statement:

Constantine was a martyr and a hero, and recognizing his noble last stand does not make me a Golden Dawn member. CK2 has nothing to do with this whatsoever.

Istanbul has been majority Turkish for nearly five hundred years as of 1920. Although the city's Constantinopolitan past holds meaning to the Orthodox Church and the Greek people (much as its Ottoman past is significant for its Turkish community), and the significant Greek minority should not have been expelled as was the case OTL, the right to self-determination is clear that the city ought to have been given to Turkey, the nation-state of what had been the city's majority ethnicity for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Demographpic majorities are but one consideration in determining the rightful owner of a place. History, religious/cultural significance, and geography also matter.

Furthermore, the extent to which you have a clearly biased perspective on the issue is disconcerting. This includes outright falsehoods stated as fact (the Greeks were never the largest ethnicity in Istanbul following at least the 1480s), the use of expressions such as "moral claim" to justify what in effect would have led to the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Turks, and morally bankrupt Godwin's Law analogies such as comparing people whose ancestors had never lived anywhere outside the Balkans since the fourteenth century to "Lebesraum settlers" and "Nazi Collaborators". With this in mind, I no longer see a point to discussing the topic with you.

In saying that Turkey should have kept it, you are justifying what in effect would have led to the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Greeks. Oh wait, it actually did!

I'm beginning to think that you wish the Ottoman Empire had never lost the Balkans, which I find somewhat concerning.
 

Hierosolyma

Banned
Based on what? Certainly not the democratic will of the people - that goes to the majority Turks. How else can we determine the legitimacy of a claim over inhabited territory that has been controlled by one group for half a millennium?

Democratic will of the people is not the only thing that matters. It is but one consideration.
 
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