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Republic of Greater Patnos
Timeline: 1983: Doomsday

OTL equivalent: Republic of Turkey
Flag of
Flag of Greater Patnos
Location of
Location of
Capital Patnos
Largest city Bingöl
Other cities Kars, Erzincan, Tunceli, Iğdır, Ağrı, Muş
Language Turkish
Religion
  main
 
Sunni Islam
  others Armenian Christianity, Kurdish Alevism
Ethnic Groups
  main
 
Turks and Kurds
  others Azeris, Armenians, Iranians
Government Constitutional republic
Population 2,150,000 (2023 est.) 
Established 1985
Independence from Republic of Turkey
  declared November 9, 1997 (declaration of republic)
Currency Lira
Organizations Mediterranean Defense League

The Republic of Greater Patnos, also known simply as Patnos, is a state in the Eastern Turkish Wasteland. It was established by the remnants of the Turkish Army expelled from newly independent Kurdistan. The state is formally a constitutional republic, albeit with varying degrees of military rule and interference in civilian political affairs. Its politics resemble a microcosm of Turkish politics prior to 1983; it is the only modern Turkish state to retain an overt commitment to Kemalism, the ideology of the defunct Republic of Turkey. It is also one of the least homogenous of the Turkish states, having inherited a large Kurdish population which remains largely sympathetic to the Kurdish nationalist cause. Critics have continually leveled accusations of systemic human rights abuses and discrimination against Kurds perpetuated by the Patnosi regime.

Greater Patnos has close security ties with the Sultanate of Turkey and is a founding member of the Mediterranean Defense League. It is theoretically committed to Turkish reunification, although it has refrained from recognizing the Sultanate as the legal successor to the pre-Doomsday republic. The Sultanate is believed to support Greater Patnos as a proxy against Kurdistan and the Empire of Trabzon, another Turkish military state in turn backed by Georgia and Armenia as a counterbalance to the Sultanate's growing influence in the South Caucasus.

History[]

Pre-Doomsday[]

Patnos, historically known as Panos and Patnoc, has been continuously settled since 1300 BC, when it was the center of the Iron Age Urartu civilization. The territory of the modern Republic was previously the core of the Tavruberan and Ayrarat provinces of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia. It was periodically contested by the Assyrian, Greek, Persian, Roman (later Byzantine), and Arab Umayyad empires until the 800s, when it was returned to Armenian control by the Bagratuni dynasty. Within two hundred years, however, it was retaken by the Byzantines, who subsequently lost it during the westward migration of the Seljuk Turks. The region was contested between various Turkish states and the Persian Safavid dynasty until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire following the Battle of Chaldiran. After the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, it was a proposed part of Wilsonian Armenia, based on Armenia's historical claims to the region. Armenian nationalists considered this to be an integral part of Western Armenia. These claims were formally abandoned after Turkey defeated the First Armenian Republic in the Turkish-Armenian War. Local Kurdish nationalists likewise laid claim to the region and launched an abortive uprising which was crushed by the Turkish armed forces in 1930.

In December 1935, much of the territory of the present Republic was consolidated under the Fourth Inspectorate-General, which appointed a military governor over the region, replaced civil service members with military personnel, and empowered the authorities to engage in forced resettlement and take forceful measures to assimilate or displace the Kurdish population. Partly in response to these measures, Kurdish nationalists launched the Dersim Rebellion in 1937; the Turkish armed forces retaliated by massacring thousands of Kurds. The army assumed full responsibility for the Fourth Inspectorate-General in 1946, effectively affirming martial law. It was dissolved in 1952.

During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of left-wing Kurdish nationalist organizations were formed by intellectuals, activists, and students in eastern Turkey, including the Ulusal Kurtulus Ordusu (UKO; National Liberation Army), which later evolved into the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Beginning in 1979, the PKK established external sanctuaries in neighboring Syria, which it used to train militants that could be infiltrated back into predominantly Kurdish areas to carry out guerrilla raids. At its second congress in exile, held in 1982, the PKK developed a strategy for a long-term war of national liberation broken into three phases: strategic defense, strategic parity, and strategic attack. The first phase of "strategic defense" assumed the PKK would be relatively weak while the Turkish Army and security forces would hold all the tactical and strategic advantages. Thus, during this period the PKK should focus on armed propaganda, politicization of the Kurdish civilian populace, assassination of Turkish officials, and the preparation of an army in exile which could engage in conventional operations. When the PKK was approaching operational parity with the Turkish Army, it could then enter the phase of "strategic balance", in which "liberated zones" - also known as red zones or red areas - would be created, allowing PKK fighters to hide and prepare for action. The third phase of "strategic attack" would see the abandonment of guerrilla tactics in favor of a full-scale offensive coupled to a popular uprising aimed at overwhelming the Turkish Army in the southeastern part of the country.

According to the PKK's projections, it would be unable to seize the offensive and engage in "strategic attack" until the early 2000s. However, events would soon overtake these projections and allow the party to execute its plans for this phase much sooner than even its most optimistic leaders anticipated.

Doomsday and 1984 Kurdish revolt[]

On September 25, 1983, the Doomsday event devastated much of western Turkey, obliterating Ankara, Istanbul, and most of the country's major cities. Eastern Turkey, with its low levels of development and relatively sparse population, was spared much of the destruction, although Soviet nuclear strikes obliterated the strategic NATO and Turkish military command centers at Erzurum and Diyarbakir.

