Chapter 275: The Turk's Dilemma
"The Turks are a very strange people. They worship Perun and the Slavic pantheon, yet they also praise Zun. They speak a total of four languages - Hindi, Turkish, Afghan, and Russian. It is only a matter of time before the contradictions within the Turkish state tear it apart and plunge the region into chaos again."
-Chancellor Xu Shichang, on the question of Turkish stability
"As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the Roman people are to achieve victory, all of the Romans, irrespective of nationality, must be united. Clearly, the strengthening of the imperial state and close unity between the German, Greek, Lombard, Norse, Kurdish, Quechua, Muslim, and other Romans is a necessary condition for the victory of the Romans of all of the Reich."
-Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph I
The year 1921 was the first year that the entire world was at peace. The ceasefire to the Kanatan Civil War negotiated by Hindenburg and Ludendorff held, meaning that the kingdom finally got to experience peace. The last remnants of the war ended with the signing of the ceasefire, which was a cause for celebration in some countries and despair in others. While the war itself was over, many countries had other issues to worry about. The Chinese Empire's elections concluded on the second of January, with the Fuxingyundong as usual gaining a majority in the Diet. The Guangxu Emperor appointed Vice Chancellor Xu Shichang as the next Chancellor. Chancellor Xu started setting up his new cabinet at once. Xu appointed General Feng Guozhang as his War Minister, while he appointed Li Yuanhong to a second term as Foreign Minister. In his first speech to the Diet, Xu vowed to follow through on his campaign promises to reform the Diet and expand the electorate, also promising to work together closely with the opposition Guomindang Party, which had gained a substantial number of seats.
Not many other countries were as lucky as China. Danmark and Abyssinia managed to maintain some degree of stability, the former through help from the Roman occupation force and the latter through martial law. It was enough to prevent either of them from descending into civil war, but it wasn't enough to restore the prosperity they had before the war. Mali was stabler than Danmark, as the local Malian army proved to be very effective in crushing dissent; the occupation force was considering lifting martial law in several months. The Triple Alliance likewise declared martial law, but the situation was further complicated when generals started operating independently from Tenochtitlan, eroding the authority of Ocuil II significantly.
India continued to slide deeper into anarchy, prompting many to flee to Indian Africa, where they found that Purandaradasa's government in exile had enough problems of its own. At least the monarchy didn't suffer the rampant hyperinflation brought on by war reparations the republic experienced.
The Turks, though, were a special case. While it looked like the country was mostly stable, as evident from an announcement in late March that electricity had been installed in a majority of Turkish towns, ethnic and cultural tensions threatened to rip apart the young nation. The Indian settlers who made up a vast majority of the country protested their marginalization and discrimination under the new regime. It got to the point that some Turkish politicians even proposed expelling all of the Indians to India and making Turkestan ethnically and culturailly homogeneous. Padishah Osman I, however, had other ideas, and forced legislation through the government granting Indians equal rights with Turks. While this appeased the Indians, the law also brought up other issues when other minorities, both ethnic and religious ones, also demanded the same treatment.
In the Reich, the most important event of that month was the release of a new novel, called
Ulysses. The book, which detailed the life of a regular Hibernian citizen several years before the war, inexplicably became wildly popular among the citizens of the Reich. It was rumored that Angelos himself read the book and remarked that it was "boring, but somehow good." The success of
Ulysses was one sign that the Reich had begun to recover from the war and return to peace. Another sign arrived in April, when the first several thousand troops arrived home. Triumphs were held in the major coastal cities where the troops disembarked. No more families would be torn apart by the war. Now the healing process could begin.
Danmark stabilized itself long enough for King Thorbjorn to accept his country's membership into the International Olympic Committee. Mayapan also achieved relative stability that month. As it was the country least affected by the war, it entered the 1920s in relatively good shape.
In China, the Diet finally passed Chancellor Xu's reforms, eliminating the weighted voting system and equalizing every Chinese citizen's vote. This earned Xu much praise among the common people. With the voting reforms completed, Xu moved on to social reforms aimed at strengthening China's ideological defenses against equalism.
