| Patnosi-Trabzon War | |||||||||
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| Part of Eastern Turkish Wasteland conflicts | |||||||||
 Patnosi tanks stage for a counteroffensive, April 1999. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Empire of Trabzon TİKKO (allegedly)
|  Republic of Greater Patnos
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| Strength | |||||||||
| 6,000 | 10,000-11,000 army troops and gendarmerie | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 2,500 dead, missing, or captured | 500 dead or missing (army casualties) ~300 civilians dead |
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The Patnosi-Trabzon War was fought between two military successor states of Republic of Turkey, the Second Empire of Trabzon and Republic of Greater Patnos over the former Turkish provinces of Erzincan and Tunceli. It lasted a little over three months, from late January to early April 1999.
The war resulted in a catastrophic defeat for Trabzon, and the destruction of much of its armed forces. By contrast, the victory for Greater Patnos proved symptomatic of the much larger recovery of that country after the post-Doomsday years of uncertainty and unrest. Greater Patnos gained increasing diplomatic and military prestige in the aftermath of the war, and joined the ranks of the great regional powers in the South Caucasus.
Trabzonian invasion[]
The self-styled emperor and military leader of Trabzon, Altan Sahin, sent his country down the path of war when in late January 1999 he suddenly ordered military units to occupy a strip of territory he defined as the "Erzincan Strip", including all of the former Erzincan Province and as far south as the Munzur Valley in Tunceli Province. These regions were loosely controlled by the Turkish military remnants based in Patnos, which had set up a civilian government there in 1990. The pretext was to gain a strategic advantage in combating the ongoing insurgency in New Erzurum, which Trabzon had been attempting to occupy since 1990. The secretly prepared and swiftly carried out operation caught by surprise the Patnosi military, which barely had time to send reinforcements to stall Sahin's lightning advance across Erzincan. The initial three columns of invading troops crossed the border on January 20 and consisted over 500 soldiers each - about the size of three composite battalions - and came equipped with tanks, armored personnel carriers, mortars, and field guns.
Altan Sahin, military leader of Trabzon.
In the twenty-first century, Sahin's decision to invade has been hotly disputed by Turkish historians and journalists. Sahin was determined to break the ongoing stalemate with the insurgents in New Erzurum, and was also worried about the political reliability of individual units and commanders which he felt he could excise by sending them on an expedition far from his capital and centers of power along the southeastern Black Sea coast. So while the decision to invade was probably made as early as November 1998, this did not require the immediate start of hostilities. Trabzon was desperately short on resources, especially fuel reserves, and making the logistical preparations for an expedition of this nature should've taken over three months and maybe as many as six. This suggests that the pressure to launch the invasion immediately came from political pressure, in particular the wish to redeploy unreliable units and have a brief and victorious military endeavor boost the emperor's public image at home.
While the Trabzonian troops crossing the border certainly presented a formidable sight to local civilians and the relatively few Patnosi border troops and gendarmerie trying to organize an effective resistance, they were not ready for combat. Sahin and his general staff threw most of the soldiers into new units it had hastily cobbled together from the many formations it deemed unreliable. Units that had never operated together and soldiers that had never been in the same companies or battalions suddenly found themselves forced to operate cohesively. A substantial number were veterans of the fighting in New Erzurum or the pre-Doomsday Turkish Army, but their ranks were also diluted by thousands of teenage conscripts that had received little or no training. These problems were compounded by the lack of a provost corps (military police) or even many non-commissioned officers, meaning officers were forced to impose discipline on the recruits themselves. This quickly failed, and discipline throughout the invasion was almost nonexistent, with the Trabzonian forces suffering from high levels of desertion and acts of looting and brutality directed against the civilian populace.
Battle for Erzincan[]
Under strong political pressure to finish the war quickly, Sahin ordered his troops to storm the city of Erzincan by the end of January. Local resistance had stalled the three advancing columns long enough for the Patnosi soldiers and gendarmerie stationed there to begin fortifying the city, but it was clear that they could not long withstand the onslaught fast approaching. On January 25, the attached artillery - mostly older 105mm howitzers inherited from the pre-Doomsday Turkish Army, opened fire on the city. Mortars firing high explosive shells joined the barrage just a few minutes later. The artillery bombardment leveled several buildings in the provincial capital, left much of the city in ruins, and marked the start of the Battle of Erzincan. However, plans to advance into the city along one main axis of approach supported by two flanking attacks failed. The flanking attacks were not as swift or as coordinated as would've been necessary, and the advance by the Trabzonian troops lacked momentum. Four or five M48 Patton tanks drove into the city center on January 27, with their crews apparently unaware this was the most heavily fortified of the Patnosi positions. The defenders were able to disable the first few tanks within minutes with emplaced land mines, and the others were finished off with anti-tank weapons. For the next three days, the ill-coordinated Trabzonians inexplicably attacked with single platoons and tanks in two or threes, allowing the defenders to isolate and destroy them. Nevertheless, the garrison also suffered heavy losses, and by January 30 the Trabzonians were in more or less full control of the city, with the remaining defenders largely reduced to carrying out isolated sniper attacks.
