Ok, Lascaris makes some good points. I still think based on my McDougall reading that with the US breathing down there neck the UK will seek to shore up as much as possible an independent position. Historically it was the declaration that the UK could not support Greece in the Greek Civil War that began the unraveling of UK autonomy (of course more important was the US economic dominance and the willingness to use that to bully the UK, and bully it did). This thread (the original document re-printed not the problematic commentary)
http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/2023/04/an-unsettled-state-majority-rule-versus.html?m=1 nicely indicates how getting kicked out of Egypt (partly a US policy) made the UK latch on to Cyprus. But in history Greece by the 1950s was dominated by US interests. If the same happens here, the UK might, I am not saying it will, be willing to give Cyprus in return for keeping the sovereign bases, as long as Greece is willing to balance the US with the UK. Australia is on the Pacific and the US since 1890 had been gunning for a dominant position. There was literally nothing the Brits could do to keep it, or Canada out of the US sphere. Greece is closer. Of course our Greece here is not as dependent as it was historically, but seeking a special relationship with the UK at this point is not a bad idea. Long-term the US will dominate the Med as well (due to its importance as a waterway linking key markets with the Atlantic-Pacific American system), but for as long as the UK wants that relationship Greece will cultivate it, and the UK will as well.
Tik Tok, you are vastly overestimating patriotic fervor. People are not going to give up a good life to go back to the Mountains of Pontus and live under Soviet rule. Even in Cyprus the "We want Greece even if we eat rocks" only got some traction. Furthermore you need to keep in mind that most deep analysis of numbers of Pontic refugees indicates that the majority were from the Russina Empire. By 1914 there were more Pontic Greeks in Russia than in Pontus (potentially 500k to 800k). These are people that had left Pontus at least 20 or 40 years ago (in example my mothers family) both due to persecution but also due to economic reasons. They had a better economic life in the Russian Empire then they could ever have in Pontus. In this scenario my mothers family would had moved to Greece in 1918, not 1939. They would have no interest on giving up what they got to go back to a poor life in isolated mountain villages. When people think of Pontus they think of Trebizond, Smapsouta, Kerasounta, but the majority of the Greek population was rural living in fairly isolated and poor mountain villages (it is why the insurgency lasted as long as it did, but also why it never was able to transform to a coherent movement). So you will get some idealists who will do this, but no you will not see a large scale return. Greece is their home.
Quinkana, the chapter by Merih Erol in Salvation and Catastrophe is a great resource for this. The Armenian community in Greece was never given minority status (which rankles with some of them even to today) but they are permitted to have their own Armenian language private schools, newspapers and cultural organizations, and they mostly kept their language. If Greece gets The City, then I expect an official declaration of minority status.
Stalin is an evil person, but he is a rationally evil person (unlike Hitler). His two major miscalculations in the early Cold War was the Berlin Blockade and getting hoodwinked by Kim (who also hoodwinked Mao). Beyond that he was very rational in what to push for and what to not. If we consider his historical diplomatic behavior, he will insist on keeping what his army holds, and seek neutralization of the Straits. He will sacrifice advantages of lesser import to get that. Hell he would be even willing to support Greece getting the City if Greece is willing to be bound by some serious restrictions in favor of neutralization of the straits. Of course it might be that he will commit a blunder ala Korea or Berlin in this case as well. That is in the purview of the author.
Finally let us revisit Kemal. Venizelos OTL is a good example. A politician that could had been world class but failed and is now just okish at the local context. Why is he so high status in our world. Well simply put his legacy is complex. 1) It would be stupid to deny for example that for my wife Kemal was great. Women like her gained opportunities that no other women in a Muslim majority country have because of his forced reforms. Maybe the reforms would had happened anyway, but no way as early as they did. 2) For many non-western people who care nothing about Greeks, Armenians or for that matter Jews, he is the guy who kept his country from becoming a western colony. There is truth in that. If Kemal had failed (and Kemal's key contribution to the Turkish war effort was his political and dimpliomatic acumen. Chakmak was the better soldier), Turkey would has spend decades in a condition equivalent to Iran. A semi-colony led by collaborationist royal governments. The end result would had been like Iran. In reaction to the rise of communist inspired independence movements , the goverment and its western patrons would had promoted Islamism. In the end you would have an Islamic takeover. Now this happened historically especially with the 1980s coup that did exactly that, but the timing is important and explains why Political Islam in Turkey took a different form than Political Islam in Iran. Would the Greek and Armenian and Jewish communities of a collaborationist Ottoman Turkey fare any better then they did. More would be alive sure, but expulsion and communal eradication would probably had been the result. So many in the Middle East and East Asia admire Kemal as the guy who stopped his country from becoming another Iran. This is true in the mid-range historical range. 3) For many Turks Kemal meant the end of an era of expulsion. It is a sad truth that in most cases were Ottoman rule ended, this was followed by the expulsion and communal eradication of muslim populations (in many places majorities). In some instances, we are talking about genocidal actions (genocide as per the Sebrenica case need not be a "regional" event, it can be even a local one). Now some think this fair and moral (one Greek commentator said that there such expulsion were a moral right in the sense of de-colonizaiton ). That is up to the conscience of every individual person. But just as Sudeten Germans, or Pedi-Noirs do not accept the morality of their expulsions, so do not Turks of Rumelian Muslim descent. So for them Kemal removed that threat. He did so with immoral means, but many people will care about the ends. 4) On the Kurds. There is no question that the Dersim Massacres was a genocidal event and a blot on the history of Turkey. But we must also remember that there was no Kurdish national idea back then. The Sevres Kurdistan had less to do with a Kurdish national idea, and more to do with competition among Kurdish clans. For every Sheik Said, Halid Beg , Ihsan Nuri, or Seyid Riza, you had as many or more clan chiefs that were happy to work the system (Nazimk Hikmet refers to these in his poem "Human Landscapes from My Country"). In this sense the suppressions were no different then other colonial imperial actions in the era. He deserves opprobrium for them, but there is nothing qualitatively in them that would make him worse then say Churchill or Salazar.