The "Hegemon of the Eimericas" was not spared the horrors of war. While it had successfully stalemated the Romans and Kanatans during the war, the millions of lives it lost took a horrible toll on the Fox Empire. Fox's economy was in ruins, as was the alliance bloc that it led, the Pan-Eimerican Confederation. The people were simply tired and wanted change, no matter how dangerous change was.
Similar sentiments were on the rise in Danmark, though thankfully on a smaller scale. The Norse in the country had been put through humiliation after humiliation, and they did not want to endure the humiliation of being a Roman puppet any longer. Riots throughout the country ensued, and the Regency ordered Thorbjorn to impose martial law. Thorbjorn refused, as he wanted to try other methods of calming down the people first. He appeared before the people of Copenhagen, urging them to overcome their prejudice and hatred and unite against a common enemy - the Soviets. While the Reich was content with humiliating them for a finite amount of time, the Soviets wanted nothing mroe than the complete eradication of Norse civilization and of the Norse faith.
Ludendorff seized on this opportunity to issue a speech of his own, emphasizing the common Germanic heritage of both the Norse and the Germans. While over half of the Diet, as well as Angelos and Hindenburg, denounced the speech as anti-Roman and detrimental to the German peoples' legitimacy as Romans, the speech served its purpose, and the Norse of Danmark calmed down.
In Suomi, Tsar-Khagan Temur III announced that the Finns had recovered the Suomenusko holy sites, boosting national unity significantly. He also warned the people that this development was unstable, and as long as the Soviets existed they had to be ready for war. Thousands of Finnish men flocked to recruiting offices, eager to defend their country. They were promptly sent off to the Soviet border, where the government had built a series of fortifications designed to stop a Soviet invasion in its tracks.
In Turkestan, tensions boiled over for a second time when a politician randomly suggested sarcastically that Osman convert to Zunism, as his ancestors had been Zunist and the Turks had only converted to Slavism under Mongol occupation. Osman mistook the sarcastic remark for an actual request, and before he could act further the govenrment descended into chaos as Zunists, Hindus, and Slavs organized into factions demanding that their faith become the state religion. To prevent the country from similarly fracturing into Slavic, Zunist, and Hindu cliques, Osman declared that there would be no state religion, which caused some generals to launch a coup against him. While Grand Vizier Mustafa Kemal managed to put down the coup, the Chinese government realized that another coup, possibly by Soviet agents, was imminent. Chancellor Xu dispatched Foreign Minister Li Yuanhong to Turkestan to negotiate a solution.
Over the next week, Li met with senior Chinese officials, such as Sun Yatsen, to discuss how to deal with the Turks. No actual Turks were invited to the meetings. On the 1st of May, Li came up with the Treaty of Kabul, in which the country would be partitioned into Slavic, Zunist, and Hindu states, as all of the Chinese viewed the fragmentation of Turkestan along religious lines as inevitable. The borders of these states were initially drawn up according to tribal and religious divisions, but after suspected Soviet agents attempted to kill him he panicked and began drawing arbitrary lines on a map. A copy of the treaty was sent to Osman, who reluctantly signed it and told his court to pack up and move to Samarkand at once, as Ghazna was inside the borders of the Zunist state.
Two new states were carved out of Ghaznavid territory as a result of the Treaty of Kabul: Zunbilstan, based in Afghanistan and headed by a Zunist Ghaznavid prince, and Paksthana, a Hindu state based in Ghaznavid Punjab ruled over by a collaborating Paramara prince. A proposal for a Zoroastrian state carved out of territory seized from Persia in the war was summarily rejected, as that would leave Turkestan landlocked. The result was the formation of a "Persian Corridor," a thin line of Turkish territory stretching south towards the sea. Both countries, which soon signed the Geneva Convention, were recognized and protected by the Chinese Empire. Many Zunists, Hindus, and Slavs found themselves on the wrong side of a newly drawn border and fled on foot. Slavs in Paksthana and Zunbilstan fled to the reduced Ghaznavid Khaganate. Zunists fled to Zunbilstan, and Hindus fled to Paksthana. Thousands of them died in the population exchange, and more died when a second coup resulted in Osman being forced to turn over most of his powers to the hawkish Turkish Parliament, which then declared war on Zunbilstan to conquer Western Afghanistan in violation of the treaty. China intervened on behalf of Zunbilstan, and Chancellor Xu gave the order to mobilize.
