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| Capital | New Erzurum | ||||
| Largest city | New Erzurum | ||||
| Language | Turkish | ||||
| Religion | Islam | ||||
| Ethnic Group | Turkish | ||||
| Demonym | Erzurumans | ||||
| Government | Municipal Confederation | ||||
| Legislature | Sendika | ||||
| Population | 240,000 people | ||||
| Established | 1991 | ||||
| Organizations | Mediterranean Defense League | ||||
New Erzurum is a post-Doomsday Turkish survivor state in Eastern Turkey, also known as the Eastern Turkish Wasteland. After the collapse of the Turkish Republic during Doomsday, much of the former Erzurum Province experienced seven years of autonomy and a lack of any centralized government from 1983 to 1990. In 1990, the armed forces of the neighboring Empire of Trabzon invaded the region. A full-fledged military conflict resulted, with the Trabzonians deploying indiscriminate violence and virtually the entire male population of military age mobilizing into insurgent groups. Local militarized communities, known simply as vilayets, mushroomed over the course of the war and later formed the basis for New Ezrurum's loosely federated statehood.
During the 2000s, the vilayets were armed and bankrolled by the Sultanate of Turkey and Republic of Greater Patnos to weaken Trabzon, which they regarded as their chief military and political rival. New Erzurum became a member of the Mediterranean Defense League in 2008, and has continued to pursue close security ties with the other member states to ensure its sovereignty.
Name[]
The name "Erzurum" derives from "Arz-e Rûm" (literally The Land of the Romans in Arabic). To the Arabs, the city was known as Ḳālīḳalā (which was adopted from the Armenian name Karno K'aghak'). The town was known in Roman and subsequently Byzantine times as Theodosiopolis, acquiring its present name after its conquest by the Seljuk Turks following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
The modern pseudo-state of New Erzurum takes its name from the Vilayet of New Erzurum, the largest of the vilayets and the seat of the Sendika.
History[]
Pre-Doomsday[]
Erzurum, originally known as Karanitis and Karin, was historically part of the ancient kingdom of Armenia before becoming a hotly contested borderland between the Roman, Byzantine, and Sassanid Persian empires. Beginning in the mid third century, the region was under heavy Sassanid influence; however, it was periodically retaken by Byzantine armies until the seventh century, when it also became heavily contested by the Arab caliphs. The rise in prominence of the neighboring kingdom of Georgia and the westward migration of Seljuk Turks also introduced two new actors to the area, much to the chagrin of successive Byzantine emperors who sought to maintain control of the area and its regional capital - Theodosiopolis - due to its proximity to strategic trade routes. Erzurum was conquered by the Georgians in the tenth century, retaken by the Byzantines, then mostly conquered again by the Turks after defeating the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV at nearby Manzikert. Thereafter, the region became part of the Saltukid beylik, although the Byzantines managed to preserve their control of Theodosiospolis itself.
In the early thirteenth century, the region and city were annexed by the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and renamed Erzurum, only to be shortly overrun and thoroughly devastated by subsequent Mongol, Turkmen, and Safavid Persian invasions. Erzurum became part of Persia for nearly three centuries until it was captured by the Ottoman Empire in 1514. Thereafter, both the region and city periodically traded hands between the Ottomans and the Safavids until the rise of Russian military preeminence in the region during the nineteenth century. The Russians briefly occupied Erzurum once in 1829, and again in 1916. Turkish authorities supervised the wholesale extermination of the region's ethnic Armenian population between 1914 and 1916; in retaliation, Armenian militias killed a number of Turkish civilians during the Russian occupation.
On 23 June, 1919, a congress of fifty-six Turkish nationalists from the Ottoman vilayets of Bitlis, Erzurum, Sivas, Trabzon, and Van under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk convened in Erzurum for the Erzurum Congress, which iterated the support of eastern Turkey for the Turkish nationalist movement and Turkish War of Independence.
During the Cold War, Erzurum became the site of Atatürk University, one of eastern Turkey's most prominent educational institutions, and a major Turkish Air Force base, which also doubled as a hub for NATO military activity.