Turkey's Third Army was largely paralyzed by Doomsday, as its commanding officer (General Fikret Oktay), then in Izmir, had been killed during the nuclear exchange. Additionally, its 9th Corps had ceased to exist after the strike on Erzurum. The Third Army Headquarters at Erzincan made a concerted effort to mobilize its remaining corps and divisions to counter an anticipated Soviet ground invasion. The 11th Corps, based in Trabzon and providing security for the south Caucasus, was hastily mobilized and thrown into battle against the Soviet 31st Army Corps along the Georgian and Armenian borders, where it soon suffered heavy losses. Also ordered to mobilize for this effort were the 9th Infantry Division (based near Kars), the 7th Mechanized Brigade (Kars), the 49th Motorized Infantry Brigade (Bingöl), and the 10th Infantry Brigade (Van), all of which also took heavy casualties. Due to the chaos of Doomsday and the collapse of Turkey's government, the units were mobilized and deployed in a piecemeal fashion, often without their integral equipment or logistical support. The Third Army attempted to replenish losses by ordering the wholesale mobilization of reservists in Erzincan, Bingöl, Tunceli, Van, and other major population centers, and stripping the surviving military bases of all personnel capable of bearing arms. Cooks, administrators, military police, and drivers were sent to the front, alongside conscripted middle-aged clerks and shopkeepers long past their physical prime. With much of the Turkish military's communications infrastructure either disrupted or severely degraded, the Third Army found it difficult to coordinate large scale actions, and much of its units to survive Doomsday were slowly ground down by Soviet firepower in a brutal war of attrition.

COIN Van Patnos1

Wary of a guerrilla ambush, Turkish reservists take cover outside Van, 1984.

On March 23, 1984, PKK sympathizers and officials convened in Van and openly announced their intention to start an uprising as the first step toward Kurdish independence. Turkish intelligence had been monitoring suspected PKK members in Van and elsewhere, but these activities had ceased after Doomsday, and the Third Army had likewise ceased routine security patrols in the country's interior while all its surviving units were being mobilized to resist a Soviet invasion. Almost overnight, pro-PKK demonstrators had occupied several official buildings and municipal offices in Van and Bitlis, unopposed by the demoralized police on duty. Within days, armed groups had begun appearing in Van's working class neighborhoods, mobilized by PKK guerrillas who had crossed the Syrian border to join them virtually unopposed. At first, the municipal authorities believed only unarmed civilians were responsible for the seizure of public buildings and sought to negotiate with the rebels. However, the guerrillas soon attacked and captured a gendarmerie headquarters, acquiring a huge arsenal of arms including heavy weapons and ample ammunition. Locals flocked to join the guerrillas' cause, and with the captured weapons the PKK was able to harm hundreds of civilians. Thousands of other Kurds took to the streets in solidarity with the gunmen, and the police and gendarmerie were overwhelmed; Van city officials called for Turkish military units to restore order, but none were immediately forthcoming due to the situation on the border.

About two weeks into the uprising, the Third Army finally began recalling troops from the border, but their forces were in atrocious condition and initial attempts to retake Van ended in embarrassing failures. Casualties and unprecedented rates of desertion and mutiny had reduced most of these units to a shell of their former status. Divisions had been reduced to brigades, and brigades to companies. They needed resupply and fresh recruits, none of which were available, and time to replenish their depleted ammunition stocks and repair their tanks and other vehicles. Within three days they were meant to be ready to retake Van and flush the PKK out of the surrounding settlements, but in fact guerrilla attacks, bad weather, and logistical woes meant they were not in place around the city for weeks. To make matters worse, they were not met by a sympathetic or neutral civilian population, but thousands of Kurds armed by the PKK, mobilized for war, and charged by five centuries of struggle against Turkish rule.

Kurdish Route Patnos

The withdrawal: elements of the 7th Mechanized Brigade on the road to Patnos.

The 10th Infantry and 7th Mechanized had already suffered almost 25% casualties fighting the Soviets when they were ordered to evacuate the Armenian and Azeri border and deploy to Van. They were badly depleted, demoralized, and forced to rely on inexperienced reservists and conscripts pressed into service with inadequate or outdated equipment. Fighting in the mountain terrain also favored the PKK, which could rely on the support of local Kurdish residents and carry out successful ambushes. For about six months, the brigades were in almost continuous movement around Van, attempting to counter PKK attacks on widely dispersed gendarmerie and army strongholds. Meanwhile, as the PKK managed to consolidate its control of Van and hold off successive military counteroffensives, the rebellion spread. The front lines would ebb and flow, and cities such as Erciş and Tatvan would change hands several times. However, in broad terms, by mid-1985 the conflict was virtually set: the Turkish military was able to check the PKK a few kilometers north of Lake Van, but were forced to abandon nearly all of Van and Bitlis provinces to the insurgents.

The Third Army relocated its headquarters to Patnos, a small town just a few kilometers north of Lake Van, to supervise operations against the PKK directly, to little avail. For the next year the conflict was characterized by temporary truces, sporadic local fighting, mutual shelling and mutual recrimination. In December 1985, eager to salvage what remained of its command and extricate itself from a war that seemed to have no end, the Third Army general staff ordered its forces to stand down and announced a unilateral ceasefire. The withdrawal of the remaining Turkish troops towards Patnos went unchallenged by the insurgents, indicating an implicit acceptance of the cessation of hostilities, which has never been recognized as a formal peace treaty or truce. Panicked by the sight of the departing military columns and fearing retribution under the PKK, thousands of Turkish civilians streamed away from their towns and villages northwards towards the relative safety of Patnos.

