Second Empire of Trabzon (1983: Doomsday)

The Second Empire of Trabzon is an unrecognized state unilaterally established in the Eastern Turkish Wasteland by a former army officer active during the vicious border war which swiftly erupted in the Caucasus following the Doomsday catastrophe. He has functioned as the region's de facto monarch since 1983. The fiefdom originally claimed unofficial descent from the former Empire of Trebizond, a medieval Byzantine polity, although Trabzon remains a thoroughly Turkish state. It has been supported by Georgia, Armenia, and other Wasteland factions as an aggressive buffer zone against post-Doomsday's expanding Turkish Sultanate.

Pre-Doomsday
Trabzon, historically known as Trapezus and Trebizond, formed the basis of several states in its long history and was the capital city of the so-called "Empire of Trebizond" between 1204 and 1461. Geographically, the first empire never enveloped more than the southern coast of the Black Sea. Its demographic heritage, however, endured for several centuries following a Turkish annexation in 1461 and a substantial number of Greek Orthodox inhabitants remained in the area until the early 20th century.

Trabzon was the site of several clashes between Russia and the declining Ottoman Empire during World War I, and was occupied by Moscow until 1917. Around this time, the city's Greek inhabitants began pushing strongly for the creation of their own Hellenic state, a move initially backed by the leading Allied Powers. A republican flag, bearing the one-headed eagle of Trebizond's Great Komnenus, was even hoisted. However, this proposal collapsed in the face of Turkish opposition and Trabzon rejoined Istanbul in 1923.

Doomsday
In 1983, Doomsday came suddenly for the Republic of Turkey and enacted a crippling toll. Due to Turkish proximity to the Soviet Union and their NATO status, Ankara and Istanbul, among other sites, were prime targets for Moscow's wrath. In the wake of the resulting nuclear barrage, a desperate border war erupted around the Caucasus region as NATO forces quickly mobilized to halt any anticipated conventional strikes by Soviet units operating from Georgia, Armenia, or Azerbaijan.

With some difficulty, the conflict was eventually shifted into Georgian territory, but desertion, breakdowns in basic communications, and severe logistics problems continued to plague both sides. Mutinies by officers even at the command level were not uncommon; one especially prominent example was an unidentified brigadier general with Turkey's 11th Corps. Deeming the tactical situation untenable and protesting his redeployment into a contaminated zone near Batumi, he achieved notoriety for placing several immediate superiors under arrest and effectively nullifying the 11th Corps as a cohesive formation.

Taking what units would follow him, the man who identified himself only as Altan Sahin withdrew from the Soviet front towards Trabzon, which he occupied shortly after the morning of November 3. Due to the confusion which had already overtaken the city, local Gendarmerie and security forces welcomed Sahin's assistance in restoring order. Nevertheless, the garrison at Trabzon Air Base, which had played a significant role in the Caucasus campaign, refused to accept this illegal authority and stood to arms. They eventually yielded after two hours, fearing that their opponents would deny landing to returning military aircraft.

Establishment
With Sahin presiding as unofficial commissioner, a more rigorous degree of martial law was swiftly applied to Trabzon and expanded into the surrounding districts. One account maintains that during the month over 153 refugees in one district alone were shot for breaking curfew regulations. Looters were similarly killed in public, including fourteen suspected 'bandits' found in possession of police weapons. Attempts by air base personnel to reestablish contact with Turkey's provisional government at Konya were halted; records salvaged from this period indicate that official radio and telephone contact with Trabzon ceased by November 10. Emergency broadcasts, such as reiterations of the infamous Toplama Order, were also forcibly silenced around the same time.



Heavy-handed initiatives to check panic ran their course well in 1984. At this point Trabzon's new leadership had recognized that they would continue to face enemies and Konya supporters among the population and even among the army. Radical Islamists who believed Doomsday to be the final judgment of Allah also posed a worrying (though comparatively minor) threat; soldiers worked to undermine such elements by disarming the civilians en masse. Meanwhile, rule by Sahin had became arbitrary. His administration issued decrees which granted security forces nearly unlimited powers of arrest and confinement to deal with 'anarchists', 'subversives', or others who threatened order. Acts of violence were used to eliminate those believed to be enemies, in particular, suspect members of Trabzon's existing civil service.

This purge inevitably led to a deterioration of local government, especially at the policy level. Senior civilian officials were removed from their posts, and others who were out of suspicion assumed low profiles. Military personnel loyal to Sahin were given the responsibility of managing ministries and departments. Such punitive and pre-emptive acts only induced a general climate of apprehension among the population, but they did succeed in creating precisely the order desired. Next to Konya, Patnos, and other key post-Doomsday centers, Trabzon proved a comparatively uncommon model of urban tranquility.

