Should the Treaty of Sevres be reimposed?

[Simfan34]

CHP voters are not Greeks (or at least no more than any other Turks), and are probably likely to be even more outraged by such an idea than Erdogan would be.

The angriest people, however, would almost certainly be the people of Hatay, who would find themselves now resident in the earthly hell known as Syria.

This is silly. Very silly. Even by Atlas standards, this is exceptionally silly.

I have always wondered about how they came to agree on the borders given to Armenia in the treaty. Were they making decisions in ignorance of the extent to which the Armenian genocide had changed the demographics of the region, or in spite of them? I could somewhat understand why they would. It is a bit off that you could kill people and take over their land-- but keep the land in a punitive peace. A lack of Poles east of the Oder-Niesse line didn't stop Poland, after all.

[Simfan34]

The only way this could remotely make sense would be if it was meant as an extremely unorthodox solution to the debt crisis where Turkey would have to buy back its lost territories from Greece, thus eliminating their debts (and deeply indebting Turkey instead).

The angriest people, however, would almost certainly be the people of Hatay, who would find themselves now resident in the earthly hell known as Syria.

Syrian Kurds control much of the area currently adjacent to Hatay, it could be arranged for Kurdistan to annex that province as well.

Again, why all the fuss about how the Turks feel about this? Should the US have worried about what the Pakis would think before they threatened to bomb Pakistan to the Stone Age unless they cooperated with the Afghan invasion?

But what have the Turks done to deserve this? Elect Erdogan?

[Simfan34]

This does not really pertain to Turkey, but I really do think Gully is right here (and I have for some time):

At this point I wonder if 'permanently occupy the region' is the only 'solution' here.

I recall a thread where someone (I think it was also Gully) posted an ethnic map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and asked how one would have best "chopped it up"-- and this map didn't even try to deal with Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats, lumping them together. The region-- if not all of West Asia, then at least the Levant (but probably the whole thing, given the war in Yemen for starters)-- can hardly be divided in a manner that will prove satisfactory, especially considering the fluid salience of group distinctions.

Take Yemen; not very long ago its Shias and Sunnis, whose doctrinal differences were less pronounced than was the case elsewhere, were able to live alongside each other in such concord that they even worshipped at each others' mosques. Now they're fighting a full-scale civil war. At the same time, for all the talk against it, events have done little to indicate that dichotomy of "Islamists or autocrats" is inaccurate-- just look at the Egyptian election in 2012 when those were literally the two choices. There has been virtually nothing (aside from Tunisia, if that) to suggest that people in the region will somehow manage to embrace democracy and get along with one another.

There seems to be two options-- either accept "irrational" borders and force people within them to "get along", or return to the multinational empires of old to do the same. Both of which would require direct foreign long-term intervention. Nothing else seems to work.