Establishment of the Republic[]

As a result of the PKK uprising, the Turkish Third Army headquarters declared martial law, ordered the dissolution of the municipal civilian governments in heavily Kurdish cities, and banned all political activity. After the de facto ceasefire with the PKK, these municipal governments were not reformed, nor the ban on political activity lifted. The region under Turkish military control remained under a state of martial law for seven years, governed from the Third Army headquarters in Patnos. Aside from the remnants of the 10th Infantry, 49th Motorized, and 7th Mechanized brigades, the Third Army also retained control of the 9th Infantry Division, which had retained order in most of Kars Province and secured the frontier against further Soviet encroachment. Other than that, little remained. Contact had rapidly been lost with its units on Cyprus; the 9th Corps had ceased to exist after the nuclear strike on Erzurum, and the 11th Corps had imploded due to desertion, battlefield losses, and a wholesale mutiny by its junior officers. Patnos, previously a small frontier town with few resources, was now hosting tens of thousands of Turkish civilian refugees well beyond its capacity; these had fled both the destruction of Erzurum to the north and the PKK takeover to the south.

HC Patnos 1

Hüsnü Çelenkler, chief of the Turkish Third Army, 1983-90.

Newly promoted General Hüsnü Çelenkler, then acting head of the Third Army's general staff, announced in January 1985, that as all contact with the Turkish government had been lost, the Third Army would be assuming power in the name of the Turkish Armed Forces, the dissolution of all civilian municipal governments should be considered indefinite, and martial law was to be extended throughout the territory under its control, including in Kars province (which had been unaffected by the PKK campaign). Çelenkler emphasized that this was a temporary measure to protect the integrity of the Turkish republic and prevent further outbreak of war or unrest. New local and regional elections would be held once the military deemed the state was adequately strengthened. Echoing the words of General Kenan Evren when he declared the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, Çelenkler stated that the army would work "tirelessly towards the reestablishment of democratic order, for the fundamental principles of Atatürk and the Six Arrows of Kemalism, and for a political structure which best fits the survival of the Turkish nation." Addressing concerns by radical army officers and some civilian officials, Çelenkler reminded the population that when the mission was completed, the soldiers had always returned to the barracks, leaving power in the hands of the rightful civil government, "in total accordance of the rules of a democratic society". Kemalism would not be forgotten, nor the country left leaderless. He closed his speech by railing against the "terrorist-secessionism" of the PKK, omitting any references to Kurdish nationalism and blaming the uprising on "Syrian-based agitators" trained by the Syrian secret service and the Soviet Union.

The Six Arrows of Kemalism Çelenkler referenced were the founding principles of the Turkish republic, as defined by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, etatism, secularism, and a revolutionary spirit. To the generals at Patnos, and much of the Turkish population prior to Doomsday, Kemalism manifested itself in a typically modern confidence or faith in the progress of the nation and the key role of the Turkish state and its army in guiding that process. Çelenkler and the rest of the Third Army staff adopted a simple five-point provisional constitution giving themselves unlimited power until civilian governance could be restored. Where it did not contradict these points, the 1982 Constitution of Turkey would remain in effect. Mirroring the events of the 1980 coup, the general staff formed a "Provisional Security Council" (PSC), named Çelenkler head of state, and appointed a 10-member civilian cabinet composed of retired army officers and state bureaucrats. Martial law commanders in all the provinces under the Third Army's control - Erzincan, Tunceli, Bingöl, Muş, Ağrı, Iğdır, and Kars - were granted sweeping powers over public administration, education, regulation of the press, and regulation of economic activity.

Patnos Refugees

Kurds evicted from their homes by Patnosi authorities, 1987.

Perhaps the primary and most immediate problem that confronted the new regime was that of handling the restive Kurdish population. Throughout the mid to late 1980s, hundreds of suspected PKK agents were detained for trials in special military courts. More often than not, their numbers included influential Kurdish businessmen whose enterprises and assets were confiscated by the PSC. Most were deported to PKK territory after a brief hearing. In 1987 and 1988, the military rounded up and deported almost 70,000 Kurdish residents from 500 select villages under its control. The evicted villagers were marched to the border of PKK territory at gunpoint en masse and effectively forced to resettle in Kurdistan.

The supervised restoration of civilian rule began in December 1989, with elections held for a Provisional Assembly - so named because the generals still expected a return to the pre-Doomsday institutions and reunification with the remainder of the country. The unicameral Provisional Assembly was declared the "provisional successor" to the Turkish National Assembly by the PSC, and endowed with the same powers vested in the latter by the 1982 constitution. It consisted of 40 deputies, elected in December 1990 to five year terms; every candidate needed to obtain military approval. In the interests of remaining faithful to the pre-Doomsday institutions, the PSC evoked a Turkish ordnance from March 1983 which barred national politicians active prior to September 1980 for contesting office again for at least ten years. The PSC also announced that the only parties permitted to field candidates would be the three parties approved to participate in the 1983 elections - the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi- ANAP), the Populist Party (Halkçı Parti - HP), and the Nationalist Democracy Party (Milliyetçi Demokrasi Partisi - MDP). The MDP, which was the clear favorite of the military prior to Doomsday, won a majority of seats. The ANAP and HP did not enjoy much success, cumulatively commanding less than 25% of the vote, but were nonetheless invited to help form the first civilian government in Patnos since Doomsday. There was no provision for polling in predominantly Kurdish districts and villages, and Kurds were effectively denied the right to vote in the elections or stand for office.

The new Provisional Assembly convened in Patnos shortly after the elections, and subsequently a civilian government consisting of a prime minister and a council of ministers was formed. Around early 1990, the PSC dissolved itself and turned over its executive and legislative authority to the National Assembly and the prime minister. Çelenkler was permitted to stay on as head of state, with the title of president, while Mehmet Başak of the MDP became prime minister. Per the 1982 constitution, executive authority was vested in the president, who was to serve a seven year term and could not be reelected. The council of ministers was headed by the prime minister, who was appointed by the head of the party with the largest number of deputies and responsible for the implementation of government policy.

