Who should Constantinople have been given to after WWI?

Who should Constantinople have been given to after WWI?


  • Total voters
    381
As an aside the idea that the city lay in ruins for 250 years before the superior Turks came along and fixed it is almost as contemptuously nationalistic as Hierosolyma’s own ranting.
Constantinople's population never exceeded 100,000 following 1204 all the way until the Ottoman conquest, when the Ottomans resettled it and it reached something like 150,000 by the 1470s. Since the city was built with something like half a million people in mind, yes, vast swathes of the city did lie in ruins for 250 years.

In fact, Constantinople did not recover its maximum population under Justinian until the age of Süleyman, although the Macedonian and Komnenian eras did come close.
 
Byzantophilia is one hell of a drug.

Let's look at this from an AH lens. Suppose the Megali idea goes ahead and Greece gets Constantinople. Do you think the Turks would bow down to the clearly superior Greeks and give away their largest city and economic and cultural center just because some Greeks had nostalgia for a dead empire? I can't imagine as an Argentine if someone tried to take out Buenos Aires, or if I was British and they took out London, or Paris as a Frenchma, and so on.

I think that if the Turks had their territory occupied and partitioned, they most likely would organize to resist and drive off the invaders rather than just give their historical capital away.

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OH WAIT. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED, REMEMBER?

The best option is a Turkey (or surviving Ottoman Empire) that fully respects the rights of minorities. This wasn't the option we had OTL, unfortunately. But given the conflicts on the Balkans, the Megali idea would have been even more catastrophic.
 
More seriously, if the question even has to be asked, then the answer is that it shouldn't be given to anyone, but just left where it is. If we aren't to have a total free for all of claim and counter-claim, then the status quo ante needs to be the default option, unless for some reason it is unworkable. So in this case - Turkey.

If a territory has been transferred from one sovereignty to another within the space of a human lifetime (ie in the past 70-80 years) then it may be legitimate to restore it to its former owner, unless the inhabitants are overwhelmingly against this.
 
Never seen a bunch of uneducated hicks in my life in this thread. It belongs to Persia. Get rekt Libs!

This is brought to you by turning point achaemenid empire
 
Prop up a rump Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, separate from the Republic of Turkey in Anadolu.

Attached to the Ottoman Empire are the overseas territories of Antakya (Antioch), Pontus, Izmir, and Jerusalem.
 
Prop up a rump Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, separate from the Republic of Turkey in Anadolu.

Attached to the Ottoman Empire are the overseas territories of Antakya (Antioch), Pontus, Izmir, and Jerusalem.
Why? Theres no point either give the ottos anatolia or give the rump to turkish republic. Theres no reason for a rump state to exist, no one benefits from it.
 
Why? Theres no point either give the ottos anatolia or give the rump to turkish republic. Theres no reason for a rump state to exist, no one benefits from it.
A reformed, internationally supported Ottoman Empire based in Constantinople and several contested areas could exist as a more ethnically mixed state at the outset; while Turkey would be a Turkish nation-state.
 
That option is a heavy favorite of yours personally, or of the imperial powers that won WWI? If in your opinion, then why?
So I've done what digging I can in a handful of hours on the historic situation, and I have to say that it has left me even more confused rather than bring about any real resolution.

Technically, as shown on a map here, Constantinople was to remain in Ottoman hands whilst being demilitarized and subject to various international restrictions under League of Nations supervision, with accompanying occupation and "local forces" units. However this already was running into trouble, as there were serious concerns to whether the Turks would honestly honor the agreements (never mind the then Ankara rebel government), and the British were beginning to lean towards establishing Constantinople and the remainder of European Turkey as an Independent Free City. The Greeks for their part on occasion made noise about wanting to "occupy" the city, which seems to have been an ever constant threat only warded off by the presence of Franco-British forces; if ever they left though, Greek annexation may well have been a fait accompli.
 
