I agree I don't think Bulgaria would be fine with losing the rhodope mountains or have all territory south of the Maritza river be Greek. They'd quickly go insane.
I personally think Greece will leverage the WAllies wanting the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan to ensure Turkey unconditionally surrenders so Greece could take as much as they want to.
Greece in this map is pleasing to look at... I dont think Georgia would get that much of Pontus.
Tbf I think Cyprus will be given to Greece when the US finds British shenanigans to be too perfidious really.
If you include the van it's gonna shift the demographics of Armenia as a whole and expelling the Kurds/Turks leave it depopulated and I very much doubt Armenia can repopulate it. Assyria seems optimistic as it would be surrounded by likely hostile states with a tiny population unable to defend itself.
I don't think the USSR gives a shit about population dynamics. I could see the USSR using Russians and Ukrainians to repopulate the area if the Armenians can't repopulate it.
It'd be more like transnistria where some areas are Russian within the SSR of Armenia. I would see the Armenians try to populate it to the best of their ability tho, Lake Van was one of their population centres in the past.
I largely agree but the Turks will have to make some territorial concessions. My main concern is how much is too much.
Oh yes, how much, and to whom. If I were a Turkish leader in this war, and defeat stared me in the face, I would agree ceding some remote, underpopulated, and economically insignificant mountain provinces in the northeast to Uncle Joe (not the full extent of the Soviet demands, of course, but some border areas) and align myself with the USSR to keep him happy, and in turn gain his backing against the Greeks, whose claims are for prime real estate. There is the precedent of Kemal's cooperation with the Soviets for this, after all.
Basically Greek demands are 1. Constantinople 2. Cyprus 3. Caria 4. Rest of the Marmara straits for Turkey. There's no way Greece doesn't at least get back their original possessions although I don't think Greece will get much out of Bulgaria communist or no, so that border wouldn't change much. There's no way in hell Greece gets northern Thrace and I'd expect it to be used against the Soviets during the horse-trading. I also think Greece fully got northern Epirus although I'm not 100% sure about that.
I'd agree on these actions and the Soviets would like to have control over the Marmara straits. A war between a us and USSR led Turkey(s) or a civil war in Turkey where the USSR side wins then does this would be interesting.
I believe the name you might be looking for when it comes to describing item 4) is Bithynia or the former Thema Optimatoi.
I would argue that a Greece that will end up being the only active European warfront for the Western Allies for 2 or 3 years while facing Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey has considerably more prestige and influence than a Greece that was fully occupied by May 1941. Greece IOTL was nothing but a government in exile with only token formations contributing to the war effort. They fought the Italians bravely but fell rapidly to the Germans once they intervened.
There is also the counter argument that for the 2nd time this century Turkey has again joined "late" to a war when it appeared the Germans were winning and best to just strip them to the bones and be done with it. Germany is also a fully industrialized state; indeed possibly the most industrialized in Europe; while Turkey without it's west coast would be a crippled husk unable to do more than be a nuisance to any of its neighbours so concerns about a Versailles type peace are overblown.
First I will point out Bulgaria OTL and Bulgaria TTL are not the same. Bulgaria TTL has been a very active participant on the Macedonian front. Bulgarian divisions are right now fighting Greeks; Greeks have blown up the Bulgarian Tsar and a large part of their political hierarchy. All I am saying is there is going to be a lot more visible blood spilled that over OTL where Bulgaria walked into its occupation lands in 1941 and left them in 1944 whereupon Greece fell into political instability and civil war.
Let's just rewind back from all your assumptions here, regardless if they have a valid basis or not, and consider the bigger picture here, that is the bare minimum Greece could gain from Turkey in this war, that being the Biga/Troy region, which would otherwise remain an enclave territory of Turkey, completely cut off by land, because there's no way in hell Greece is going to ever concede any of its prewar sovereignty to Turkey, or that any of the winning powers would ever suggest something along those lines, apart from the USSR and even they would not dare to press the issue, and given that the only reason that the Biga/Troy area remained as part of Turkey after '22 was Venizelos unwillingness to pressure the British to withdraw from the Channel Zone, if anything it suited him to leave this area aside for later, to remain as a useless enclave, to be annexed in a future war later down the line and instead demand the biggest area possible from Turkey instead, after winning in 1922. That and Constantinople, as half of its population remains Christian, Greeks and Armenians alike. Those two areas aside, Lascaris had disclosed way earlier in the TL that a contested part of Caria would became Greek post WWII, so there's that. On top of those three, add Rhodes from Italy, thats currently occupied and its populated in its vast majority by Greek people and you can see that the only thing actually contested with Turkey post war in the negotiations would be the Opsimakon theme. Not remotely enough to bring the Turks to the USSR sphere of influence on it's own, even if the Turks get to preserve it. So, it might be safe to assume that the Soviets, aware that they don't have much that they could realistically offer to defeated Turkey to bring them onto their sphere of influence, just go for maximum gains from Turkey instead, which the Allies would not oppose, and keep those areas under their direct control to incentivize the Turkish people to side with the communist faction during a future Turkish civil war.
It's ww2. Several million Germans were kicked out of the territories Germany lost. Even more from places like Sudetenland. Any territory lost by Turkey, is not very likely to fare much better...