The MDP and the former members of the PSC initially forged a strategic alliance which allowed the military to retain some degree of control over the electoral process. In 1997, when Çelenkler's term drew to an end, Başak announced he would seek to succeed him and oversee the declaration of a Fourth Turkish Republic. In a remarkable split with the generals, most of whom still espoused some form of loyalty to the pre-Doomsday state, Başak declared that an integral part of Kemalism was emphasizing the virtues of the new as opposed to the old. He argued that it was painfully evident that the old pre-Doomsday institutions had been demolished, and the Turkish nation had to adapt to new, modern realities - in accordance with the revolutionary and reformist virtues of Atatürk. On October 30, 1997, in an overwhelming show of support, the Provisional Assembly elected Başak as president. He was sworn in on November 9, the same day the Provisional Assembly voted to rename itself the National Assembly and declare the Republic of Greater Patnos - although it stopped short of making a formal declaration of independence. During his opening remarks as president, Başak emphasized that the reunification of the Turkish nation would remain one of the Republic's key goals.

War with Trabzon[]

See main article: Patnosi-Trabzon War

Despite the restoration of civilian governance, most of Greater Patnos remained in an impoverished and decrepit state. Martial law was lifted, but military officers retained ultimate decision-making authority at the local level in many areas. Başak was proceeding cautiously in re-asserting civilian authority, and recognized that military-imposed restrictions were essential to improve the internal security situation. After the PSC dissolved, Çelenkler, as president of the Republic, had been in a position to veto any policies that might displease the military, but even once Başak had succeeded him the military's influence remained pervasive. Başak's popularity was also declining in the late 1990s, largely because of continued instability, the Republic's inability to restore social services, and the continued deterioration of pre-Doomsday infrastructure. In January 1999, a however, a new crisis gave Başak the opportunity to regain the political initiative.

General Altan Sahin, a former commander in the Third Army's 11th Corps, had cut communications with the Third Army's general staff shortly after Doomsday and was running Trabzon as his own miniature fiefdom. In 1987, Sahin, taking the title of "İmparator" (emperor), proclaimed his intention to create an "second empire of Trabzon" in northeastern Turkey and the following year, purged a Kemalist faction among his followers. Çelenkler was aware of Sahin's ambitions and repeatedly warned Başak throughout his premiership that the self-styled emperor controlled a substantial portion of the former 11th Corps as well as all the equipment, fuel, and ammunition reserves stockpiled at the NATO base in Trabzon. Between 1989 and 1990, Sahin launched an invasion of the former Erzurum province, which he claimed had fallen into lawlessness after the destruction of its provincial capital during Doomsday.

Çelenkler insisted that the Erzurum expedition would foreshadow later attempts to extend Sahin's control over the entire Eastern Turkish Wasteland; he regarded Sahin as a traitor due to his mutiny against the Third Army headquarters after Doomsday, and no attempts were made to establish a line of dialogue with his regime. Patnosi troops carrying out patrols and reconnaissance in Gümüşhane and Bayburt provinces had come under fire, and warned that much of the territory north of Erzincan was controlled by hostile militiamen with heavy weapons, believed to be Sahin's forces. Security incidents in this area increased in 1998, and a dozen civilians and soldiers were killed near the borders of Erzincan Province - mostly by sniper fire -in the final quarter of the year. Nonetheless, that figure paled in comparison to the almost 50 civilians and soldiers killed in skirmishes and border incidents with the PKK south of Patnos in 1998, so no troops were redeployed.

Meanwhile, Sahin was already taking steps to launch an invasion of what he described as the "Erzincan Strip": the former provinces of Erzincan, Tunceli, and Bingöl. At least outwardly, Trabzon had become the strongest military power among the Turkish successor states in the eastern part of the country, and in spite of some misgivings about the quality of his troops, Sahin prepared to deploy his forces. In January 1999 Trabzon began a partial mobilization of its reserves, conscripting thousands of additional recruits from urban centers along the Black Sea coast. During the late 1980s the Patnosi military had deported the population of Ahmetli, a small Kurdish mountain village near the former provincial border between Erzincan and Gümüşhane provinces. In its place a small outpost was installed; the garrison was responsible for sending out patrols and manning observation sites atop the nearby heights overlooking the border. On January 19, the outpost commander reported with dismay that long columns of military vehicles were streaming south along the highway from Kelkit. Radio contact between Patnos and Ahmetli was lost shortly afterwards.

Erzincan 1999 War

Damage in Erzincan as a result of Trabzonian shelling, January 1999.

Sahin enjoyed the advantage of tactical surprise, and his troops easily occupied several small villages. The success did not last, however. The undisciplined looting of civilian homes by the Trabzonian troops aroused local resistance, and the inhabitants rushed to help delay the invaders. Disgruntled civilians created road obstacles out of concrete blocks, bricks, and other building materials, and parked trucks on the roads to prevent the Trabzonian convoys from passing through. Barricades sprang up at every key crossroads town. These spontaneous acts of resistance had the effect of stalling the initial advance, buying time for Başak and Çelenkler - who resumed his position as chief of the general staff - to prepare the defense of the northwest and amass valuable intelligence about the invading forces. Further delaying the invasion was the fact that the Trabzonians, almost none familiar with the region, lacked maps, compasses, or any other navigational guides. It took the columns almost two days to reach the suburbs of Erzincan, and the largely inexperienced Trabzonian fighters found themselves trapped in bitter street-to-street fighting with the small city garrison and local gendarmerie. Driving the defenders out of Erzincan's maze of hastily fortified apartments and commercial buildings proved a difficult task, and not until January 30 did Trabzon capture the city. It was the first and only major success of Sahin's campaign.

