Rise of Australia

Chapter 907: Strait of Constantinople Issue
For Britain and France, in order to ease the pressure on the Balkan countries, it became very important to find new allies in the Balkan region.

After much deliberation, the British focused their attention on Turkey, which was once the most powerful country in the Balkans and one of the great powers a hundred years ago.

After several Balkan wars, the current Turkey is no longer as powerful as the previous Ottoman Turkey, and the emerging republic is not welcomed by Britain and France.

Especially after the end of World War I, large areas of land and sea, including Constantinople and the Strait of Constantinople, were forced to become demilitarized zones, just like the Rhineland in Germany.

What is even worse for Turkey is that the current Turkey actually controls a part of European territory, namely the Edirne region that it snatched from Bulgaria after the end of the Balkan War.

Although the land area here is not vast, it is located around Constantinople, one of the most prosperous cities in Europe.

More importantly, this is a very scarce plain area in Turkey and one of the most important grain-producing areas in the entire Balkan Peninsula.

If the entire area is a demilitarized zone, it is equivalent to sending fat meat to the mouths of Balkan countries. For the Republic of Turkey, which has completed the revolution, this is undoubtedly a national pain and a problem that the Turkish government always wants to solve.

But Constantinople and the Straits are not only important for the Balkan countries, but also for the Black Sea countries.

Of course, there are not many countries along the Black Sea coast. Russia and Turkey have occupied more than two-thirds of the coastline, and the remaining coastline is divided between Romania and Bulgaria.

Why do the British attach so much importance to Türkiye?
Turkey’s strength is actually far from that strong, but Turkey’s influence on Constantinople is definitely the strongest except for the great powers.

Once Turkey is brought into its arms, Britain will be able to completely blockade the Strait of Constantinople and cut off the route for the Allied Powers led by Germany and Italy to obtain resources.

You know, Romania and Bulgaria are both belligerents. As long as Turkey can join the British side, it means that Romanian and Bulgarian ships will never be able to leave the Black Sea.

Romania and Bulgaria can only trade by land, but these two countries have few neighbors, and a considerable number of them are their enemies.

As a result, the only way for Romania and Bulgaria to obtain resources was to cooperate with the Germans and obtain them through railways.

But the Germans themselves lacked resources. So, apart from Romania's oil which could help the Germans, from other perspectives, Romania and Bulgaria became a burden to the Germans.

More importantly, if Turkey could be allowed to join the Balkan war, the advantages enjoyed by Romania and Bulgaria would disappear.

Turkey has a very small territory in the Balkans, but it owns the entire Anatolian Peninsula in Asia, with a total land area of ​​78.5 square kilometers and a total population of nearly 1700 million.

Such strength is fully capable of matching the two Balkan powers, Yugoslavia and Romania, and can pose a major threat to Bulgaria.

More importantly, Turkey was one of the countries that participated in the division of the Bulgarian-occupied territories. Although these territories were originally occupied by Bulgaria from Turkey, there are still some conflicts between the two countries.

As time entered 1937, negotiations between many European countries and Turkey became the biggest news in the world.

Because of the war in Europe, the place for negotiations was chosen as Istanbul, which is known as Constantinople by the Europeans.

Historically, this meeting actually took place in Montreux, Switzerland, but Switzerland at that time was clearly not suitable for such a multinational high-level meeting, not to mention that it was biased towards the British side.

As the victor of the First World War and one of the four major powers of the Allied Powers, Australasia was naturally qualified to participate in this conference and, as the protagonist, become the final decision-maker together with the British and French representatives.

It is worth mentioning that although Russia, one of the four major powers of the Allied Powers, also participated in this conference, it was obviously not welcomed by Britain, France and Australia.

However, Russia still participated in this meeting because they are also a Black Sea coastal country, and Russia's Black Sea Fleet has always been one of Russia's three main fleets.

But Russia's three major fleets actually have certain problems. Even today's Russia is unable to solve the problems faced by the three major fleets.

Russia's three major fleets are the Baltic Fleet, the Black Sea Fleet and the Far Eastern Fleet, the Far Eastern Fleet is also known as the Pacific Fleet.

The Baltic Fleet was once one of the most important fleets of Tsarist Russia, and its annual military budget was the largest among the three major fleets.

But since the current Russia came to power, the importance of the Baltic Fleet has clearly fallen behind other fleets.

Of course, this is not just the fault of the current Russian government.