Doomsday[]
As with the rest of the world, Doomsday came swiftly and caused great destruction in the area. The province of Erzurum suffered heavily on Doomsday due to the presence of a major NATO air base in its capital. The nuclear strikes focused on the Erzurum Airport, which was also a NATO military base and the location of the Turkish southeast air command. The airport was hit with a 100 kiloton nuclear warhead, which annihilated the base and much of the surrounding area. The shock-waves from the blast, followed by the ensuing firestorm, devastated the city proper and sent many of its surviving residents fleeing into countryside. It is estimated that over 72,000 people in Erzurum died in the blast and ensuing firestorm. Surviving Turkish military forces in the area attempted to maintain order while deploying forces towards the border to defend against the Soviet invasion, however, the Soviets being the greater priority left many of the survivors without substantial aid from the military.
Rise of the vilayets[]
In the months after Doomsday, the outskirts of Erzurum became a major center of Turkish military activity thanks to the distant war with the Soviets on the border. However, as supply lines and central governance broke down, much of the Soviet military withdrew and Turkish Army units began to filter back towards Konya, per the Toplama Order. Other units, weakened and demoralized, scattered throughout Erzurum Province and joined with various communities struggling to survive. With the disappearance of centralized military authority in Erzuzum Province, many of the survivors sought refuge in rural villages and townships. Faced with waves of refugees, rogue Turkish and Soviet marauders in the countryside, and famine, these communities - commonly described as vilayets (the terms sanjaks, kadiluks, kariyes, and kazas were also used depending on the size of the community and the whims of its leaders) - soon became highly militarized. The vilayets mostly coalesced around preexisting settlements throughout Erzurum Province, although they could vary greatly in size from several dozen inhabitants to over a thousand. Local military organization was uncomplicated, developing on the basis of the vilayet leader (vali) and whatever armed men he could muster. Most of the vilayet militia troops lived at home, were linked to their leaders by familial bonds or another personal patronage network, and planned operations out of community centers or their valis' houses.
Many Erzuruman communities militarized for their own survival after Doomsday.
For years after Doomsday, these communities fought with each other for survival. After the years of famine subsided and the population stabilized, the warfare and competition for resources only increased. The region continued to suffer from tremendous problems; nearly all its key infrastructure was in ruins from the nuclear exchange and subsequent years of neglect. Erzurum was fraught with corruption, petty and organized crime, violence, warlordism, and overall economic backwardness. The formal economic system and financial institutions were never restored, so Erzurum reverted to a shadow economy, in which the vilayets traded with each other and external parties by bartering raw materials. Criminal activities spread throughout the former province; in particular, extortion and kidnappings became rampant. Another dilemma was the rise of Islamic extremism. Like many parts of the world after Doomsday, Erzurum experienced a period of religious revival and the rise of fundamentalist sects. Members of the Muslim Liberation Army who had settled in the region also exerted further religious influence. MLA members not only sold their services as military training instructors to the vilayets, but also offered religious education. During the late 1980s, the process of religious revival involved the construction of mosques, religious schools, and organizations; dissemination of religious texts, and revivalist Muslim communities formed their own vilayets.
Erzuruman vilayets feuded over territory, religion, and the few valuable marketable commodities, such as prime agricultural land, which they could either exploit directly or tax. They survived on material contributions from whatever they could produce, and brigandage. All the vilayets levied taxes in goods from shopkeepers, farmers, and artisans. These included tea, tobacco, and hazelnuts, cigarettes, shoes, grain, and recyclable scrap metal. Some vilayets also fought each other for access to the borders of neighboring states, such as the Empire of Trabzon, where the main source of income was not agriculture but lucrative smuggling schemes. Theft and looting were also less sophisticated forms of earning income. Rival vilayets appropriated shipments of smuggled goods from each other by hijacking them in transit and reselling the goods themselves.
Trabzonian invasion[]
The vilayets' smuggling of goods both out of and into Trabzon near the border regions soon attracted the attention of that country's military leader, Altan Sahin. The smuggling of Trabzonian hazelnuts and tea into Erzurum, where they were traded to the vilayets at a mark-up, especially incensed Sahin, who had imposed a military purchasing monopoly on cash crops. Sahin seized the opportunity to publicly demonize the vilayets, launching a propaganda blitz for several months throughout 1989 and 1990 through his own state-controlled newspapers and radio. The Trabzonian public was inundated with official communiques emphasizing that warlords, bandits, and brigands to the country's south posed a threat to law and order, and needed to be dealt with. In May 1990, Sahin stated in a public address that he was the only man capable of ridding the trouble "southern provinces" of warlords who had turned their weapons on their own people, and had sanctioned the use of direct military force. Insisting that the war would be over in two weeks, Sahin launched a full scale invasion of Erzurum with thousands of Trabzonian troops before the month had ended.