In late 1985, Altan Sahin gave his first personal address to the city residents at Trabzon's Hagia Sophia church. He extended the existing state of emergency, but also gave vent to his doubts about the survival of the Turkish republic. An aide actually read the subsequent proclamation which bluntly declared independence with the simple words "there are no compromises available". This actually changed relatively little; Turkish flags continued to be hoisted until 1987, when Sahin announced his intention to become Emperor and started constructing a palace for himself at the old Trebizond Castle.

Rise to prominence
Trabzon itself, always an underdeveloped region, was in relatively poor shape following Doomsday. Peasants found themselves forced to share homes with the countless refugees which began to crowd the countryside. In some areas, anarchy persisted. Military bureaucrats who handled administrative tasks and maintained the civil infrastructure were mostly occupying ransacked offices with few chairs, desks, typewriters, or paper. Due to a marked decline in the circulation of existing currency, black markets thrived and inflation skyrocketed. Sahin responded by fixing prices and using his resources to maintain an artificial rate. In an attempt to promote agriculture and stave off starvation, he also exempted those producing cash crops from reaping the meager sums determined by officially depressed prices.



With his establishment of a monarchy in 1987, Sahin, normally a frugal individual, reveled in unprecedented extravagance. The cost of his new residence, added to his absurd coronation, devastated Trabzon's fragile finances. A year later he announced more publicly funded celebrations to commemorate the coronation, and several subordinates mutinied. The conspirators, despite seizing the airport and a municipal radio station, were crushed after some initial skirmishing and their loyalists pursued into other districts with relentless determination. Contingents of Sahin's forces attacked Sinop, where a provincial warlord had granted two treacherous officers sanctuary, while others stole property and destroyed the livelihood of refugee communities. This, in turn, sparked a small series of scaled wars between the command at Trabzon and their independent neighbors in what had become known as the Eastern Turkish Wasteland.

As Wasteland realms and smaller states were subsumed by Sahin, he found himself saddled with the reluctant role of maintaining order in provinces which had been largely without effective government since Doomsday and lacked capable authority. Perhaps this gave rise to his subsequent preoccupation with 'pacifying' chaotic Eastern Turkey whilst casting Trabzon as the benevolent conqueror; the fearsome conventional military capability at his disposal offered Sahin excellent means to further this cause.

Occupation of New Erzurum
In 1991, the newly constituted Trabzon Defence Force began penetrating the vilayets of neighboring New Erzurum. Confounded by difficult terrain and poor maps, expeditionary units soon lost cohesion in the face of stiff resistance from militia leaders with followers both trained in guerrilla tactics and armed with the necessary hardware to mount an effective insurgency.



A costly war in New Erzurum, which lasted for roughly seven years until the end of 1998, resulted in the formation of major rebel armies, a greater unity among the vilayets, and the militarization of local society. The TDF, on the other hand, responded by adopting an aggressive preemptive and counterstrike strategy. Security forces not only hit back hard against guerrilla targets but also attacked what remained of New Erzurum's priceless economic infrastructure by mining roads, sabotaging crude utilities, disrupting communications, and burning fields.

Initially, imperial troops possessed excellent morale; most units were also well trained for their respective missions. Heavy weapons and armour inherited from the pre-Doomsday Turkish Army were old but maintained adequately enough to offer conventional superiority over any potential Wasteland enemy. Yet the situation in New Erzurum considerably deteriorated by mid-1996 as the number of armed statelets with the capacity to resist continued to grow; by 1997 they had even succeeding in expelling Trabzon from the south. From 1998 onwards, the TDF strengthened its presence further north, although even here it remained infeebled by consistent intelligence blunders: Sahin either underrated or failed to recognize the prospect of infiltration altogether until well after guerrillas from southern vilayets were already integrated into new strongholds and began striking targets.

Campaign against Greater Patnos
In 1999, Trabzon again resumed the offensive, this time on the Republic of Greater Patnos, New Ezurum's largest neighbor. The preparations for this latest conflict lasted no more than a week; some have even speculated that Emperor Sahin, by now a committed alcoholic, had made the decision to invade Greater Patnos while intoxicated. Whatever their rationale, Trabzon's High Command soon realized they had provoked a new and powerful enemy.

During the war in New Ezurum, the TDF had established bases at Refahiye to monitor insurgent bases in the nearby mountains. Beginning on December 21, 1998, these outposts were turned into a collective forward operating area; at least twenty-six armoured cars were concurrently flown to Rafahiye town together with additional support and transport vehicles. These formed the so-called "Task Force Kasim". Simultaneously, further to the west another task force, "Damad", was comprised of motorized infantry. They were backed by five M40 Patton tanks, some M-113 armored personnel carriers, and dozens of light vehicles, including jeeps mounted with 105mm recoilless rifles and ATGMs.

