Coulsdon Eagle
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And with the Poles expelling millions of Germans, and you could add the Soviet Union expelling millions of Poles.
Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
Tbf for Turkey would central Anatolia be dominated by large landowners or by the gentry? If it's dominated by the landowners I don't see Turkey going anywhere.
They were, but that was someone in the Soviet zone not a western ally doing the dirty job. At the same time the Germans were being expelled, the US foreign ministry was advising against US support of territorial concessions from Bulgaria to Greece because it would leave up to 400,000 people on the Greek side of the border and was taking for granted that no population movement would be taking place.
And before someone argues that TTL Turkey will look worse one would note that Bulgaria OTL had invaded both Greece and Yugoslavia on the German tails and its troops managed to behave worse than the Germans.
Let me note that you know that Ankara the city has not done well. As seen by the TTL census data I published earlier, Ankara the region is doing fairly well. The obvious question here is... what would an Ankara that is NOT capital of the Turkish Republic have going for itself to turn it to the OTL city of five million from its 28,000 in 1914? Not much. In all likelihood had it not been capital Ankara wouldn't have been that different from say Sivas who has today 365,000 people.
Ok , so let us do some comparative politics 101 a bit. There are two reasons ME countries have not industrialized 1) resource curse due to oil (the usual suspects) or foreign aid (Egypt) 2) dominance by patron-client networks that vie for distribution of said resources. War has not worked as a shock for reform for the simple reasons that most ME regimes are immune to loss. You get killed for making peace not for losing a war.
Turkey lacks both 1) and 2) to a certain degree. The educational and economic skill advantage of Rumelian refugees over Anatolians is so huge that they did dominate the country for 100 years OTL. ATL removing the Kurds from the equation makes that advantage bigger. The biggest failure imho of Kemalist reforms in OTL was land reform. I can see landreform happening ATL as a way to solidify the domestic legitimacy of the new regime.
Now let us go on with the potentials of Turkey in ATL. It has the profile to pull off both import substitution industrialization or state developmental capitalism.
While both aim for the same goal, tools are different. ISI relies on massive lending while SDC on a docile workforce, willing to forgo consumption increases for 20 years and high saving rates.
Contrary to popular opinion both can work. But ISI is inferior to DSC because those foreign funds can easily become the equivalent for a resource curse raw commodity ( Egypt is the example were US aid has exactly the same political economy consequences as petroleum or diamonds).
Argentina's problems have to do less with the role of agriculture but the reality of an already fractured political system. And even there despite failures ISI as in most South America , ISI did produce development. Argentina for all its problems is a Middle income country. LA issues have more to do with monetary policies then economic fundamentals.
My view is that competent Turkish leadership under the limitations it will face post defeat can pursue DSC. The Rumelians are innovation pursuers and stress education. The Anatolians are probably going to be docile workers (and other refugees) and used to low consumption, facilitating savings. It needs an export market, which can be the MENA region or even the USSR, or even further afield.
Furthermore defeat, plus restrictions in FP will make harder expending that energy into foreign adventures. I am not saying Turkey will be as rich as ATL Greece, but it can definitely reach Uruguay or OTL Greece levels.
Of course a lot will depend on who gets power, how, etc. But you already lack many of the reasons you get ME political economies.
Turkey lacks both 1) and 2) to a certain degree. The educational and economic skill advantage of Rumelian refugees over Anatolians is so huge that they did dominate the country for 100 years OTL. ATL removing the Kurds from the equation makes that advantage bigger. The biggest failure imho of Kemalist reforms in OTL was land reform. I can see landreform happening ATL as a way to solidify the domestic legitimacy of the new regime.
Now let us go on with the potentials of Turkey in ATL. It has the profile to pull off both import substitution industrialization or state developmental capitalism.
While both aim for the same goal, tools are different. ISI relies on massive lending while SDC on a docile workforce, willing to forgo consumption increases for 20 years and high saving rates.
Contrary to popular opinion both can work. But ISI is inferior to DSC because those foreign funds can easily become the equivalent for a resource curse raw commodity ( Egypt is the example were US aid has exactly the same political economy consequences as petroleum or diamonds).
Argentina's problems have to do less with the role of agriculture but the reality of an already fractured political system. And even there despite failures ISI as in most South America , ISI did produce development. Argentina for all its problems is a Middle income country. LA issues have more to do with monetary policies then economic fundamentals.