The Trabzonian armed forces quickly overran much of the northern vilayets, destroying their fortifications and disarming their local militia forces. The vilayet leaders and their militias who wished to continue their resistance fled into the mountains and conducted a guerrilla campaign. If Sahin had attempted to use economic aid to win over the civilian population of the areas he initially occupied, the remaining vilayets might have capitulated under popular pressure. Instead, the Trabzonian troops behaved like a foreign occupying army and treated local residents indiscriminately as enemies. Drunken and undisciplined soldiers robbed, harassed, and otherwise mistreated the civilian population while plundering the occupied vilayets for anything of value. After the soldiers had continued on their way, most civilians were rounded up by Trabzon's State Security Service and herded into "filtration camps" to prevent them from passing information about troop movements to the remaining vilayets.
The vilayets quickly recognizing the existential threat posed by Trabzon, and previous rivalries, feuds, and ideological or religious differences were forgotten as they mobilized to resist the invasion. In July 1991, representatives of the twelve largest vilayets met to try and establish a united front against the Trabzonians. They established the Coalition Sendika, initially a military council to coordinate joint operations, and proclaimed their independence as the State of New Erzurum to de-legitimize the invasion. While the vilayets' declaration of independence and proclamation of the new state was an important symbolic move, the Coalition Sendika was never a centralized governing body - even with regard to the war effort. Defensive military operations were largely still conducted by individual vilas acting on their own calculations. Nevertheless, the Coalition Sendika proved useful for bringing the vilayets together to plan major counter-offensives, which demanded much more intense cooperation and coordination. It was the council's ability to coordinate such offensive actions that permanently stalled the Trabzonian invasion.
Erzuruman refugees flee the Trabzonian military offensive.
Trabzon initially committed anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 troops, increased later to 6,000 troops, then finally 8,000 - the most it could expect to sustain for extended operations beyond its own borders. Even with frequent personnel rotations, this limited expeditionary force was insufficient to conquer all of Erzurum Province although it assured control of a few major roads and municipalities. The Trabzonian troops initially operated in large conventional armored and mechanized formations to crush the vilayets. But faced with the rugged mountainous terrain and the effective guerrilla tactics of the vilayets, they soon reverted to mobile assaults by smaller motorized or airborne infantry units. Though they possessed superior firepower and war materiel, the Trabzonians simply lacked the numbers to control the countryside or to prevent guerrillas from infiltrating behind their lines. Their priority soon shifted to defending the towns they had taken, roads, and key facilities while subjecting the rest of the province to periodic sweeps and air and artillery strikes. Occasionally Trabzonian mobile forces could besiege and capture a new town or village, but a prolonged occupation required more manpower that they did not possess.
On November 11, 1997, Altan Sahin declared Erzurum "pacified" after a recent campaign of ineffectual Trabzonian ground and air attacks. He traveled to northern Erzurum to meet with Trabzonian soldiers and congratulated them on their ostensible victory, which was derided as a publicity stunt by the Erzuruman leadership. Thereafter, the Trabzonians abandoned all attempts to operate south of the former city of Erzurum, leaving most of the vilayets with their independence intact. Trabzon retained its control of northern Erzurum Province, which was largely depopulated and turned into a demilitarized buffer zone. While minor confrontations have continued until present day, and each side still controls territory claimed by the other, these have not escalated into a resumption of open warfare.
The Erzurum Accords[]
Throughout the war, the vilayets' cooperation on administrative matters and trade had increased along with coordinated military operations. However, when the conflict froze, the Coalition Sendika found itself contending with serious problems. Major internal divisions and power struggles resumed, resulting in the unwillingness of some vilayets to continue cooperation with each other. Without a common enemy, the rival vilas were unable to settle on an acceptable power-sharing arrangement, and skirmishes flared repeatedly between vilayets who were allied with each other in various and constantly shifting combinations. It soon became clear that the Coalition Sendika simply could not aspire to the role of a national coalition government. Control of the various parts of New Erzurum remained divided among the competed groups. The country returned to its prewar status quo of an armed camp, only with power and water supplies, and food cultivation, further disrupted by the war with Trabzon. Massive destruction had been wrought on whatever infrastructure had survived since Doomsday, and more than half the villages with a population under five hundred abandoned or destroyed, sections of larger towns were reduced to rubble, roads turned to rough dirt tracks, and orchards, pastures, and fields left unsafe due to unexploded ordnance and land mines.
