WI: An unwanted indefinite dely of Operation Barbarossa.

The OP said that the Germans managed to get the Turks on their side or at least be a non-belligerent willing to grant military access . I agree with you that, the later on this is, the less likely the Turks are to buckle, meaning the intimidation would have likely had to have happened in 41 or 42. However, the simple fact is that with Barbarossa Hitler has whole army groups to play around with (Some need to garrison the Eastern Front, granted... but there they can take advantage of the strategic defensive. Since the crux of so many of Germany's problems were logistics-based, being able to operate defensively from pre-built airfields, use your own pre-built rail lines for transport, and having facilities set up to repair/manufacture parts for damaged aircraft and vechiles will be a huge force multiplier). Turkey's position really isen't enviable: they're getting squeezed from three sides and each one has the capablity of launching a crippling strike before any potential allies can get in place to protect them.

Any way you slice it, though, the land campaign is going to be a nightmare. I expect to see the Brits and Americans argueing endlessly as the British aren't going to be willing to spill alot of their (very limited) blood and are going to be stuck constantly looking for weak points that don't exists.

Turkey becoming an Axis member or a Sweden-like neutral that allows Axis troops in is going to be the alarm that awakens Stalin. Have a look at the German-Soviet diplomatic correspondence running up to mid-1941: much of it is about containing German meddling in the Balkans and then Turkey.
With German troops all along his Western border and in Turkey, Stalin not only stops the supplies, but he'll also not be deluded into thinking the Germans won't attack. Additionally, he might very well be the one attacking, if and when the Westerners try something significant in Europe.
As to weak points, the Germans, as long as they haven't fielded the Luftwaffe in the East, can easily defend the most obvious one, Ploesti and the Danube. But they're still stuck with a continent that is not self-sufficient as to food. Once they lose North Africa (and they will, even if they have a surplus of troops - that doesn't mean they have a surplus of shipping and port handling capacity in the Med), things get worse; that's because, as long as Vichy France was a nominal neutral, the British allowed grains, oil and fish from the French North African colonies to go to Marseilles, but when that ended, those supplies ended too. The Germans aren't going to draw food from the Ukraine either. If the British aren't making the Archangelsk run effort, they can devote Royal Navy resources to the Med and, once North Africa is cleared, to put pressure not only on Italy (obviously) but also on neutral but unfriendly Spain and Turkey. The pressure needn't be overtly military, it can come with a carrot: sell your strategic stuff to us, or else your cargo shipping will suffer from delays as our anti-contraband measures get tighter. And Spain, needless to say, was importing food from South America. The British can also reinforce Cyprus and Syria, just to let Turkey know they shouldn't exaggerate. Istanbul can't withstand a bombing by the Luftwaffe - but neither a series of night visits by British bombers.
 
The British can also reinforce Cyprus and Syria, just to let Turkey know they shouldn't exaggerate. Istanbul can't withstand a bombing by the Luftwaffe - but neither a series of night visits by British bombers.

absent Barbarossa it is not clear Syria would be in British hands? the whole fiasco in Iraq and Syria resulted from paucity of resources devoted and inattention, for instance there were French troops in Greece unable to reach Syria due to lack of German transport aircraft.

it had become pretty clear the combat power of Italy, maybe Germany tries to restart Palestinian uprisings from Syrian base as (relatively) cheap second Middle Eastern front.

by this time the Allied plans for Operation Pike were known to Germany, they might also want to preserve the Syrian airbases as at least an option to carry out their own version of that campaign.
 
absent Barbarossa it is not clear Syria would be in British hands? the whole fiasco in Iraq and Syria resulted from paucity of resources devoted and inattention, for instance there were French troops in Greece unable to reach Syria due to lack of German transport aircraft.

Good point there.
 
It's worth remembering that the infrastructure in Eastern Turkey was terrible and the terrain quite rugged and mountainous. Also, Turkey was still recovering from a disastrous WW1 and a civil war/war of national liberation after that - the army was in no shape to fight the Soviets. So not only is Turkey joining the war against the Soviets suicidal for them, but it gives the Germans virtually no benefit.

fasquardon
 
Just to give some numbers:

Turkey had a peace time army of 174,000 men which didn't start seeing increase until the start of 1940, at that time they mustered ~230,000 men, one armored brigade, and three cavalry brigades with four corps stationed in the eastern "frontiers" of the nation, one corps in Thrace and one in reserve. Almost all of the equipment was pre-WW1 with rifles like the Lee Enfield, Lebel, Masuiers etc. being used, this could easily be remedied with Italian or German made weaponry but it is still something to consider. They had fortifications along the Dardanelles and along the outer regions of the country to the East, including heavy works at Erzurum, Kars, Adana among some others.
The air-force was 370 planes of all type with only about half of them being modern even though they had over 8,000 men in their air-force.
The Turkish navy consisted of the outdated battle cruiser Yavuz (ex-Goeben), 4 destroyers, 5-6 submarines, 2 light cruisers, 3 mine-sweepers, 2 gunboats, 3 motor torpedo boats, 4 minelayers and a surveying vessel.

Turkey had one main rail-line connecting the country that was in pretty decent shape but it was only one rail (from what I found at least) so troop/supply transport would require more lines being laid. Some rail was being laid that would link along the southern coast of the country but that had only been recently in production and was only around 5-10% completed.

Having the Black sea open to German and Italian ships could possibly be a very big boon to the Axis depending on how things play out however. The Soviet Black seas fleet was a pretty major player during early operations/sieges. Allowing German and Italian ships into the region (Turkey refused to let the ships enter and the German ships that had entered had mainly been transported over-land) as well as the Romanians (The Romanian navy consisted of four destroyers, twelve torpedo boats, four gunboats, six minelayers, three amphibious landing self-propelled barges, four submarine chasers, three submarines and five midget submarines.) could possibly defeat Filipp Oktyabrsky and prevent the vital aid the fleet gives ITTL. Sieges like Odessa and Sevastopol (as well as the whole Crimean campaign) likely won't happen but you get what I'm trying to get across.
 
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