Authorization to redeploy the necessary battalions from the southern border to counter the new threat could come only from Başak. News of the invasion reached him on January 22, but the incredulous president dismissed the reports as unfounded and asked for confirmation. The following morning, the general staff informed him that not only could it confirm the initial reports, but the scale of the Trabzonian attack was more intense and on a wider scale than originally believed; the invaders had tanks and artillery, and were already on the verge of reaching the city of Erzincan. Thereafter both he and Çelenkler acted quickly. Two battalions stationed in Tunceli were ordered to decamp immediately and redeploy to Erzincan province by road. Their objectives were to stall for time until more troops could be mustered around Tunceli for a counteroffensive. In the following hours, elements of the 9th Infantry Division would also be mobilized from Kars, with instructions to deploy to the northwest with as much of its vital equipment as could be moved quickly.

All throughout February and March, the Patnosi troops in the northwest fought delaying actions and harassed the slow, plodding Trabzonian columns, trading territory for time. The convoys often got lost and forced to backtrack, and drove repeatedly into Patnosi ambushes which stalled their advance further. The Patnosi military worked furiously to build defenses in cities and towns south of Erzincan, and Kurdish civilians were pressed into labor crews for digging trenches and tunnels. Whenever the Trabzonian troops approached, they had to contend with defenders safely moving through an underground network linked by basements and cellars, while alleys and trenches also provided excellent ambush positions. Although the invaders possessed superior firepower, it often took up to ten days to overrun a single village. A common practice in urban combat was for infantry to clear buildings of enemy detachments to make certain that the passing vehicles could not be ambushed with anti-tank weapons. However, the Patnosi defenders were often free to remain at their positions, and the Trabzonian recruits, many of whom had been enrolled with minimal training, failed to debark from their vehicles and screen their approach.

Patnos Trabzon War1

Patnosi troops prepare to destroy a Trabzonian tank, March 1999.

By the time the Trabzonian columns reached the Munzur Valley on March 26, they had lost over half their tanks and an even larger percentage of their unarmored vehicles, while the loss of life among crews and embarked infantry was equally high. The three columns entered the city, but soon the infantry disappeared or lagged behind and left the tanks devoid of protection from infantry attacks. In a few hours, it was all over, and most of the remaining vehicles in all three columns were either destroyed or captured; their demoralized occupants, who were low on ammunition and food, surrendered in droves. By the morning of April 1, thousands of additional Patnosi troops redeployed from the south and eastern parts of the Republic, including almost the entire crack 9th Infantry Division, had moved into previously prepared positions around Tunceli; they were just waiting for the order from Başak to begin the counterattack. The president gave the order at midday. The counteroffensive caught the remaining Trabzonian units north of Tunceli by surprise and plunged them into panic as they scattered into the countryside under intermittent artillery bombardment. Many of the totally demoralized troops made a made rush to escape to Erzincan. As word spread that Patnosi tanks were counterattacking, what remained of the exhausted, depleted invasion force disintegrated. Trabzonian soldiers fled in panic, whole units simply melted away, and for the final week of the war Sahin's army suffered more losses to desertion than combat.

Within six days, the Patnosi Army were nearing the outskirts of Erzincan, having retaken what Trabzon had laboriously contested for almost three months plus almost a thousand prisoners. With the military defenses collapsing rapidly, Sahin considered one last attempt to rally his fighters by personally visiting Erzincan, only to be advised that all remaining Trabzonian forces were abandoning the city. The last Trabzonian troops were recalled from Erzincan on April 7. Patnosi tanks reentered the city the next morning without meeting resistance.

The opportunity for Greater Patnos to permanently redraw the borders of eastern Turkey 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 stepped down from his position as chief of the general staff and shortly thereafter retired from the national scene.

Addressing the food crisis[]

The Patnosi victory over Trabzon had significant implications for the Republic's regional standing in the south Caucasus. Başak stated that the war allowed Greater Patnos to join the ranks of the greater powers in the region, and discouraged other actors from dismissing the Republic as a weak and submissive rump state. It also had the effect of resuscitating Başak's own flagging political fortunes. It was clearly the president, working in concert with the generals, who had directed the difficult path through the crisis, with a stream of daily communiques reassuring the population on the progress of the war and the inevitability of victory. Furthermore, the war's end also characterized the end of a prolonged period of insecurity in the country since Doomsday and, with Çelenkler's quiet retirement to Patnos, the recession of the military's political clout over national affairs.

The material circumstances of the Patnosi population recovered gradually under the MDP. Per capita food supplies had not returned to 1982 levels by 2000, but they had certainly improved from 1983-85 levels. Food supplies had been poor everywhere, except for the more or less privileged military and state officials. The military's practice of compelling farmers to grow food for its own stores and the larger population centers included high collection targets, which effectively confiscated much of what was available in the countryside. Since the military and cities had priority, food was often in shorter supply in rural areas than in the cities, and this accelerated the trend of urban to rural migration after Doomsday. Just prior to 1983, at least 60% of the Patnosi population was residing in rural areas and dependent on agriculture for their sustenance and livelihood. By 1997, this figure had dropped to just under 50% of the total population.

In his bid to make Greater Patnos entirely self-sufficient in food, Başak established the Patnosi Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Rural Affairs under Resul Okumus, one of the younger deputies in the National Assembly and former official of the Turkish Agricultural Bank. Başak charged Okumus with promoting food self-sufficiency, with a long-term goal of also maximizing agriculture's net contribution to the balance of trade. Aside from the collapse of regional food distribution networks, one of the problems which plagued the agricultural sector after Doomsday was low rainfall and growing aridification on the eastern Anatolian plateau. During the early 1980s, agriculture had stagnated and was heavily dependent on irrigation, high-yielding varieties of seeds, chemical fertilizers, equipment, and fuel, all of which were imported. Large scale public irrigation projects had been operated by the Turkish government and combined water supplies for urban areas, hydroelectric power, and irrigation; these had largely been allowed to deteriorate after Doomsday. The result was that most agricultural production declined severely, as they again became dependent on the amount and time of rainfall, which varies greatly in the Republic from year to year. Most Patnosi farmers faced a six month dry season allowing them only one harvest per year.