It soon became clear that New Erzurum was a state that was simultaneously suffering from severe state failure - it lacked functioning, viable political institutions or a unifying political system, with the population itself pushing back against the very notion of a central government. Indeed, the vilas ruled bereft of the structures held elsewhere to be essential in most central governments. Whereas in other regions, such as Trabzon, the vacuum of power left by the collapse of the pre-Doomsday Turkish government was quickly filled by a new regime, in Erzurum Province society re-organized itself and supplanted the state altogether. By the late 1990s, most Erzurumans based their identity on their local community and leaders, and the notion of a greater national identity had become a barren concept.
Since local communities had reemerged as the basis for identity and governance, it became clear that the best the vilas could hope for was mutual amicable relations among themselves to oversee the reconstruction of the country. The reintegration of society, at least under the terms of a strong nation-state, was impossible. Since the vilayets were unable and unwilling to cede control over their local areas to a national government run (at least in part) by members of other communities, alternative power-sharing arrangements were discussed. The Coalition Sendika convened six times throughout 1998 to discuss these matters, and at the end of the year representatives of the twelve original vilayets - now joined by seven others - signed the Erzurum Accords. These re-affirmed Erzuruman independence, albeit under the terms of a loose confederation based on the principles of community self-governance. The freedom of the vilayets themselves to be able to manage their own local affairs, rather than relinquishing that right to other actors or governing bodies, was held sacrosanct. At the same time, the Coalition Sendika was empowered to take out foreign loans and create communal funds for the re-vitalization of infrastructure and reopening of schools and mosques in all the vilayets. The vilayets retained obligations of mutual defense in the event of foreign aggression.
Alliance with Patnos[]
The Patnosi-Trabzon War of 1999 persuaded New Erzurum to seek a political and military alignment with the neighboring Republic of Greater Patnos. On the one hand, the Republic's decisive victory had placed it in a powerful position relative to its neighbors. Meanwhile, Trabzon's losses of troops and materiel in that conflict had seriously weakened its military forces, and spelled an end to any future plans for the renewal of hostilities with New Erzurum. After the war, Patnosi foreign policy was characterized by attempts to keep Trabzon, which sought to rebuild its military with Armenian and Georgian support, from posing a threat to its stability and newfound position of strategic dominance. To this end the Patnosi government considered the cultivation of New Erzurum as a friendly buffer state as vital to its own national security goals.
In 2002 Patnos formally recognized Erzuruman statehood and announced plans to provide the country with political, diplomatic, and material assistance as needed. By recognizing New Erzurum, Patnos rhetorically and diplomatically reinforced the former's status as outside the authority of Trabzon. It also contributed heavily to the Coalition Sendika's communal funds, offering to finance much of the expanded administrative budget with its own subsidies and loans. The Republic provided expertise by training Erzuruman civil servants to fill key administrative posts in several vilayets. Most importantly, Patnos wished to help the vilayets obtain modern military capabilities. Military kit, arms, and ammunition poured into the militias, and attempts were made to organize them into a cohesive defense force. Patnosi military subsidies to New Erzurum reached half of the Erzuruman GDP by 2007.
In 2008, New Erzurum was admitted to the Mediterranean Defense League.
Government[]
New Erzurum is a decentralized confederation based in the former Turkish province of Erzurum. After Doomsday, the city of Erzurum itself was destroyed, but the surrounding communities slowly evolved into a network of fortified hamlets, known as vilayets. Each vilayet became a self-sufficient community with its own government system, militia, and public services. In the years after Doomsday, these vilayets came together and united into a coalition to deal with mutual threats. The nineteen vilayets are: Aşkale, Çat, Horasan, Hınıs, Ilıca, İspir, Olur, Oltu, Karaçoban, Karayazı, Köprüköy, Narman, Palandöken, Pasinler, Pazaryolu, Şenkaya, Tekman, Tortum, and Uzundere.
The coalition is structured as a single decentralized, mixed legislature that serves both legislative and executive functions. The Coalition Sendika, which is the Turkish word for "union", is composed of 19 delegates, one for each vilayet within New Erzurum. Each delegate serves as a representative, legislator, and executive for their vilayet in the confederation government.
Politics[]
Each vilayet is politically autonomous with the very little internal interference from the Sendika. The governance structures of the vilayets vary widely from open democracies to autocratic dictatorships. However, a basic acceptance of the rights and duties of the citizens of all vilayets has been established to enable some commonality of governance betweeen the vilayets.