Back in the Reich, the average citizen's most urgent concern was not staying alive but rather trying to keep up with recent developments on excavations in Aegyptus. After the dinosaur craze died down because of the war, public consciousness focused on the tombs of the pharaohs. Dozens of tombs ranging from the beginnings of Egypt to the reign of Cleopatra had already been found, their wondrous treasures and mummies shipped off to universities and museums across the Reich.
In China, Chancellor Xu continued his social reforms. Numerous minority groups had petitioned him to recognize and reward their contributions to the war effort. It was well known that Japanese, Burmese, Siberians, Aleutians, Eskimos, Hmong, Khmer, and other minorities had demonstrated their loyalty during the war by enlisting in large numbers and dying in large numbers on the Indochinese, Siberian, and Kanatan fronts. Xu saw no reason not to grant them their demands, and he introduced legislation to grant them full citizenship and equal voting rights. They would be considered as Chinese as the ethnic Han that made up a vast majority of the empire.
In July, the first shipment of Roman economic aid reached Indian Africa, helping to stabilize Purandaradasa's government. A few weeks later, public outcry about Ludendorff's "Germanic speech" reached its peak when citizens protested in front of the Reichstag, demanding that Ludendorff issue an apology for the speech. They felt that Ludendorff had weakened the bond between the peoples of the Reich by emphasizing the Germans' Germanic roots over their Roman heritage. This would be dangerous as it could embolden Soviet attempts at espionage and undermine the links between the Germans and the other groups. The Hohenzollerns could not afford to lose their legitimacy.
Ludendorff reluctantly issued an apology, stating that he was now putting the "greater good" above the stability of Danmark. Thorbjorn agreed with his decision, stating that he could handle the unrest in his domains on his own while the Regency dealt with its own problems. There was also the question of Kanatan Noregr, whose civilians were as angry and humiliated as Thorbjorn's. The former Fylkir told Ludendorff that he would focus on Scandinavian issues and work towards unifying the people in spirit, if not politically.
The Ghaznavid invasion of Afghanistan stalled as thousands of Chinese troops, supported by modern tanks and airplanes, flooded over Turkestan's northern border. The Turks, used to guerrilla warfare, were no match for the Imperial Chinese Army. Those Turks who managed to reach the Afghan border were bogged down, ironically, by guerrilla warfare waged by Afghan insurgents. The forbidding terrain of Afghanistan killed off hundreds of Turks, most of whom hadn't even encountered a single Afghan. There was a reason that Afghanistan was called the "Graveyard of Empires." It had defeated everybody who attempted to control it, including the Turks themselves. And the Afghans didn't really pay much attention to the war; what they were most concerned about was getting electricity for their homes and tractors for their farms.
Meanwhile in the Soviet Commune, Chairman Lenin ordered a purge of all "anti-equalists" and political dissidents. Hundreds of intellectuals, capitalists, and aristocrats were rounded up and either sent off to gulags or shot in the head immediately. As usual, the Reich and every other civilized country condemned this act of barbarism, but Lenin didn't care.
Even though Mayapan largely survived the war intact, there were still some who lost faith in their government. Liberals demanded a return to the 1848 constitution, and republicans demanded the restoration of the ancient Mayapan League. Rising liberal unrest prompted the Mayan government to reach out to Fox and Tawantinsuyu and ask for help in restoring order. Dohumme and Pachacutec agreed and sent some supplies and equipment to relieve the government.
Meanwhile, the Finnish athletes for the 1920 Olympics finally received their medals.
While the dinosaur craze of the late 19th century had largely been supplanted by the Aegyptian archaeology craze, there were still some notable finds in paleontology that made the news. In late August, a Roman scientist working in Mongolia discovered a new species of dinosaur, a small pack hunter dubbed "Velociraptor."