At the end of January, Sahin believed conditions for a continued offensive could not be more favorable, despite his troops' difficulty in wresting Erzincan from a much smaller defending force. Informants and sympathizers confirmed that Greater Patnos simply did not have enough of a military presence in Erzincan Province to mount an effective resistance once the city had fallen, and many of the police and gendarmerie were simply not willing to fight the Trabzonian army, at least on their own. Sahin naively believed that as word of the fall of Erzincan spread, most of the Patnosi military and security forces would promptly surrender or switch sides, while his men could isolate the few diehards and force them to withdraw to positions outside the cities.
Unfortunately, as a result Sahin and his staff failed to change tactics, and their plans to hurl motorized and armored columns into the urban landscape and awe the defenders into submission promised high casualties in the event that the Patnosi troops had enough manpower and weapons in place to mount a truly determined resistance.
Battle for Tunceli and Patnosi counteroffensive[]
The three Trabzonian columns left behind a skeleton force to police Erzincan and mounted a slow, plodding offensive across the province towards Tunceli. General Hüsnü Çelenkler, the Patnosi chief of staff, had only two light infantry battalions in the northwestern part of the Republic to resist the invasion, and was reluctant to squander them in slugging matches with the massed Trabzonian formations, who enjoyed significant artillery and armored support. Accordingly, he ordered those troops to switch to guerrilla tactics. By retreating into the countryside and climbing into the mountains, the lightly armed Patnosi troops had greater opportunities to inflict casualties on the advancing Trabzonian fighters. All throughout February and March, these units harassed the Trabzonian columns, which repeatedly stalled due to both these attacks and logistical issues, namely lack of food, water, and fuel. The troops spent much of their mornings foraging for supplies and water, and ceased their advance in the late afternoon to construct defensive works.
Hüsnü Çelenkler, chief of general staff in Patnos.
Çelenkler calculated he would need 7,000-10,000 troops to reverse the grim battlefield situation. Because the civilian leadership insisted he could not remove troops from most of the existing formations on the border with Kurdistan, Çelenkler was forced to call up reservists to fill skeleton units, mostly in the northeastern parts of the Republic near the former Soviet borders. He also created a new organization, the 40th Division, to house and command the units going to the northwest. This was made up primarily of elements from the Turkish Army's former 9th Infantry Division, which Greater Patnos had inherited after Doomsday, based in Kars Province. Putting this large force together in a rush proved to be a massive administrative and logistical challenge, especially with the deterioration of much of the region's pre-Doomsday communications and rail infrastructure. It would take Çelenkler almost two months to move all his troops into the 40th Division's assembly points around Tunceli, but rather conveniently the Trabzonian advance was going so slow it would take that much time for the invaders to reach the outskirts of the city. A lack of maps, bad roads, and unexpectedly heavy flooding which further damaged much of the few decent roads stalled them further all throughout March. According to Patnosi sources, the Trabzonian advance would've been even slower if the invaders were not aided by local informants, allegedly from the the Liberation Army of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey (TİKKO), armed wing of the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist. As the Trabzonian forces advanced, TİKKO insurgents seized the opportunity to infiltrate areas abandoned by the Patnosi army and gendarmerie in their rear. Numerous reports soon emerged that the insurgents were trading intelligence to the Trabzonians in exchange for freedom of movement behind their lines.
As the Trabzonian columns finally entered the Munzur Valley and encroach on the outskirts of Tunceli, they drove into ambushes, suffered heavy losses, and could not advance, while anti-tank weapons and mines destroyed much of their armor. The supporting infantry fell behind, remained embarked in their trucks and personnel carriers, or simply evaporated, leaving the tanks vulnerable. Each of the columns soon became immobilized, pinned down by hostile fire, and unable to break through the Patnosi defenses at the city entrances. Meanwhile, fresh troops from Çelenkler's 40th Division were arriving in droves and staging around the city, with orders not to reveal their presence unless fired on. Çelenkler, who had relocated his headquarters to Mazgirt and was not far from the front lines, remained cautious. He was very much aware that Trabzon might still win the war, but only if its soldiers captured the city of Tunceli before more Patnosi reinforcements could materialize in the following days.
Patnosi troops prepare to ambush a Trabzonian tank outside Tunceli, March 1999.