The Coalition is largely composed of the Sendika and its subsidary bureaucracies. The Sendika is composed of the voluntary delegates of the 19 vilayets. Each delegate is appointed or elected by their respective vilayet government and may be recalled at will. Each delegate exercises legislative and executive powers within the Sendika and serves on various committees. The size of the delegation may vary with each vilayet, but the voting power of all vilayets is equal. Typically, to avoid disputes, the Sendika operates on the basis of consensus and avoids most internal political issues. It mainly serves as a body to control foreign policy and overall military coordination.
Economy[]
In the early 1980s, Erzuruman society was split between a largely rural, subsistence economy and an urban economy dependent on the pre-Doomsday Turkish state's links to the international financial systems and market. About 85% of the Erzuruman population were connected to the urban economy, controlled largely by the government in the provincial capital. In rural areas, the cash economy was still not well developed, and the private sector was largely confined to informal trade. With the destruction of the city of Erzurum during Doomsday, only the rural economy and private sector remained. Tens of thousands of urban dwellers who survived the bombs lost their homes, cars, valuables, jobs, and savings. With no sources of income, they were reduced to poverty and often starvation or malnutrition. Most production facilities were obliterated, and the few properties that survived the nuclear exchange intact were looted. A great deal of salvage was pursued by those lacking recourse to agriculture or sophisticated smuggling operations. The salvage of steel frames, telephone cables, industrial equipment, and nonferrous metals from abandoned buildings was common in the years following Doomsday. Many damaged buildings of architectural value were also taken apart for building materials that could be resold.
The vilayets were able to do little, if anything, to rebuild the pre-Doomsday industry while they were focused on consolidating and preserving their own independence. The economic collapse of prewar industry precipitated by Doomsday was further exacerbated by the destruction wreaked on many towns and villages by the Trabzonians, the damage caused to roads and bridges, the destruction of forests, the spoiling of arable fields, and contamination of water sources.
One of New Erzurum's many informal markets.
Petty trading on a local level within and between the vilayets formed the cornerstone of New Erzurum's economy for almost a decade after Doomsday. There were many traders, since anybody who could produce or acquire something promptly offered it for sale or barter, wherever there might be any demand - from private shops to market stalls and road sides. The energetic barter exchange simulated economic activity and gave the appearance of a market saturated with goods, chiefly at the level of street trade. The principal centers of commerce were the central markets established in virtually every settlement. Many individuals with weapons became vilas this way, since these central markets could not function without armed security, and went on to tax the traders in exchange for their services.
The transit trade - or smuggling - emerged as a major sector during the late 1980s. The most lucrative schemes involved smuggling goods in and out of neighboring Trabzon. Major trucking operations carried rubber tires, salvaged automotive parts and transistors, and fuel from Patnos, Azerbaijan, and Iran into Trabzon, returning with Trabzonian hazelnuts, tobacco, cigarettes, and tea. Vilas fought for control of various sections of the road network that would enable them to tax this trade. Although this was a significant income for New Erzurum, it is far less than the amount of Trabzonian duties that would be owed on those imports, so to individual smugglers the long-distance contraband routes were still profitable. The Trabzon transit trade experienced a severe disruption due to the invasion, but resumed with the cooperation of corrupt Trabzonian military officers after the conflict froze. The purchase of duty-free goods in Patnos by Erzuruman traders who ship them back to New Erzurum for smuggling into Trabzon remains pervasive.
The lack of any centralized bureaucratic oversight in New Erzurum has made it possible to transform it into a base of operations for organized crime. As early as the mid 1990s, the country had emerged as a center of counterfeiting and the production of false documents. After Greater Patnos converted to the Turkish Lira during the late 2000s, it became inundated with millions of counterfeit Lira bills of Erzuruman manufacture. The Central Bank of Trabzon, which used the Lira for covert and gray market foreign transactions, also lost millions of Lira through forged letters of credit printed by Erzuruman criminal groups.
Subsistence agriculture meets the basic food needs of New Erzurum, although farm production was severely curtailed by Doomsday. Most of this food was produced by private gardens, small rented farms, and a few large commercial farms that had survived the nuclear exchange - although these suffered from shortages of fuel and equipment. The commercial farms were quickly divided among private owners or requisitioned communally by individual vilayets. In the smaller villages and rural areas, the local vilas seized control of all arable farmland and made their chief profits off selling hay crops and beehive honey. Other vilas did not involve themselves in agricultural production and trade directly, limiting their role to levying taxes on the farmers and traders who purchased their produce. During the 2000s, most of the vilayets signed agreements with Patnosi companies to purchase and market the agricultural produce in areas under their control.