As the summer winded down, the King of Paksthana proudly announced that electricity had been installed in the majority of towns and cities in his country, while Temur opened negotiations with Tsarist Russia, Danmark, and Noregr on the possibility of free trade deals and alliances against the Soviets. The Roman government presided over sweeping reforms of the Athanatoi and the Inquisition. The former, which had disappointed bitterly during the war, was restructured to focus on matters of national security, both within the Reich and abroad. The Inquisition, which had been mothballed ever since the 1880s, was brought out of retirement for a second time. In addition to dealing with traditional religious-based cases and "unexplained" cases, the Inquisition would also serve as a domestic extension of the Athanatoi, supplementing its operations within the Reich so that the rest of the Athanatoi would be able to operate overseas with greater efficiency. While the Athanatoi was nominally under the joint administration of the Bureau of Investigations and the Bureau of Intelligence, it and the Inquisition ultimately both answered to the Bureau of Defense. The Regency appointed a veteran pilot named Hermann Goering, a descendant of the anti-Maximst and anti-Siegfriedist rebel Maximilian Goering, as the Minister of Defense.
In the Eimericas, Sapa Inca Pachacutec III was faced with rising unrest perpetuated by veterans of the war, who felt that the government had stabbed them in the back by signing the Treaty of Neu Brandenburg when they were clearly winning. Meanwhile, K'uhul Ajaw Can Ek III decreed that the Mayan pantheon was the official state religion of Mayapan, and all citizens were now required to at least acknowledge the Mayan gods as existing.
The economy boomed, especially in the Reich. As thousands of men returned home to their families and their jobs, they drove up industrial efficiency significantly, creating prosperity--and decadence--on a scale never seen before. This period eventually became known as the "Roaring Twenties," a period in which citizens got everything they needed and wanted. The government made so much money that it began giving it out to the public and cut taxes to levels not seen since the 1860s.
However, not everybody shared the prosperity equally. The Alliance had to deal with equalist and fascist insurgencies everywhere as local rebels challenged the Huey-tlatoani's authority. Purandaradasa had to worry about stabilizing his new government, deciding to focus on first consolidating his hold on Africa before going after Bose. And equalist unrest within the Reich itself, most likely organized by Soviet saboteurs since the government had already implemented generous social policies for the public, led to Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph I publishing a fifty-page diatribe denouncing equalism and Soviet barbarism. He also gave a speech in front of Hagia Sophia to thousands of devout Christians, urging them to stay strong in the fight against equalism, to support the Hohenzollerns and the monarchy, and to participate in capitalist society so that the Reich can effectively stand up to godless equalism.
In early November, a former ail mail pilot and Luftstreitkrafte veteran named Karl Mansson Lindberg became the first person to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean from Neu Brandenburg to Lisbon. His plane, The Spirit of Saint Wilhelmina, touched down outside of Lisboa on the evening of 1 Nocember and was immediately swarmed by thousands of spectators. Lindberg immediately became a celebrity, being interviewed by every major news outlet and meeting with the legendary fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen himself. The Regency upheld him as an example of the ideal Roman citizen. Lindberg's flight set off a new trend throughout the Reich, as citizens attempted to follow in his footsteps by learning how to fly. Soon flying became even more popular than Aegyptian archaeology, and the easiest way to become a celebrity was to fly over an ocean or two.
With the Ghaznavid capital of Samarkand under siege from the Imperial Chinese Army, Osman attempted to sue for peace, but the Parliament overrode his attempts and continued the war, mostly because politicians wanted to ensure their chances of reelection (Turkestan was in the middle of elections) by presenting themselves as brave patriots who wanted to fight to the death. It was only when the Chinese breached the walls of the city in early November, stormed Parliament, and killed almost all of the politicians present that the surviving politicians agreed to surrender. In the Second Treaty of Samarkand, the Ghaznavid Khaganate recognized the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Zunbilstan and Paksthana and agreed not to invade them again. To ensure compliance with these terms, the Turks were also obligated to cede all territory that Chancellor Xu considered integral parts of China, as well as some additional land that fell within the revised Chinese borders that Foreign Minister Li randomly scribbled on a map. The treaty was designed so that the Ghaznavids would know their place in the world and that China was fully in charge of the destiny of Central Asia.
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I apologize for using the console to change a few provinces, but it was to make sure no states were split between China and the Ghaznavids.
Edit: I realized I just skipped over all of 1920! Expect my next post to talk about what happened in that year. It will come either tomorrow or Wednesday.
