WI: World War I doesn't happen, but the Armenian Genocide happens anyway


In the above video (which you should check out if you're unfamiliar with the Armenian Genocide), I thought this interesting quote from July 1915.

The Turks know that the Christian nations are too busy to take care of Armenians so they take advantage of the time to destroy their 'enemies'. It is quote obvious that the purpose of their departure is the extermination of the Armenian people

So in a world where Archduke Franz Ferdinand is not assassinated and World War I is delayed into 1915, what if the Ottomans decided to enact the genocide anyway, attracting condemnation from around the world?
 
This would be the perfect excuse for European powers to partition the Ottoman Empire between themselves. They are all growing at a rapid rate and looking for places to expand with many already taken. This could honestly push back the Great War a decade or two. Europe could have a Berlin type of conference about the Ottomans. Ottomans would be dumb to do this during peace time. Europeans are still going to have more sympathies towards the Christians, Greeks, and Armenians more so then Turks especially minus the war. I could see Britain taking most of the Arab lands. Bulgaria gains back its parts of Thrace. Constantinople is either in Russia hands or is a international city. Russia does gain some minor border areas. Pontic Greek and Armenian state are carved out of the former empire. Both are probably given a very generous amount of land. Italy and France gain some islands and coastal regions.
 
Russia utilizes it's position as defender of Eastern Christendom and marches in to Anatolia, going deep enough to provide a buffer zone for surviving Greeks, Armenians, and if they are close enough Assyrians.
 

Deleted member 94680

This would be the perfect excuse for European powers to partition the Ottoman Empire between themselves.

Russia utilizes it's position as defender of Eastern Christendom and marches in to Anatolia, going deep enough to provide a buffer zone for surviving Greeks, Armenians, and if they are close enough Assyrians.

What would make the reaction to the 1915 Armenian Genocide different? Because nothing really came of the reaction to the 1894-6 Massacres or the 1909 Massacre.

Never underestimate the ability of Great Powers to turn a blind eye to things that don’t suit their own agendas.
 
What would make the reaction to the 1915 Armenian Genocide different? Because nothing really came of the reaction to the 1894-6 Massacres or the 1909 Massacre.

Never underestimate the ability of Great Powers to turn a blind eye to things that don’t suit their own agendas.

Well, if the Great Powers are starting to feel land hungry and want to blow off some steam, this is a perfect excuse.
 

Deleted member 94680

Well, if the Great Powers are starting to feel land hungry and want to blow off some steam, this is a perfect excuse.

... perfect excuse to start a War.

The whole “Great Powers want to dismember the Ottomans at the slightest opportunity” is a trope and not at all supported by OTL.

The ‘designs’ the various Great Powers had on the OE were contradictory at best and mutually hostile otherwise.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
The genocidal actions against the armenians of 1915/16 can be seen as a 'follow-up' of similar pogroms before.

But ... the war enabled (?) them this time to reach another level/magnitude then before. The war this time also provoded an excuse to enact them in this magnitude.

Without the war ... I doubt that there would be anything resembling this magnitude again. Possibly there would be further progroms of the scale of the already mentioned Adana massacre -horrible enopugh without a doubt- but they would most likely ... 'wind down' with time and -more importantly- increasing journalistic possibilities and means of coverage.

The 'hatred' against the armenians wasn't as ... 'deep' as the antisemitism of Hitler, Himmler and Streicher. It also blended with religions in being kinda anti-christian move. I would/could see some progroms against such groups as well but again nothing up to the scale of the genocide in WW 1 or the holocaust by the nazis.

Though ... it depends to quite some extend how the OE would actually fare in a no-WW-1-world/timeline.
 
Top