Farm Reform Patnos

Patnosi farmer inspects crops in his newly irrigated field, 2004.

Okumus's first plan was to revitalize the public irrigation sector as a means of increasing and stabilizing agricultural output. He established the Directorate of State Hydraulic Works, which assumed responsibility for all public sector irrigation systems; it not only restored some of the old irrigation sites but constructed dozens of new ones around the Republic. Just prior to Doomsday, the Turkish Agricultural Bank was also in possession of many farms in eastern Turkey due to a high proportion of defaults by farmers on loans with high interest rates. Since Doomsday, they had remained fallow and abandoned. Okumus and his Ministry inventoried and surveyed these farms and offered to grant new deeds to the previous owners who could be located, and train new farmers to assume ownership of the land where they could not. Due to the return of many farmers to their land and the huge public investment in the irrigation projects - often carried out with military resources and manpower, plus conscripted Kurdish labor - per capita food supplies had recovered to pre-Doomsday levels by 2004. Intense irrigation, particularly in the southeast of the country, had allowed expansion from one to two or even three harvests per year.

In late 2004, in anticipation of the forthcoming elections, Başak and the MDP lifted the food rationing originally imposed by the PSC in the 1980s. This marked a major turn for the better in the lives of Patnosi citizens and ensured the MDP carried the next elections in a landslide. In recognition of his role in resurrecting Patnosi agriculture and helping feed the nation, the MDP appointed Resul Okumus as the next president of the Republic.

The Republic and the Sultan[]

Okumus took office in the midst of a potential national crisis. Just days after his inauguration, the Sultanate of Turkey invaded the neighboring State of Elazig. This was brought to the attention of general staff and the MDP's upper echelons at a meeting in Patnos late on the afternoon of October 29, where a contingency plan was developed for the protection of border crossings. Already, long lines of refugees fleeing the Sultanate's invasion were queuing to cross into Greater Patnos by car, foot, and horseback. Elazig had immediately recalled all military and paramilitary personnel on its eastern frontier at the start of the invasion, leaving the border vulnerable to bandits who preyed on local settlements and refugees. The first week of November, Patnosi troops unilaterally crossed the border and established their own checkpoints. Okumus, on the advice of Başak, ordered both reinforcements from Bingöl and the deployment of a battalion out of distant Tunceli to secure the border. The former president warned his successor that he should be concerned about the possibility that an unsecured zone in eastern Elazig might expose the border to banditry at best or allow the PKK another front to infiltrate fighters into Patnos at worst. The cabinet was divided on whether military action should be taken, but Okumus was able to assuage the doves that Patnos would only control the border sites temporarily until the Elazigi government could reestablish its authority and retake control. As Okumus and Başak both well knew, the latter was quite unable to do so.

Throughout early 2005, the Republic's confidence in the ability of Elazig to hold its own faded. Its army had been mostly destroyed in the first three weeks of the war, and it was only the difficulty of the terrain, the inexperience of the Sultanate's forces, and dogged resistance by a few elite Elazigi units, bolstered and trained by a shadowy mercenary group, which had prevented the premature fall of the capital. The Patnosi military recommended covertly supplying arms to Elazig to help it resist the invasion, but Okumus remained committed to the Republic's neutrality.

The subsequent capitulation of Elazig brought Sultanate troops directly to the Patnosi positions near the border. Having lost contact with much of western and central Turkey after Doomsday, the Republic had been able to stand aloof from political developments there, namely the growing military consolidation of the Sultanate - which was bent on recovering all the territories held by the pre-Doomsday Turkish state, to which it considered itself the only legitimate successor. From the onset, however, and keen to avoid the fate of Elazig, Okumus and Başak expressed hope for cooperation with the Sultanate's government.

Exhausted by the relatively short but bloody six month war with Elazig, the Sultanate seemed reluctant to take on new open-ended military commitments in eastern Turkey for the foreseeable future, despite clamoring from its political elites for a fully fledged Doğu Fethini (Eastern Conquest). With this perception in mind - and despite widespread antipathy by the generals and much of the populace towards the Sultanate's monarchist and neo-Ottoman propaganda, Okumus presented Greater Patnos as a willing partner in creating a renewed and Sultanate-led power bloc in the southern Caucasus. In what amounted to a major diplomatic coup, Okumus dangled the carrot of an implicit strategic understanding between the Sultanate and the Republic in which the latter surrender a measure of independence (but by no means its Kemalist and Republican statehood itself) in exchange for pursuing strong economic, political, and military ties with Konya. With Başak's encouragement, Okumus also committed in principle to the concept of "peaceful integration" with the Sultanate - although the terms were flexible, and the ways in which such integration ought to proceed remained a matter of ambiguity. To the Patnosi public, Okumus explained that the Republic was merely seeking economic integration, and that rapid political integration with the Sultanate was not being discussed. He pointed out that integration was a "long and uneven process", and the Sultanate had reassured him that it would "not to expedite it by force".

As the Sultanate stood to gain little economically from a union with Greater Patnos - and risked losing a great deal by directly merging with the largely military-controlled and inflation-ridden Patnosi economy, many observers believed that Okumus had offered the Sultanate all the advantages of a client state but none of the disadvantages - either in terms of military or economic cost - conferred by direct annexation. Okumus claimed to the National Assembly that he had bought Patnos essentially unlimited time by seeking détente rather than war, thereby risking the fate of Elazig. He downplayed concerns that the Sultanate was more interested in eventual political integration, pointing out that "integration" was a laborious undertaking with a virtually open-ended framework. The correct sequencing involves economic integration first, and only once patient and gradual increases in economic cooperation and compatibility had been achieved, could incremental political integration occur.