Always threatened by the larger presence of Kurdistan to its immediate east, Greater Patnos was unprepared for the sudden blitz. On New Year's Day, 1999, Task Force Damad overran Patnosi border encampments and began advancing in force towards Erzincan. Task Force Kasim likewise drove south from Refahiye, overtaking an airfield at İliç, where it was reinforced by additional armored cars and heavy mortars. By January 9, Damad had reached Erzincan, and five days later Kemah was shelled into capitulation.

On January 20, both Task Forces Damad and Kasim reached the suburbs of Ovacik, where elements of the Patnosi Armed Forces (AFGP) attempted to ambush the approaching columns. This resistance was broken in less than an hour, and by January 15 the TDF had seized Hozat as well. However, exhaustion was taking its toll on the troops as they attempted to meet their wildly optimistic timetables, and immense supply problems - especially with petrol for the vehicles - had further hindered progress. As Damad stalled on Tunceli's outskirts, AFGP forces began streaming into the area to organize a counterattack. For the first time in the operation, TDF soldiers were exposed to artillery fire in the field when defenders raked their advance with rockets. Kasim deployed its scout cars and tanks, which out-maneuvered the opposing artillery and forced the AFGP to withdraw towards Pertek.

By early February, the task forces were preparing to capture Pertek. But their progress had only slowed further since overrunning Tunceli; in a successful attempt to further confound their adversaries the Patnosi had salted the roads with land mines, damaging or crippling several armored vehicles and trucks. AFGP reinforcements and material were also being deployed to the north in larger numbers. The TDF suffered its first setback when it attempted to capture Mazgirt, losing seventeen men and a single helicopter. Regrouping, Damad, Kasim, and a third Trabzon task force, "Eretna", which wheeled towards Pertek from the east. Between 9 and 11 February a vicious battle resulted at the strategically important settlement of Mercinek. After exchanging fire with an AFGP brigade for about forty-eight hours, Eretna launched a massive combined arms assault with heavy artillery and armor support. The unprecedented ferocity of this attack shattered the brigade's flanks and cut the survivors to pieces; the AFGP retreated with heavy losses. Eretna, however, was only able to move another five kilometers before being halted again by tenacious opposition. In retrospect, this would mark the end of the TDF offensive.

Until the end of February, the campaign degenerated into a classic war of attrition centered around Pertek and Bingöl, with neither side able to gain a decisive upper hand. The TDF, despite inflicting severe casualties, was having difficulty adding to its conquests or even holding what territory it had taken. Bloody insurrections in Erzincan were hampering Trabzon's ability to rule her appropriations, and other Wasteland states, such as Elazig and Hatay, were rightly alarmed by the sudden aggression so close to their own borders. In addition, the overstretched task forces had lost their initiative, and the aerial logistics lifeline upon which mobile fronts depended had been derailed by the GPAF's emerging air superiority. On March 1, Sahin personally directed the consolidation of Task Force Eretna and Kasim, which were pulled back to Erzincan the following day. Damad remained until the end of the month, when it, too, was withdrawn. No further major clashes were reported and Erzincan itself was abandoned to approaching Patnosi convoys in April.

Legacy
The undeclared war between Trabzon and Greater Patnos lasted only two months, but had destabilized the political landscape of the Eastern Turkish Wasteland forever. From 2000 onwards, other Wasteland states declined in importance - but the two chief rivals had each finally encountered a force in the other which checked it. Patnos ended Trabzon's wanton aggression; likewise, Trabzon checked Patnosi aspirations for its own desired status as the stable regional superpower. This bitter rivalry has persisted to present day.

The looming Sultanate
After 2001, Trabzon began publishing intelligence on the Sultanate of Turkey, legal successor state to the defunct Republic. The fall of Hatay in 1997 had permanently cemented the Sultanate's power in Anatolia, and sympathies across the Wasteland - including some endorsed by Greater Patnos - for a reunified Turkey were regarded with suspicion. Before 1997 Altan Sahin had made it no secret that he considered himself and Konya's interim government at odds. If anything, this view was radicalized by the ascension of Ertuğrul II - who was regarded as a deranged puppet of "illegal securocrats".



