Note: The following items came from the never-ending discussions that appear on the Europa e-mail list. If you have access to e-mail, you too can join the great debate by sending an e-mail to europa- request@lysator.liu.se and requesting a subscription in the body of your message.

Q: I hear the Turks can intervene in WitD. What's the story?

A: In War in the Desert, Turkey can intervene in a limited fashion in the Middle East to protect its interests and especially to build a buffer zone around Turkey itself. all territory in the Levant, Iraq (if not neutral), and Iran (if not neutral) within 10 hexes of Turkey.

Turkey as a nation does not mobilize and join one side or the other as a full belligerent in WitD, as the likelihood and consequences of this are far outside the scope of the game. Instead, Turkey can dispatch a Turkish Expeditionary Force, a force comprised of part of Turkey's neutrality watch forces. Depending upon events in the game- such as if the Axis crosses the Suez Canal in force-the players check to see if Turkey intervenes "to maintain order" in nearby regions.

When Turkey intervenes, players check to see against whom Turkey is "maintaining order"- this depends in part on how well Germany is doing in the USSR (good in summer 1941 and summer 1942, bad in winter 1941/42 and winter 1942/43). If Turkey is "maintaining order" against the Allies, the Axis player gets to move the TEF, and vice versa if it's the Axis who is on the outs.

Even if Turkey intervenes, Turkey remains technically neutral in the game, and Turkey itself remains off limits for operations. (As the Axis or Allied player, it's outside your jurisdiction to invade Turkey, and your superiors won't give you permission. Anything larger in scope here is reserved for Grand Europa.)

The reasoning behind the rule is that the establishment of the Turkish Republic after World War I is a complete change of regime from the Ottoman Empire-a sea change for Turkey in many ways as significant as the creation of the USSR was for the former Russian Empire or even as the appearance of the (first) French Republic was for France. Political life and national goals changed significantly under Ataturk, and the government continued Ataturk's course in the 1930s- 40s after his death.

The net effect was that the Turkish government concentrated on trying to reforin and modernize Turkey internally rather than embarking on foreign adventures. Among the new (post Ottoman) ruling elite, there seems to have been little interest in bringing in the former Ottoman (but non-Turkish) territories back under Turkish rule. Thus, I believe any intervention in this region would have been strictly limited and mainly defensive.

Outside the scope of WitD, even Pan-Turanianism (the unification off all the Turkic-speaking people of the Middle East and Central Asia-Turkey, Azerbaijan (both in Iran and the USSR), Turkmenistan, Kazakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uygaristan (Sinkiang)-had no government sponsorship and few influential adherents in the political elite. Thus, a Turkish ideological intervention against the USSR was very unlikely. A realpolitik intervention to help permanently reduce Soviet/Russian power was somewhat more likely--even here, however, Turkey seemed about as eager to join the Axis and enter war as Spain was (that is, not very). Turkish intervention in the USSR thus would have come about had a successful proAxis coup toppled the Turkish government (which seems unlikely) or if it looked almost certain that Germany was going to defeat the USSR (in which case limited Turkish intervention in the Caucasus area would have secured Turkey's interests and improved relations with a victorious Germany).

Q: Wouldn't oil influence Turkish foreign policy-such as the chance to seize nearby oilfields?

A: While Turkey itself produced some oil during the 1940s, Turkey was not a significant source of oil. However, Turkey did have a fair amount of coal reserves. Not surprisingly, the Turkish economy mainly did not use oil but did use coal. Even here, Turkey had modest energy requirements when compared to an industrialized economy: Turkey mainly had an agricultural economy as the following statistics illustrate:

1927
80%of the population was dependent upon agricultural economic activities.
75% of the population was rural.
25%of the population was urban but was mostly involved in services and not industry.

1950

71%of the population was dependent upon agricultural economic activities
68% of the population was rural
32%of the population was urban but still less than 10% of the population was involved in industry

What industry that did exist in Turkey in World War II was mainly light industry. The transport system depended mainly on coal- driven trains and not on oil-driven motor transport. Winter heating of the cities depended upon coal, and indeed Turkish defenses were concerned with protecting the Zonguldak coalfields, since Zonguldak supplied Istanbul (the largest city in Turkey by far) with coal for winter heating.

Turkey thus had little internal strategic interest in oil in the war.

As for external interests, seizing foreign oilfields with the hopes of selling the oil to other nations seems the type of risky international adventurism Turkey shunned--a dubious gain at a cost of making enemies, enemies who if they won the war would call Turkey to a reckoning soon afterwards.