Kaiserreich For Darkest Hour Progress Report 3: The Ottoman Empire
Welcome one and all to the third Progress Report for Kaiserreich for Darkest Hour! As you may recall from the last PR, the next update for KRDH is focused on the Middle East, thanks to a partially completed Ottoman rework from 2016 being graciously handed to us by an old team member! In fact, that is today's nation! The Ottomans!
The Ottoman Empire has been troubled of late. Their entry into the Weltkrieg in 1914 proved to be a mixed bag, where victories at Gallipoli and elsewhere were tempered by military defeat in the Caucuses and The Levant. The Arab Revolt of 1916 would see revolts among some of the Arab population as British forces advanced to aid them. The greatest disasters would come in 1918, when British General Allenby would conquer Damascus after a great encirclement. This caused Panic and Anti-German sentiment to rise throughout the Empire, and only victory in the West in 1919 along with the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha kept The Sublime Porte in the war until it would end in 1921. In the peace The Ottomans would claim rulership over the former Italian colony of Libya, now a restored Tripolitania, as well as suzerainty over the recently independent Armenia.
Ottoman Diplomatic Screen: 1 January, 1936
But the end of the war would not mean the end of the Ottoman’s troubles. Knowledge of the Armenian Genocide had become so widespread that many relations soured, and the carnage combined with the uprooting of many in Eastern Anatolia left the region much poorer than it had been at the start of the war. The Greeks of Asia Minor also abandoned the Porte in the early years of the war, and over 400,000 dead men left the economy teetering. The seizure of Cyprus, The Sinai Peninsula, and Kuwait after the collapse of the British Empire would only exacerbate that. When Egypt declared independence in the chaos, The Ottomans moved into to secure the Suez Canal. Officially to maintain the trade link, unofficially to use it to help rebuild the economy.
The Ottomans were betrayed however. Germany, eager to take as much as they could, moved into the Canal itself and claimed ownership. This turned into a three week standoff between the Kaiserliche Marine and The Ottoman Army that became known as the Suez Crisis. What initially appeared to be a joint German-Ottoman takeover to outsiders evolved into a near total collapse of relations. After weeks of furious negotiation through their old wartime allies in Austria and Bulgaria, The Suez Canal was awarded to Germany in exchange for promised financial assistance to rebuild the Ottoman economy. But the damage was done, and Berlin and Constantinople have not gotten along since.
Isolated, and with relations with Germany cooled over the Suez Crisis, The Ottomans turned to the war hero Kemal for leadership. Playing up his place as a determined servant of the Sultan, Kemal built up a power base around his Ottoman People's Party party that would dominate politics within The Ottoman Empire through the rest of the decade. Two other parties would come into the national spotlight as the strongest opposition parties and the only ones with the hope of dethroning Kemal: The liberal "Freedom and Accord Party" and the much more conservative and pro-Turkish Turanist Party. Kemal’s age is starting to show, and many expect a snap election to be called in the event of his death, and both parties will make their bid for power. It is a matter of them building enough support… or for Kemal’s followers to keep themselves united after his death…
In gameplay terms what this means is that your main job as an Ottoman player during 1936 and 1937 is to balance building the strength of your preferred party with either building up enough support for reform or intentionally failing to. This gives you six domestic paths before WK2: two for each party depending on if they have enough support in the chamber of deputies or not. A lot of events will affect your support one way or another, so be careful balancing immediate gain with long term political success…
On a quick tangent the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies is some of the most interesting code I have seen in Darkest Hour. Based off the Long March events between Communist and Nationalist China in the base game’s 1933 scenario, this content will make the Ottoman’s one of the most unique tags in all of Darkest Hour.
Of course that is not the only thing you will have to worry about. Foreign concerns abound playing as the Ottomans. The Balkan Pact will look to destabilize your Bulgarian frenemy, Russia might become revanchist and look to take Armenia off of you, and of course the Third Arab Congress will likely inflame your own minorities and see your envious neighbors plan to destroy you. How you respond to these will affect both your ability to bring your preferred party to power and your performance in a future conflict with The Cairo Pact.
I hope you have enjoyed this preview of what is coming in 1001 Arabian Fights! Next time we will head west a little bit, to Egypt, The Gift of The Nile. We might also reveal the release date. That would be fun.
Posted Oct 11, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC · edited
Oooh very exciting! This is definitely gonna be one of the biggest content updates!
If you haven't yet, check out Home of the Brave. It adds so much more content to the 2ACW.