The Coalition Sendika has not developed a state budget, and therefore has not controlled its income or expenditure. Because there is no centralized collection of taxes, the closest thing to a state treasury it possesses are communal funds used for infrastructure projects. These funds have been occasionally used to create new industrial enterprises throughout the vilayets, including prefab construction plants, mills, cardboard factories, and sugar refineries.
Military[]
Every vilayet has an irregular militia made up of local residents.
The New Erzurum Defense Force is not a regular standing military, but is composed of militias raised by the country's 19 individual vilayets. In addition to the insurgent forces that mobilized in order to fight the Trabzonian occupation, countless new militias also formed after the conflict was frozen. The creation of an ostensibly unified defense force command did not occur until 2009, and then mostly under pressure from the Turkish and Patnosi governments to give these armed groups some form of state legitimacy. In reality, however, they primarily defended the interests of their local leaders, members, or social base, while largely evading centralized state control. The vilayets' competition over equitable access to military aid from New Erzurum's allies has been a source of tension.
The vilayet militias are equipped with small arms and some light artillery inherited from local military bases after Doomsday. After the disintegration of Soviet rule in the Caucasus and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the vilayets were able to arm themselves with a few heavy weapons smuggled through the porous ex-Soviet borders into Greater Patnos. Since the early 2000s, they have been partly rearmed with old and obsolete weapons donated by the Sultanate and Greater Patnos, as well as small quantities of more modern arms supplied through the Mediterranean Defense Conglomerate (MDC).
New Erzurum does not possess an air force, being dependent on the air forces of the neighboring Sultanate and Greater Patnos to ensure the security of its airspace. The acquisition of aircraft or air defense systems is not viewed as a priority, since the country's likeliest opponent - Trabzon - has not possessed a viable air force of its own since the early 2000s.
International Relations[]
New Erzurum has limited relations with other countries. Its chief geopolitical ally is the Republic of Greater Patnos, which has effectively subsidized Erzuruman statehood. Both Erzuruman politicians, as well as the people of the region, see good relations with Patnos as a guarantee of their country's continued existence, and as a factor strengthening the social standards of their society. The intensely developed bilateral relations between the two nations relate primarily to national defense, as well as economic, social, political, and diplomatic cooperation. Patnosi officials and foreign policy commentators have continually harped on New Erzurum's status as an effective buffer state between the Republic and Trabzon.
Due to the small size of its internal market, New Erzurum focuses primarily on exports of goods to foreign markets, namely Patnos and the Sultanate of Turkey. Due to an economic blockade imposed by Trabzon, trade partnerships with New Erzurum's other two neighbors are necessary to ensure export routes for Erzuruman goods. Beginning in the early 2000s, Patnos and New Erzurum established a joint customs union to further facilitate the free movement of goods and services, labor, and capital.
Both Patnos and the Sultanate of Turkey vastly increased their economic support for New Erzurum during the late 2000s. New Erzurum's subsidies and loans from its two allies grew to almost 200 per cent of its GDP by 2014. The main bulk of these funds went towards rebuilding the country's devastated infrastructure, which had been almost totally destroyed by Doomsday and the subsequent Trabzonian invasion, with reconstruction efforts consuming up to 50 percent of New Erzurum's GDP by 2020. Targeted subsidiaries and loans are the chief manifestation of Patnosi financial support for New Erzurum. Since 2008, Patnos has paid out allowances for the pensions of elderly Erzuruman citizens. In addition, it has also supported healthcare by financing new hospitals and donating modern equipment, and the education system by financing the construction and renovation of schools. Around half the Erzuruman public debt is currently owed to Patnos, and debt servicing is a heavy burden for the meager domestic budget.
As New Erzurum does not possess its own diplomatic or consular services, Patnosi embassies and consulates abroad represent Erzuruman interests. Dual nationality is not prohibited, and most Erzuruman citizens obtain Patnosi passports for travel abroad.
Transnational Issues[]
There are unconfirmed reports that the Muslim Liberation Army (MLA) has set up training camps in New Erzurum, along with a growing logistics and command network. How widespread the support the MLA is receiving is unknown. It could range from individual vilayets to the entire New Erzurum government. Many believe the timing of the establishment of these camps corresponds to the detente between the Sultanate of Turkey and Iran that was rumored to have occurred during a series of secret negotiations in 2010.
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