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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Turkish Delight
This AH
will need a few slight changes in 1940, although the major changes won’t come
until later. In OTL, the Turks
basically sat WW2 out, their agreement with France and Britain was dropped once
France fell and the British had problems in the desert.
The Turks became more careful once Greece fell and tried hard to stay
between the two sides once Germany reached the borders.
Once the allied victory became certain, the Turks declared war on Germany
and did nothing to aid in their defeat. In 1940
after the fall of France, everything was in flux.
Enlightened opinion expected the British to make peace, which might
involve them giving colonies to Germany and Italy, which might put the two axis
powers on Turkey’s borders. Let’s
have the Turks take advantage of French weakness after the armistice and recover
Syria and Lebanon. The Turks send
in most of their army on a ‘securing’ exercise and offer the French
government a choice; the Turks will either occupy the colonies and intern the
French forces, OR the Turks will defeat the French forces and annex the
colonies. Whatever the French
decision, the Turks end up with the two colonies.
By this
time, the British will have fought and won the battle of Britain and the
fighting will have shifted to the Middle East.
The British will probably agree to supply the Turks with some vital
supplies in exchange for Turkish neutrality.
The Turks know they’re not ready for a conflict with Britain or
Germany, so they still stay out of the main war.
Germany signs a non-aggression pact with Turkey in early 1941.
The Italian invasion of Greece will still flop and the Germans will clear
up the mess for them as OTL. Some
British forces retreat to Turkey after Greece falls, so the Turks technically
intern them, but practically allow them to go free.
At the
end of 1941, barring any butterflies, the Germans will have still invaded the
USSR and America and Japan have entered the war.
The Turks hesitate; they could recover long-lost land from the Russians,
or they could formally declare war on the axis. After receiving recognition of their conquests and their
inclusion into the lend lease program, the Turks declare war on the axis.
This
changes the picture of the war. The
Turks have been supplying the Greeks and the other Balkan nations that have
anti-German factions. As the war
goes on, resistance movements make German lives miserable in the Balkans.
The
allies have a major problem. In OTL,
they invaded Italy in 1943 and then Normandy in 1944.
Here, there is also the option of heading up though the Balkans.
Churchill pushes for that as hard as he can, as do the Turks and the
Balkan resistance. Stalin opposes
it as much as he can because he wants Eastern Europe as colonies.
The net result is that the Turks and the British launch attacks on Greece
and Bulgaria in late 1943, while the Americans continue to build up in England
for an invasion of France. As that
offensive continues, the German position starts to collapse. Italy leaves the war, which means that the Italians in the
Balkans tend to switch sides, while the allies push upwards; Bulgaria,
Yugoslavia and Romania all try to defect in 1944. Often, the allies are on a shoestring, but the Turks and
British are getting good at shipping in supplies to arm forces.
The
Turko/British offensive ends in 1945. The
allies hold Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia, as well as everything southwards of
them. Stalin is having a fit over
his reduced positions at the peace conferences, while Germany is losing faster
than OTL. Stalin gets East Germany,
Poland and modern-day Moldova, as well as the Baltics.
The rest is in the western camp. The
Turks get to keep Syria and Lebanon. The
French have fits, but they’re smart enough to realise that they can’t get
them back and they’ve got other problems anyway.
The UK/US bribes the Turks to allow the Greeks to keep their 1939
borders, which makes for better relations, and the two powers share control of
Cyprus when the UK leaves it. The
effects on Israel are uncertain. The
Turks are the only other Middle Eastern power to support Israel in OTL.
I suspect that the Turks will come to an agreement and a secure border
with Israel at some point. Another
possibility is the autonomous zone of Zion, under Turkish protection
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