In the military and security sphere, Sultanate-Patnosi cooperation began with a series of agreements in 2007 that granted the former long-term access to Patnosi military infrastructure and established joint border protection. Technical agreements followed soon thereafter, permitting long-term Sultanate leasing of military bases. In January 2009, the Sultanate and the Republic agreed on further military cooperation, particularly measures to integrate the military-industrial enterprises of the two states, to expand joint use of Patnosi military infrastructure, and to coordinate regional planning efforts. In 2010, Greater Patnos joined a collective security pact, the Mediterranean Defense League, which included the Sultanate, Bosnia, Macedonia, Lebanon, and neighboring New Erzurum.

The Yaylali years[]

Turkish Lira banknotes from the pre-Doomsday era were circulated and traded in Greater Patnos as late as 1988, at artificial rates set by the PSC. In an attempt to reform the financial system and prevent the country from being flooded with old Lira notes, in July 1988, the PSC began modifying notes with crude adhesive stamps bearing the six arrows of Kemalism and the notes' corresponding denomination. The defaced notes replaced the old Lira notes at par. The provisional notes were phased out between 1990 and 1995 by a Patnosi Lira, equal to 1,000 old Lira and printed at an old newspaper office in Bingöl. The Patnosi Lira, which consisted solely of paper notes, was subject to periods of extreme inflation, followed by a period of hyperinflation around 2010. The government found itself faced with ongoing shortages of hard currency as a result of public distrust and the inability of importers and trade partners to use Patnosi currency.

In exchange for joining the Mediterranean Defense League, the Republic demanded that the Sultanate include it in a new Lira zone and ink an agreement on a monetary union. Okumus, then on the last year of his presidency, argued that if the Sultanate was serious about integration, it would pursue "good and close fraternal relations with Patnos...which means extricating the economy from crisis." In 2011, Greater Patnos adopted the Sultanate's post-Doomsday Turkish Lira as its only legal tender.

National identity[]

Although political borders were redrawn following Doomsday, cultural borders are not so easily dislodged. In spite of widespread support for the Republic of Greater Patnos and its institutions among the Turkish-speaking Patnosi populace, loyalty to a sense of pan-Turkish nationhood remains strong. Unlike in neighboring Trabzon, no attempts have been made to forge new links between individuals and a state via a new national culture. The Patnosi people have inherited the residual appeal and habit of seeing oneself as essentially part of a greater Turkish nation, and no localized form of national identity has emerged. Practices and values spawned by the pre-Doomsday Turkish Republic and a deep nostalgia for that era persist. Continued identification with the imagined continuity of the pre-Doomsday Republic is strengthened by the modern Republic's attempts to emulate its defunct institutions and Kemalist ideology. Political structures (such as the National Assembly) and parties such as the MDP have maintained their names and organization from the pre-Doomsday era. External critics of the regime have characterized Patnos as the final holdout of the Republic of Turkey - a group of Kemalist nostalgists unwilling to accept Atatürk's irrelevance in the modern era.

Patnosi national identity is essentially vested in a greater pan-Turkish identity, with strong historical precedent. While external critics and scholars have often remarked on the Republic's commitment to a future union with the Sultanate of Turkey, the country's population does not aspire to become Turkey; it considers itself already an inseparable part of a greater Turkish nation. Patnosi citizens mostly view themselves and their land as being Turkish, and other states like Trabzon, Hatay, and Elazig which rejected the reunification of the Turkish nation as illegal separatists abandoning that world.

Government and politics[]

Ataturk Kars1

Statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish republic, in Kars. Although increasingly forgotten in other Turkish states, Atatürk remains revered in Greater Patnos.

The Republic of Greater Patnos is a constitutional parliamentary republic, albeit one without a unique constitution of its own. Instead, the Republic remains governed by the provisions of the 1982 Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, with a few minor amendments to account for practical realities. Although the latter ceased to exist during Doomsday, Patnos does not recognize the 1982 Constitution as having lapsed, somewhat to the annoyance of the Sultanate of Turkey, which has adopted its own constitution and claims to be the Republic of Turkey's only legitimate successor state.

Article 2 of the 1982 Constitution stipulates that the Republic is a "democratic, secular, and social state governed by the rule of law", grounded in human rights and loyalty to the political ideals of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Article 5 stipulates that the Turkish nation is sovereign unto itself, which the Patnosi state uses as its justification for sovereignty - since it regards itself as part of a greater pan-Turkish nation rather than a unique geopolitical entity. The fundamental objectives and duty of the Republic are to safeguard "the independence and integrity" of the greater Turkish nation and ensure "the welfare, peace, and happiness of the individual and society."

As per the 1982 Constitution, the powers of the state are divided among three branches of Patnosi government - the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. The legislative branch consists of a unicameral parliament known as the National Assembly, which is based on the pre-Doomsday Turkish National Assembly. The Patnosi National Assembly is composed of 150 deputies elected to five-year terms. The executive branch consists of the president, who is elected to a seven-year term by the National Assembly, and a prime minister, who is appointed by the president from among the National Assembly deputies. The prime minister heads a cabinet known as the Council of Ministers, members of which are nominated by the prime minister and appointed by the president. The judicial branch, the Republic's court system, is strictly independent of both the legislative and executive branch. Amendments to the constitution must be proposed by at least one-third of the National Assembly deputies, and the proposal must win the votes of a two-thirds majority. If an amendment is vetoed by the president, the votes of three-quarters of the National Assembly are required to overturn the veto.