During the Russian Revolution, Russia lost a lot of territory, including half of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

This also reduced Russia's coastline on the Baltic Sea from thousands of kilometers to less than 200 kilometers. The remaining coastline has St. Petersburg, the most important city in the former Tsarist Russia and also the capital.

But since the current Russia came to power, not only has the capital been moved to Moscow, but St. Petersburg has also been forced to change its name.

Although the Baltic Fleet has not been removed from the list, its treatment is indeed not as good as that of the Black Sea Fleet and the Far Eastern Fleet. It has gone from being the first of the three major fleets of Russia to the last of the three fleets.

The problem of the Black Sea Fleet is not much different. The environment around the Black Sea is quite complex, and it is an inland sea thousands of kilometers away from the ocean.

If you want to go to the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian Ocean from the Black Sea, you must pass through the Strait of Constantinople, the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar or the Suez Canal.

Since the beginning of the Russian Empire, Russia has dreamed of Constantinople and the Strait of Constantinople. Unfortunately, looking back at the hundreds of years of Russian history, the Strait of Constantinople has never been controlled by Russia, and the Black Sea Fleet has always faced the problem of difficulty in going out to sea.

Compared with the Baltic Fleet and the Black Sea Fleet, Russia's Far East Fleet is actually in much better situation.

Let’s not talk about how Vladivostok, the base of the Far Eastern Fleet, came about, but Vladivostok does have a relatively better environment among the three major ports in Russia.

But it can also be seen from the terrain that Vladivostok is located in the Lesser Sea of ​​Japan and is currently surrounded by almost all the territories of the island country.

This is also the reason why the relationship between Russia and the island countries is not very good. Russia has finally found an ice-free port (actually a semi-ice-free port) in the Far East, but this port is almost blocked by the island countries, and if it wants to go out to sea, it still faces problems similar to the Black Sea Fleet.

Fortunately, compared with Constantinople, the island country is undoubtedly the weakest one. Although the Russian Far East Fleet has been subject to certain restrictions, it is not difficult to go to sea.

It was precisely because of the difficulty of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to go out to sea that Russia attached so much importance to Constantinople that it even participated in the conference as one of the only two neutral countries at the conference, despite the hostility of other countries.

On January 1937, 1, Britain, France, Australasia, Russia, Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Albania and other countries formally participated in a meeting in Constantinople to discuss how to deal with Constantinople and the Strait of Constantinople in wartime.

There is a heated debate over the issue of warships from various countries passing through the Strait of Constantinople.

Of course, the most important dispute was the blockade of the Strait of Constantinople between Britain and Russia.

Of course, Russia does not want to be blocked by the Strait of Constantinople, but the British also want to firmly control the Strait of Constantinople. This is actually a certain contradiction.

However, looking around, all the countries participating in the meeting, except Turkey, are allies of the British, which actually shows who is the decision maker of this meeting.

The Russian representative advocated that the Strait of Constantinople should be blocked and warships of any belligerent country should not pass through it. Countries along the Black Sea and Aegean Sea can pass through the Strait of Constantinople, but they are subject to tonnage restrictions.

Naturally, the British could not accept such a proposal.

Russia is also a country bordering the Black Sea, so there are almost no restrictions on the Russians. On the contrary, Britain itself, as a participating country and not a country bordering the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, will be prohibited from entering the Strait of Constantinople.

In order to prevent Russia from strengthening its position in the Mediterranean and the Balkans, the British put forward their own opinions, insisting on the equal rights of non-Black Sea coastal countries and Black Sea coastal countries on this issue.

In other words, the British representative directly stated that although Russia is a country bordering the Black Sea, Britain should enjoy the same rights as Russia.

At the same time, the British proposed that in wartime, the belligerent countries could freely pass through the Strait of Constantinople. If the strait needed to be blocked, it must be approved by more than 65% of the countries participating in the meeting.

The British proposal seemed a bit rogue to the Russians.

After all, except Turkey, all the countries participating in the meeting are allies of the British. Britain and its allies account for six votes, which is 75%.

This also means that it would be easy for the British to achieve a 65% vote, and the UK could block the Strait of Constantinople with impunity.

But Russia is different. There are very few countries that Russia can win over, and it is even more likely that it only has one vote.

Isn't this equivalent to the fact that after all this discussion, the Strait of Constantinople still fell into the control of the British?

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(End of this chapter)