I genuinely cannot believe that there are currently 114 people who voted 'give it to Greece' on this history website. I suppose those 114 people would support giving Wrocław, sorry, Breslau back to Germany? Because who even cares about the actual human beings that live there. Just like how the residents of Marseilles (what the invading French currently call Massalia) have no right to live in that city, it should go to the Greeks who definitely are the same Greeks that settled there two and a half thousand years ago and are not even a little bit different after a hundred odd generations. What's that? I was born through no choice of my own into a country that almost entirely consists of land stolen from a hundred different nations that controlled it for 55 000 years? Well I'll just go deport myself because that's definitely what everyone including the original owners actually want as opposed to some silly "moral" outcome with equitable treatment for everyone involved.

Come on guys. Let's not let out pet AH interests cloud the reality that people born into a place have committed no crime in doing so and do not deserve to be driven from their homes, or even just placed under a foreign government for no reason other than "well I guess a Greek-speaking country owned it 500 years ago".
 

Scaevola

Banned
Greek annexation may well have been a fait accompli.
Greek annexation would have been impossible, just look at Greek's poor performance following WWI in which they tried to force the Megali idea.

Istanbul had (and STILL has) a higher population that the entirety of modern Greece! This is like saying that, even in a vacuum, the Croatian army can occupy New York City, it just won't happen. And Turkey won't take it lying down.
 
I genuinely cannot believe that there are currently 114 people who voted 'give it to Greece' on this history website. I suppose those 114 people would support giving Wrocław, sorry, Breslau back to Germany? Because who even cares about the actual human beings that live there. Just like how the residents of Marseilles (what the invading French currently call Massalia) have no right to live in that city, it should go to the Greeks who definitely are the same Greeks that settled there two and a half thousand years ago and are not even a little bit different after a hundred odd generations. What's that? I was born through no choice of my own into a country that almost entirely consists of land stolen from a hundred different nations that controlled it for 55 000 years? Well I'll just go deport myself because that's definitely what everyone including the original owners actually want as opposed to some silly "moral" outcome with equitable treatment for everyone involved.

Come on guys. Let's not let out pet AH interests cloud the reality that people born into a place have committed no crime in doing so and do not deserve to be driven from their homes, or even just placed under a foreign government for no reason other than "well I guess a Greek-speaking country owned it 500 years ago".
A similar logic from the people that cry "ancestral homeland" regarding israeli settlers rights yet ignore those from the palestinian refugees. If ar gonna pretend that every jew in the world is the same jew thats was expelled from roman palestine. If we are into that pretence at least extend the right to return to the palestinians living in camps just a few km from the frontier, they are the same people expelled 60 years ago, or at least theier literal grandchildren. Also being desended of the inhabitants of centuries or millenia ago isnt a special claim in both Israel/Palestine and Grece/Turkey both sides can claim that. The turks are largelly local greek/armenian/kurd/etc. population that got assimilated by a smaller turkish migration. Same thing happened in roman palestine. After roman atrocities a good portion of the population was forced into diaspora but the majority remained, but with their society destroyed they eventually converted to christianity, of course not every single one of them converted in fact the jewish people remained a sizeable minority all the way into the 20th century, but it's also true by the time of the muslim invations the population was largely christian and than the process reapeted itself. The majority of the christian eventually converted to islam and arabized but a relevant arab christian minority remained just like the jews before. This process is not exceptional and does not give the descended of old conquerors the "mark of Cain", every one is responsable for their own actions guilt isnt hereditary.
 
I genuinely cannot believe that there are currently 114 people who voted 'give it to Greece' on this history website. I suppose those 114 people would support giving Wrocław, sorry, Breslau back to Germany? Because who even cares about the actual human beings that live there.
I genuinely cannot understand why you keep bringing up places in western Poland (like Wroclaw) as an example of how absurd transferring them on the basis of long past historical ownership and in spite of the population's wishes is, when exactly that happened to Wroclaw within living memory.
Long analogy about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the right of return.
Lets try and keep one of the most controversial issues in current politics confined to chat please.
 
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