So let us get to the issues that are at the crux. Kemal was an enemy of the Greek, and Armenian people. No question on that. That said it is hard to place a lot of responsibility for the Armenian Genocide or the Greek Genocides of 1914-1918 on him. He was absent during the beginning of the Greek Genocide at Fokaia and Eastern Thrace in 1914, and his commands during Gallipoli were not involved in activities tied to the genocide. By the time of the battle of Gallipoli, the expulsion of Greeks from the region had already been completed. He was not a central member of the CUP, and was outside the leadership circle. By the time he took command in Syria, the Armenian genocide was done. His responsibility there is that of being part of the Ottoman Goverment, but nobody holds every German divisional or corps commander equally responsible for the Holocaust.
Now in 1918-1922 he bears more direct responsibility. But we need to remember a couple of things a) Kemal did not create the Turkish Nationalist movement. That was a CUP creation. Violence in the Pontus (Topal Osmans depredations), western Anatolia (conflict between muslim muhajirs and Greek and Armenians returnees), and in Eastern Anatolia (Andranik vs. Muslims) predated Erzurum. There was a complete collapse of any order in the post-1918 Ottoman Empire. Kemal took over the CUP creation (in many ways in a coup) with the support of initially Karabekir and then much later Chakmak (whose support was the key one in getting Ottoman military elites to join). He inherited the violence (just as Venizelos had). The difference is whereas Venizelos tried to put a stop on it (this is why Stergiadis was appointed) , Kemal sanctioned it. B) It is the sanctioning that makes his responsible with the most clear examples being his protection of Topal Osman and Nurredin Sakalli Pasha, both of whom are the real "merde" deal. C) Still we are talking about a total war on both sides. And both sides were armed. This is the big difference with the Holocaust. Greek and Armenian bands were active, they did commit atrocities. The war with Armenia was a war. All sides used scorched earth tactics. The Greek Army did devastate Western Anatolia (operating under military logic) and that did create a massive internal refugee movement that lead to many people dying for starvation and disease. And yet i.e Cappadocian Christians were not prosecuted, exterminated. This is why I dislike the "Christian Genocide" moniker. The target was not Christians per se. It was Greeks, it was Armenians.
That said, I do agree with the castigation of Kemal (I just have to be diplomatic due to my personal circumstances). The destruction of the Pontic Greeks did not have a military logic (there was not unified Pontic revolt, Kathenootis in 1919 reported that the local Pontic Greek elites considered military action suicidal and were angry at Russian Pontic Greeks for pushing for it). Even the pro-Turkish McCarthy speaks of a reaction out of proportion (hint, this is what you say when you do not have the guts to talk about a war-crime). The burning of Smyrna the same. One can debate what happened but there is no question how the Turkish state used it. There would be no repetition of 1918, no repatriation of refugees and expellees. The treatment of Ottoman Greek prisoners of war was criminal, the abduction of death of many Greeks and Armenians after the Greek army was defeated the same. These are the genocidal actions that rest on Kemal. Especially the last two were his decisions. He was not covering for someone else.
But, how much of the above is relevant to the Alternative Timeline: 1) You still get the benefits of westernization. So he is going to be popular in Turkey among women (I joke that CHP is at its core the party of middle-aged and older educated westernized women , and that is not far from truth). 2) He still is part of the story of averting Turkey becoming another Iran, but now he is not the protagonist, just part of a broader team. The movement is more important then the man. Chakmak is much more of a central personage. Turkey as a whole is going to have the role Kemal as a person had historically, but with its participation in WW2 as lot of that prestige is going to go away (and even then do you think many in Asia will care? They will still admire Turkey, as they admired Imperial Japan for beating the European colonial empires, or Thailand for picking a fight with France in WW2. Nobody in Thailand things Thailand was wrong to do so). His legacy thus in the timeline is secondary. Turkey is likely to still be popular in Asia an example of a Muslim country not rolling over for the Infidel Colonialists. 3) The 1919-1921 wars took a much different form. Turkey was defeated. Kars and Adrahan remained Russian/Soviet. Rather than a second phase of the 1914-1918 genocides you are talking about a "tamer" thing. Instead what is going to be central now is Turkish State War Crimes during WW2. Kemal is irrelevant here. The Kurds are a different actor, still riven by clan divisions, but Kurdish history is going to take a different path. Simply put the era of 1918-1939 is not going to play the same role in Kurdish nationalism as the era of 1939-1945.
In another name, in the timeline 1939-1945 is going to overshadow 1914-1939. Rather than 1914-1918 the central victimization narrative in Greece is going to be World War Two.
I hope this explains why in the context of the narrative built by Lascaris I think focusing on Kemal so much makes little sense. He simply is not that important of a character. As Lascaris says, there is no hero worship (which is a good think for Turkey imho). He probably holds a position more similar to Inonu in Turkey today within the scenario world (and I expect him to eclipsed by Ismet in this story). Indeed I bet there is a faction in the CHP of the scenario that does try to promote some kind of hero worship and they are just seen as embarrassing weirdos by the central leadership circles.