"Comrade surely you don't care about such anachronistic things like religion? You are speaking Armenian (or Greek or Georgian) surely you understand you are Armenian? No? But you wanted to stay in our glorious Soviet Union and not leave for Turkey? Well then we have some nice cotton producing land in Kazakhstan in need of more farmers! Oh you changed your mind and you are Armenian after all?"These guys
Hemshin people - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Not allowing Royal Hellenic Navy ships to go to Cypriot ports happened in OTL as well after the colonial authorities got afraid of the local being overtly enthusiastic every time a Greek warship visited the island. Given how I very much doubt the Colonial Office would care about giving up any single sliver of land painted pink on the map... as soon as the situation looks to get better they are likely to revert to character IMHO. Emphasis on Colonial office not Churchill and his cabinet.
They had to make concessions to the Greek Cypriots, frex the Cypriot brigade guarding Cyprus at the moment out of war necessity and there is still the Cypriot legislative assebly around as well as Dragoumis back in 1931 handled things and appointments to the island differently. And the bombings alleged are Turkish commandos that have landed in the island earlier. That said Famagusta port in particular being in the old town was unintentional. I've been to Nikosia, Paphos and Larnaca but for uhm... obvious reasons pertaining to modern politics not Famagusta.
Charles Woolley seems to me a logical appointment TTL as well. After all he'd served in Salonica and Constantinople in WW1.
Very little, but then Monastir/Bitola is almost at the border. Not entirely happy about it happening and the Italians were invading anyway but the Serbs would be likely to make the offer as they had in 1915 and this particular Greek prime minister guaranteed to want it given his background.
I believe the Irish army in OTL was about 42,000 men and tens of thousand more crossed the border to volunteer in the British armed forces. Looks to me there is sufficient manpower for 1-2 divisions there. And of course the US is going to supply the Irish armed forces. It's supplying already countries that don't have so many congressmen available...So is the US that gonna supply the Irish Armed Forces? Nice- just crossing in my mind:
- A Fighter Group escorting USAAF bomber forces
- One or Two PB4Y Liberators or PBM Mariner squadrons patrolling the Atlantic
- A squadron of Clemson-class DD's
- Finally a infantry brigade and a tank battalion operating in France
Liberated by the Greek navy back in November 1940. That is a territory the Greeks will be keeping in 1945 for certain.
It would be... tricky. In OTL the Soviets did launch a campaign of encouraging Armenian immigration to the USSR with some success, most of the Armenians refugees in Greece for example did leave for the Soviet Union. They are likely to do the same TTL although at least in Greece they are likely to be faring worse given the much better situation of the refugees in TTL Greece. If they go down that route they'd be likely be claiming the Muslim Armenian, Greek and Georgian speakers as ethnic Armenians, Greeks and Georgians, resettling Armenians and Greeks from elsewhere in the Soviet Union and for good measure settling Russians and Ukrainians if all else failed.
The Assyrians are in a pretty delicate position. The are actively pro-Allied as they were OTL and TTL that's even more important. But their relationship with the Kurds is strained to say the least given the Kurdish role in the Assyrian genocide and no government in Baghdad has any reason to want to let them go peacefully. Of course Abdullah king of the Arabs has at the moment all of 8,000 men in the Arab legion and vast ambitions, the Assyrians actually outnumber the legion at the moment....
That's entirely too likely. The GWRA is going to be having a field day. And given is chairman is Spyros Skouras who just so happens aside from being Greek American to be the president of 20th Century Fox... hell the Greeks don't even to try very hard to get their propaganda...
Because Hitler was an idiot and did not want to postpone the invasion of the Soviet Union. Had the Germans continued they'd likely be able to break Thermopylae. Of course unless they routed the defenders this means they'd pull back behind the Corinth canal which reduces the front to an isthmus of 7 kilometers. But in the end it's the result that counts...
The Greeks stopped the Germans instead of surrendering. For good measure did so at Thermopylae of all places. The propaganda is writing itself...
Technically so has Ireland, Poland and of course France but TTL Greece is orders of magnitude more important than OTL Greece is its contribution to the war effort
I suppose it depends on how you count the Canadians and Australians but at the moment Greece is contributing an army of 434,000 men in addition to the navy and the air force and all three are likely to increase. By the end of the war it is likely going to be surpassed by the French, they mobilized over 1 million men by 1945 but still...
Turkey still holds most of Anatolia... but joining the war while understandable is looking problematic now. What this means for its prospects in the peace table? Depends on how it ends the war, I would expect. Forcing concessions during the war is likely entirely different than forcing concessions in 1947 when the Paris peace treaty was signed.
If they feel it's in their interest almost certainly. If it is not costing them anything not. To put it somewhat differently I'd suspect that gaining Cyprus would be much more difficult than getting some land in Anatolia.
The Soviets had extensive territorial demands in OTL. Now certain of these demands are already Soviet since the border remained the 1914 ones. And the Soviets can be guaranteed to be interested in the straits and Constantinople. Which... could be a problem for Greece.
The Greeks will nor be amused but then had not been amused from just the occupation OTL. The British and Americans have reason to be less sympathetic. The Soviets... it depends on who runs the show in Bulgaria.
In OTL the maximum Greek demands were about 16,000 km2, the minimum 2,000. They got of course nothing. And for the irony they will be likely claiming that the Pomak Muslim minority there prefers them to the Bulgarians... which it actually does.