Parliamentary elections are theoretically held on the basis of free universal suffrage with equal and secret balloting. Ballots are sorted and counted under the supervision of the judicial system. The Supreme Electoral Council, composed of eleven judges elected by the Patnosi Court of Appeals, has jurisdiction over all electoral proceedings, and may declare election results invalid. The executive and legislative branches are barred from influencing the electoral process at any juncture. Per Article 76 of the constitution, every citizen over the age of thirty is eligible to be a National Assembly deputy, provided he or she has completed primary school and has not been convicted of a serious crime, or been involved in "ideological and anarchistic activities". Male deputies are required to have completed military service. Members of judicial or educational institutions, the military, and civil service must resign their posts prior to standing for election.

Per the Turkish Electoral Law of June 1983, only political parties which obtain 10 percent or more of the total national vote can be represented in the Patnosi National Assembly. The Republic is divided into seven provinces corresponding roughly to pre-Doomsday Turkish provinces, some of which it only partly controls; the three most populous provinces of Kars, Bingöl, and Erzincan are subdivided for electoral purposes so that no single province can elect a disproportionate number of deputies. Each province automatically is assigned one seat in the National Assembly, regardless of population.

Politicians and political parties registered with the Patnosi Ministry of Interior are the only organizations permitted to engage in political activity, meaning educational institutions and trade unions were forbidden from canvassing for a particular candidate. Political parties cannot contribute to, nor receive financial benefits from, trade unions, professional bodies, clubs, cooperatives, and foundations. Communist parties are explicitly banned in Patnos, as are any parties with an "ethnic and religious agenda and/or program".

Political dynamics[]

MDP Patnos1

MDP campaign banner displayed on an apartment block in 2007.

The Republic's stubborn adherence to the 1983 electoral law ensured that the only successful political parties in the aftermath of Doomsday were the local wings of three major pre-Doomsday parties: the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi- ANAP), the Populist Party (Halkçı Parti - HP), and the Nationalist Democracy Party (Milliyetçi Demokrasi Partisi - MDP). Bolstered by the armed forces, the secular and Atatürkist MDP was, and remains, the most powerful party in the National Assembly since the first Patnosi elections of 1990. The more centrist HP enjoyed strong support in all the Patnosi provinces prior to Doomsday and has consistently attracted a quarter of the national vote, making it the country's longstanding political opposition. The ANAP had a strong electoral presence everywhere in Turkey prior to Doomsday, but commanded little genuine support in eastern Anatolia and despite a brief revival during the 1990 elections, had become a token party by the mid 2000s. In its final years, its last ditch platform of economic liberalization and appeals to business leaders floundered as the Patnosi economy recovered under the MDP's leadership. The ANAP's inability to attract more than 10% of the vote in the 2010 elections resulted in its being disqualified and dissolved, essentially leaving Patnos with a two-party system. Most ex-ANAP members and sympathizers have since rallied behind the MDP or independent candidates. Despite differing on several minor issues, both the MDP and HP were avowedly Kemalist, and all three parties were generally secularist and right of center.

The major source of contention between the MDP and HP revolved around national security and the Republic's relations with the neighboring Sultanate. The HP has maintained that the armed forces have done too much to maintain security and the massive defense budget is siphoning away resources badly needed for the development of the country. It has opposed the image the military has cultivated for itself as the extraconstitutional guardian of the political process, ready to intervene unilaterally under the guise of saving the Republic. The HP has also fought against the MDP's decision to pursue closer relations with the Sultanate of Turkey, and has bitterly criticized initiatives to draw Patnos into a greater political and economic union with the latter. While military support for the MDP remains strong, the HP has managed to draw away secularists among the Republic's civilian elite, for whom compromise with the Sultanate represented a betrayal of the principles, goals, and disciplines of Kemalism.

Military[]

The Armed Forces of Greater Patnos consists of two branches - the army and the air force. The Patnosi Gendarmerie, Civil Defense, and National Intelligence Organization are closely affiliated with the armed forces and also subordinate to the the Republic's Ministry of Defense. The national defense policy aims are based on the Constitution of Greater Patnos, which guarantees the preservation of the independence and sovereignty of the Republic in accordance with Turkish nationalist and secularist principles.

The Turkish Third Army largely disintegrated in the wake of Doomsday. The most powerful grouping of forces to survive from the Third Army then became the core of the Patnosi armed forces. Greater Patnos inherited the 9th Infantry Division and seven mechanized and light infantry brigades, storage bases in Erzincan, two artillery regiments, and a large amount of equipment which had ben withdrawn from what became Kurdistan after the PKK uprising.

Economy[]

The economy of Greater Patnos is geared towards industrial production. While there is a strong agricultural base focused on foodstuffs and livestock which was established after Doomsday, recent economic development has focused on reindustrialization. New factories have been built across the region and cities are redeveloping. In addition to industry, mining and tourism are playing increasing roles in the Patnosi economy, particularly as the economy opens itself to the world. Above all, the Patnosi economy is geared towards a permanent wartime status, due to the existence of Kurdistan.

International Relations[]

Greater Patnos has reached out to many states in the region and established diplomatic relations. They maintain relations across the Middle East and the Caucasus. They are allies with the Sultanate of Turkey and New Erzurum. They have on going disputes with Trabzon and the still unrecognized Republic of Kurdistan.

Transnational Issues[]

The Republic of Greater Patnos continues to have border conflicts with the Republic of Kurdistan, which is viewed as a rogue breakaway state. Patnos claims the entirety of the Turkish portion of Kurdistan and, as a result, continues to refuse to recognize the country.

Many northern areas of the Republic are also claimed by the Second Empire of Trabzon, with whom Patnos has a long standing rivalry and previously fought a war with in 1990s.

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