Apart from the Sultanate's ability to threaten the Wasteland economically, Sahin was concerned about Konya's ability to use the more direct methods, such as the annexation of Elazig in 2005. He has since asserted that his government had no intention of interfering in mainstream Turkish affairs but warned that the empire would use its strength if the Sultanate attempted to undermine Trabzon's security. There is no evidence that Trabzon has attempted to instigate a military confrontation, but because of known Sultanate involvement in other Wasteland states and the discovery of undercover agents with the security forces who were charged with gathering intelligence for Konya, regime officials now suspect that their western neighbor is conducting a program of ongoing covert operations against them.

In August 2008 a TDF patrol clashed near Sinop with operatives serving with the Turkish Armed Forces and killed four of them. The Sultanate has also been linked by Sahin to a variety of acts of "terrorism" and "sabotage", including the support of insurgent movements in New Ezurum. The extent of Turkish activities having overt security implications beyond intelligence could not be ascertained, but many international observers believed that the Sultanate was at least in contact with Trabzon's opponents.

As of 2013, the Second Empire of Trabzon remains one of the only three surviving states in the Eastern Wasteland, the other two being Greater Patnos and New Erzurum, which have both accepted aid and arms in varying degrees from Konya. Sahin, who continues to enjoy support from both Georgia and Armenia (although neither have recognized his country or imperial title), has succeeded in preserving a delicate balance against his rivals to prevent the outbreak of any further open warfare.

Military
During the Second Empire of Trabzon's history, it had managed to become the most militarily powerful state in the Eastern Turkish Wasteland. The Imperial Army of Trabzon was actually one of the most professional military forces in the whole of the wasteland states, with high standards of training and discipline. It is also a battle-tested army, fighting in the emperor's long-running expansion wars from the 1980's to the 2000's.

The Imperial Legion
The Imperial Legion in particular showed distinction during the Hatayan invasion of Trabzon, which was becoming to achieve serious military successes against the imperial forces. In just a week of battle, the Legion had inflicted a series of crushing defeats upon the Hatayan army, and further consolidated their reputation as masters of wasteland combat. The Trabzon invasion of New Erzurum also demonstrated how effective and brutal the Imperial Legion could be. During the four-year conflict, the Legion perfected a style of ruthless warfare that inflicted terrible losses on the New Erzurum coalition. Though they were feared by the opposing armies, their lack of proper map information in unfamiliar territory meant they suffered some heavy losses during the attempted occupation. During the Turkish Sultanate's recent operations against Trabzon, the Imperial Legion performed excellently, partly owing to the thorough training, iron discipline, and regimental prides, as well as to the fact that many of the troops were grizzled and hardy veterans.

Government and Politics
In the Trabzon state, the emperor was the sole and absolute ruler. Officials were arranged in strict order around the emperor, and depended upon the imperial will for their ranks. There were also actual administrative jobs, but authority could be vested in individuals rather than offices. The emperor exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, thus wielding political power over the sovereign state and its subject peoples.

The empire has a powerless, solely symbolic, senate and other governmental bodies that the emperor can alter or dissolve at will. Despite effectively being an absolute monarchy, Trabzon is technically a constitutional monarchy due to the existence of a constitution and national canon of law. The Second Empire of Trabzon has also been classified as having possessed an autocratic form of absolute rule by leadership unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other social and political factors within the state. The emperor allows little room for political organisations and has outlawed many political parties and underground partisan organizations.

In 1998, the Güvenlik Polisi violently repressed protests against economic mismanagement and political oppression. Protestors had never managed to gain much ground until then, with a major food shortage and a plague threatening Trabzon. They clashed with the heavily-armored Güvenlik Polisi, who used lethal force to end the protests.

The imperial government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. The nominal empire exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the emperor.

The inhabitants of Trabzon experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control is exerted by means of the Güvenlik Polisi, which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.

Economy
After 1998, the emperor retreated from totalitarian rule and permitted modest expansion of the private sector, allowed some foreign investment, and received needed foreign exchange. The economy was still rated as the least free in the Middle East, and all fundamental market institutions were suppressed. Private enterprises were also often co-owned or indirectly owned by the emperor.

In 2000, contact was first made between Emperor Altan and the Federation of Georgia, which bordered Trabzon to the north. Imperial scouting parties and diplomatic delegations were treated with friendliness by the Georgians, who secured arrangements for trading between the two states to help support the empire's economy, and the Georgians agreed to help the emperor as a trading partner, granting him trade rights in Georgian territory. This provided a greatly needed boost that was especially noticeable for the economic stability of Trabzon 2001-onwards.

The national currency was the Trabzon Asper, based off the Asper, a former Turkish monetary unit, and a silver coin currency, worth 1/120 of a Piastre. By 2009, skyrocketing inflation also had begun seriously impeding economic growth.