My view is that competent Turkish leadership under the limitations it will face post defeat can pursue DSC. The Rumelians are innovation pursuers and stress education. The Anatolians are probably going to be docile workers (and other refugees) and used to low consumption, facilitating savings. It needs an export market, which can be the MENA region or even the USSR, or even further afield.
Furthermore defeat, plus restrictions in FP will make harder expending that energy into foreign adventures. I am not saying Turkey will be as rich as ATL Greece, but it can definitely reach Uruguay or OTL Greece levels.
Of course a lot will depend on who gets power, how, etc. But you already lack many of the reasons you get ME political economies.
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I’m really not sure I believe that. They were perfectly fine slicing off pieces of Italy post war. Some of it was being returned to their native ethnic groups but plenty of what Yugoslavia took had majority or large Italian populations. The Soviets did whatever the he’ll they wanted and all the Western Allies did was complain. They wouldn’t like it but I doubt they stop the Greeks from doing it. They made them give up Constantinople in exchange for large land concessions elsewhere they knew what that was going to entail.
Honestly the western Allies have to keep Greece happy. If they don’t, or go back on their word, the Greeks could very easily turn east to the Soviets who will let them do whatever they want to Turkey. You don’t both have to be communists to do business after all. And a Soviet Neutral or Friendly Greece blows whatever ideas the Western Allies have of trying to restrict Soviet Naval movement in the Mediterranean by using the Aegean to hell.
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Well let us be frank. Greece is not yet at the point where it can militarily defy the maritime powers. It just is at the point that it can realistically drive a hard bargain but within very clear parameters. A turn to the USSR is strategically unrealistic.
Indeed Greece can never really defy the maritime powers. Even for Venizelos the Greater Greece would still require a patron-client special relationship with the UK.
Indeed Greece can never really defy the maritime powers. Even for Venizelos the Greater Greece would still require a patron-client special relationship with the UK.
Are we talking OTL or TTL. Because OTL that's exactly what the US State Department did with the British following suit. Greek ambitions vis a vis Bulgaria were not supported, at least the Yugoslav backed Bulgarian demands of... Greek territory were not supported ei5her and the same was the case.
And out of curiosity what area lost by Italy to Yugoslavia was Italian majority? At a quick look the map below doesn't look particularly good for Italian claims to the Julian march...
Greece needs to either be the primary naval power or on the side of the primary naval power... not even the royalists at their more anti-entente in 1917 when they were airing plans for the postwar Greek navy having 30-50 submarines "to be able to resist great power blackmail" did not think otherwise.
But what lessons the Greek political establishment takes from being shown its weaknesses is a reasonable question I think. Famously or infamously France and Britain took diametrically opposite lessons from their treatment by the United States culminating at Suez. And even Britain who went with the special relationship, made sure to have her own deterrent no matter what. How Bevin put it? "We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs ... We've got to have the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it." Greece will be in the western camp period. But does it resemble more France or Britain, taking into account she's far weaker than either of course?
I think that, besides that if Britain and particularly the US would want to counter the Soviet, influence/whatever, what would be their TTL are in control in the Balkans and/or to protect the Adriatic sea, they would have to count with the Greek Army.
Also, at the difference of OTL, may seem that that the Franco-British influence over the M. Eastern would be bolstered and supported by whatever military forces that would remain there in occupation duties and/or to help to form/organize, at least, to the Kurds State that would be formed.
Also, I think that would be two possible scenarios for the post-war Greece. One of them ,would possibly be, that if as OTL, the Anglo-American interests would diverge from the Gaullist France ones, then probably Greece would have another major power (and a Mediterranean one, as a plus) to align/partnering with...
Another possible scenario, would be that what would diverge ,earlier than OTL, would the French-British interests with the Americans ones,and if so, then on this hypothetical scenario, this post war Greece, could perhaps alternate/chose which one would best align with their interests.
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I was referring to TTL as that’s where the agreement over giving up Constantinople was made.
As for Italian areas given away, that map hides the realities on the ground as the large majority of the population lives on the west coast of the peninsula. The city of Zadar/Zara was majority Italian. The city of Fiume was majority Italian as I understand it. Krk was majority Italian until the Dalmatian exodus as well, although it was given to Yugoslavia in WW1 so it’s iffy at best.