On the evening of March 26, as explosions and tracers lit up the skies over Tunceli and small clashes raged between individual groups of invaders attempting to infiltrate the city and the defenders just as anxiously searching them out, Patnosi President Mehmet Başak flew into Mazgirt by helicopter. Başak reviewed the ongoing military response and approved Çelenkler's plans to amass enough overwhelming force to deliver a crushing blow against the Trabzonians along the nearby front. But that operation required at least a week to get underway, and it was imperative the city hold until then. To this end, the president agreed to bolster the city with a battalion of Patnosi special forces, who were mostly combat-hardened veterans of the Kurdish insurgency. These elite units joined with the city garrison in carrying out fierce house-to-house fighting against the Trabzonian troops, who had lost most of their tanks and artillery and were reduced primarily to carrying out unsupported infantry attacks. While the fighting continued to rage over the next few days, the 40th Division's artillery batteries were taking up positions north of the city and had established radio contact with the defenders. The soldiers inside the city were able to serve as spotters for the Patnosi artillery, and soon a massive and devastating barrage was raining down on the attackers and the exposed riverside highway on which they had concentrated most of their remaining vehicles and rear assets. The shelling scored a direct hit on a field headquarters at the Trabzonians' rear and killed many of the senior officers directing the attack on Tunceli, causing what little coordination between the Trabzonian units to disintegrate and the leaderless troops to despair.
On the morning of April 1, the 40th Patnosi Division began its counteroffensive from the south and the east. This proved to be the final straw. Caught between the relentless advance of fresh attacking Patnosi tanks and the very accurate shelling of their rear, the surviving Trabzonians began a disorderly route. Out of fuel, ammunition, and rations, Trabzonian soldiers were surrendering in the hundreds by midday.
End of the war[]
Çelenkler urged following up with the counteroffensive as soon as possible, and warned Başak that every delay increased the possibility that Trabzon might move more units south rapidly to reconstitute its forces. The president agreed, and the Patnosi troops continued pursuing the retreating Trabzonians after driving them out of Tunceli, with only a small rear guard left behind to round up stragglers and abandoned military equipment. As word gradually spread through the Trabzonian ranks that Patnosi tanks and artillery were counterattacking, whatever remained of the invasion force entered into its final stage of disintegration. Most of the surviving conscripts and reservists had vanished days earlier, and the Trabzonians withdrawing towards Erzincan suffered more losses to desertion than combat. From April 2 to April 7, the Patnosi troops advanced rapidly towards the Trabzonian border in the face of almost zero resistance.
Destroyed Trabzonian military vehicle on the highway north of Erzincan.
News did not reach Sahin that his army had collapsed until April 4. He contemplated making one last attempt to personally rally his troops by making a personal visit to Erzincan, only to be informed that this was impossible because of the rate at which Trabzonian soldiers were abandoning the city. On April 7, Sahin formally recalled all surviving Trabzonian units from Erzincan, although in fact virtually nothing remained to recall. Patnosi tanks reentered Erzincan the following morning and found it deserted. Sahin now had to contend with the very real possibility that the Republic would continue to pursue its advantage and cross into Trabzon. The opportunity for Greater Patnos to permanently redraw the borders of the Eastern Turkish Wasteland seemed irresistible, and Başak would not need to push his military campaign very far it prove he had won completely. Indeed, Çelenkler, who considered Sahin a warlord and a traitor to the Turkish nation, recommended carrying the counteroffensive as far north as the Black Sea. However, he was overruled by Başak, who feared the Republic had overextended its own modest military resources. Çelenkler insisted that the president was making a mistake of halting the advance too soon, when Greater Patnos had the means to occupy Trabzon's "empire" and depose its authoritarian leader. When Başak again refused, Çelenkler voluntarily stepped down from his position as chief of the general staff.
In his memoirs, written two years before his death in 2010, Çelenkler reiterated that Greater Patnos had the means to destroy the Trabzonian regime, but the sole policy of wanting to return to the status quo ante bellum had prevented the civilian leadership from taking advantage of the decisive victory granted to them by the military.
Aftermath[]
The war had the effect of galvanizing the Turkish population of Greater Patnos. Ever since the independence of Kurdistan in 1984-85, nothing but bad fortune seemed to have plagued the country, including economic woes, a refugee crisis, and a sense of national demoralization. The victory over Trabzon was able to overcome the regional and domestic image of Greater Patnos as a weak and helpless rump state. Başak stated in a later interview that the war allowed Greater Patnos to join the ranks of the great powers in the South Caucasus, which culminated in its acceptance into the Mediterranean Defense League and discouraged other major powers such as the Sultanate of Turkey from dismissing the Republic as a weak and submissive actor in regional affairs.
Although the war provided a much-needed boost to national morale, a host of new problems confronted Patnos after its victory. Erzincan was badly damaged, and the Republic lacked the means to rebuild the city. Most of the civilian population was evacuated and did not return, and those that remained were mostly the elderly and unemployed. To this day, much of its infrastructure remains in ruins, and many residents are still living in war-damaged buildings without running water or electricity. The TİKKO insurgency also made a major resurgence as a result of the war, since the Patnosi army and gendarmerie ceased routine counter-guerrilla operations while they were being mobilized to stop the Trabzonian invasion. By the time the Trabzonians were defeated, TİKKO insurgents were active in more parts of the Patnosi countryside - particularly around Tunceli - than they were prior to the war. They were also flush with war materiel, thanks to raids on abandoned gendarmerie and army outposts behind Trabzonian lines, and allegedly arms received directly from the Trabzonians as well. Trabzon seems to have established covert ties with TİKKO's leadership as a result of the war, due to a common animosity towards the Patnosi government.
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