Honestly that 400,000 Bulgarians number making the western allies decide against giving it to Greece OTL surprises me considering the amount of Dalmatian Italian given to Yugoslavia. And both numbers are nothing compared to the Germans and the Polish that the Soviets moved with minimal consequences. I’m not saying Greece can man handle the Western Allies politically. But they have a strong bargaining position between their valuable strategic position and their contributions to the war. If they feel betrayed/improperly rewarded they can become very ambivalent to Western demands. If they go the way of OTL France, and France does the same, theres the opportunity for a significant fracture in NATO.
They can but not in the late 1940s-1950s when they will need US funds for rebuilding. Fundamentally the basic economic reality of a devastated Europe has not changed. This gives enormous power to the US.
The same US who barely cared about forced movement of population in the immediate aftermath of the war as long as it was happening to the people of Axis countries? Hell at the Potsdam Conference all the allied leaders reaffirmed their support of the removal of the Germans from Central and Eastern Europe. I highly doubt the US is going to raise more than a token protest in 1946 if Greece forcibly moves a couple hundred thousand Turks of the land they gain from the war, not when easily over 10 million Germans were forcibly moved between 46 and 50. It's only after that expulsion and it's aftermath was realized that they changed the Geneva conventions to declare population transfer a warcrime.
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I.am not sure what my post has to do with that. I was referring to Greeece and France pursuing a out of NATO fp.
Strictly it wouldn't be purely "out of NATO". Just... to use the French military's favorite buzzword...
"Strategic Autonomy".
Oh sorry about that. From my understanding, the conversation that lead into the idea of Greece following the France route regarding NATO started because of the idea of the other major NATO members objecting to forcing the Turks out of land Greece would be taking. I thought the two ideas were intertwined so I thought you were also saying that the US would withhold Marshall Plan funds over it.
Which really did not amount to much in the Cold War. The French talked a big game, made lots of symbolic flash, but toed the line when it came to serious crises.
Probably, though it did help the West having an obvious "dissident nation" even willing to elect Socialists, and yet never being brought back into line. Compare that to the Soviet bloc, who had half of its block that had to be brought back into line by Moscow...
But Socialists were elected in more Core NATO states ( Labour in the UK and Norawy which were quite socialist), and the USSR could point to Finland on the virtues of "friendship".
The US official papers are available online. In our case the memorandum that formulated US policy over modifying the Greek-Bulgarian border from May 11th, 1946 can be found below. Looks to me th3 US government was worrying about causing resentment within communist Bulgaria rather more than it did about Germany.
In response to a request by the Acting State Member, State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, dated 29 April 1946, for a study evaluating the strategic elements which are involved in the Greek request for rectification of the Greco-Bulgarian frontier, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have advised the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee as follows:
- “a. Greece desires to advance her Bulgarian frontier an average of about thirty-six miles northward to include the general areas of the Macedonian-Thracian watershed, approximately doubling the present width of her territory between Bulgaria and the Aegean Sea. This would require transfer of a strip of more than 6500 square miles of Bulgarian territory along the full length of the Greco-Bulgarian frontier with a population of about 400,000, the majority of whom are Moslem Pomaks or Turks. There are no known important military establishments in the area.
- b. In all probability Greece could not successfully defend her present frontier against Bulgaria attacking alone. Greek forces in western Thrace can easily be cut off by penetration to the sea through her present narrow east-west corridor in this area. Acquisition of the Macedonian-Thracian watershed area would materially widen this corridor and strengthen Greek defensive capabilities, possibly to such a degree that she might withstand Bulgarian offensive efforts. However, Greece would not be strengthened to the extent to guaranteeing successful defense against Bulgaria or any coalition or combination of nations.
- c. Unless preparations to re-enforce Greece have been made in advance of attack, it is improbable that acquisition of the Macedonian-Thracian watershed would strengthen her sufficiently to prevent a break-through by a coalition or combination of nations before outside support could become effective.
- d. Advancing the Greek boundary at the expense of Bulgaria, as proposed, would not strengthen the Greek position sufficiently for her to participate effectively with Turkey in defense of the Dardanelles. On the other hand, in the unlikely event that neutrality is permitted to Greece, her possession of the Macedonian-Thracian watershed would be of some advantage to Turkey in a defense of the Dardanelles. This might, however, influence Turkey to accept the extreme hazard of defending her territory in Europe.
- e. Transfer of this territory from Bulgaria to Greece would likely be followed by violent resentment and partisan activities. The peace of the Balkans would thereby be endangered without decisive strategic gain.”