Blood, Steel and Sand: Part II

Excerpt from Devin Synder’s Blood, Steel and Sand: The West Asian Conflicts, 1914-1946(Georgetown Publishing, DeLeon, DC, 1970)

Turanist Toils

The Iranian-Azerbaijan offensive was intended to be a tide-turning operation, aimed at shattering Soviet Armenia through a lightning campaign, with the added bonus of catching the Iranian Army off guard before they entered the war against them. Initially, the Turanists found success in the offensive’s early days. Their experience of fighting in the mountains of Kurdistan and Armenia allowed them to catch the initial Iranian divisions flat-footed. However, the mountainous terrain made any advance into Iranian Azerbaijan difficult, as supply columns were needed to catch up with the advancing mountainous troops.

The other objective, however, of flanking the Armenian partisans bore more fruit. The Transcaucasian staff in Yerevan found themselves in a challenging situation as Turanist divisions were now threatening their southern border. Their options were limited: They could either fall back to more defensive lines and harry the Turkish advance through a continued path of hit-and-run attacks or hold on to their defensive lines until reinforcements arrived. The latter seemed like a risky gamble. The Battle of Stalingrad had tied up the majority of the INTREV forces in the area, and the only possible line of support was from Iran, which currently has its own crisis, in the form of Turkey’s offensive.

This did not mean that there was no assistance from INTREV, as the 41st American Mountain Rifle Division arrived in late 1942 to stem the tide in Iranian Azerbaijan. Moreover, with a unified military leadership and national fervor at an all-time high, Tehran mobilized for total war, finally ready to throw back the Turkish onslaught. But Turkey’s offensive put Iran on the back foot and forced it to trade land for time, as its army needed to be fully prepared and mobilized to face Turkey head-on. Turkey’s offensive had reached Lake Urmia by the year-end of 1942, but any further offensive actions would have to be halted. Supply trucks were needed to catch up to the troops along the rugged mountain passes, and the Turkish army was waiting for its ally from Baghdad to launch its offensive, drawing the bulk of Iranian forces away from the Azerbaijan front. However, their window of opportunity was closing. If Turkey had any chance of gaining victory, Armenia must be subdued.

By 1943, Turkey found itself at a critical crossroads. Atsız, now leading the HTP after Nur’s passing, faced mounting challenges. His much-anticipated Iranian offensive did not deliver the swift triumph he desired and dragged on without the decisive success he craved. Meanwhile, while Armenian SSR partisans were being pushed back under the pressure of an impending flanking attack, other unfolding events across Europe were compounding his difficulties, making his position increasingly difficult.

After a brutal engagement in Stalingrad, Soviet and American forces had a massive victory over the Wehrmacht in January, regaining the initiative. The German Army Group Caucasus had been fighting in Grozny but halted its offensive actions in preparation for a red wave from the Volga. As the situation grew increasingly precarious, General Eisenhower and Marshal Zhukov recognized the urgent need to fortify their supply route to Iran. The two began strategizing plans to deploy divisions and armaments to bolster the Transcaucasian front, knowing that time was of the essence. If AGK were to fall back into Ukraine, the INTREV forces would hold a commanding advantage over the Turkish troops. Ankara was racing against the clock; without a swift and overwhelming victory, the spectre of defeat loomed closer than ever.
Turkey’s eastern campaign against Iran aimed to seize Tabriz, the crown jewel of Iranian Azerbaijan. Alongside the Royal Iraqi Army’s push towards the southern city of Ahvaz, Turkey aimed to cut off the lifeline to Soviet and American troops in Armenia and the Caucasus—a swift blow that could reverse INTREV’s fortunes in the aftermath of Stalingrad.

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Բարձր կանգնեք/Bardzr kangnek’(Stand Tall)

Four concurrent and decisive battles began on the Transcaucasian front in the late winter and spring of 1943: the Battle of Yerevan , the Battle of Tabriz , the Battle of Grozny, and, more infamously, the Second Battle of Stalingrad.

For most, Stalingrad is the principal battlefield that comes to mind, and how its two battles helped shape the outcome of the war. However, recent historical academia has seen how each of these battles was interconnected in the larger strategic battlefield of the Caucasus and how they influenced the overall strategy of Germany, Turkey, and INTREV during the World Revolutionary War. The Wehrmacht’s offensive in Stalingrad was to support its Grozny operations that continued into the new year, and Turkey was similarly minded in its logic for Yerevan and Tabriz.

On February 21st, while German troops still battled in the Grozny maze and Iran mobilized its forces to prepare for the grand battle that would occur in Tabriz, the Armenian campaign reached Yerevan.

For Turkey, Yerevan wasn’t just a strategic location in the larger front-line situation; it was a matter of nationalistic blood and soil. Atsız, similar to Hitler, had a fixation on the “traitor races” and a desire to control the places where he viewed they “encroached” on Turkish land. In his infamous pamphlet, “Language, Land, and Blood, ” which defined his ideology, Atsız viewed places such as Constantinople, Yerevan, Tehran, and Baghdad, where “Great Turan” had rightful authority.

To the supremacist mind and philosophy of Atsız, those grand cities had been infected with the unholy, and only a complete liquidation of the “undesirables” would be accepted. As Turkish forces captured Kars and joined the main southern advance toward the Armenian capital, Atsız declared that the lives of every Armenian who resided in the city when Turkish troops arrived would be forfeit.

To the Armenian partisans awaiting to defend the city, the message was clear: It was a battle of survival. The SSR declared that every capable adult was to be armed and defend the city with their lives, with the only exceptions to the conscription order being children and pregnant women.

As the Turkish troops came within 10 km of the city’s outskirts, the Armenians had about 200,000 fighters ready to defend the city, while the WFRAAF arrived to support them in the skies. A-14 Shillelaghs and FA-35 Yeomans invoked havoc on Turanist positions, drawing time for Armenian forces to dig around the city and entrench themselves in defensive works.

INTREV was far from idle as its Caucasus Front faced this looming Turanist threat. The aftermath of the 1st Stalingrad had set the stage for a renewed push westward, making a counter-offensive toward Grozny and the Caucasus an urgent priority. Increased air support swiftly filled the skies, alongside crucial drops of ammunition and food supplies for the defenders. Reinforcements that could be spared were dispatched, bolstering the Armenian defenders with skilled firepower just when they needed it most.

As Turkish forces approached the outskirts of Yerevan, they encountered a formidable sight: a city fortified with trenchworks, barbed wire, and artillery batteries standing ready, cannons aimed directly at the advancing enemy. The defenders were poised to meet the challenge, every wall and gun a testament to their resolve. The stage was set for a dramatic confrontation, with the fate of the region hanging in the balance.

Armenia would make its stand here.

[…]

The forces of the Turkish State numbered around 295,000 men, accompanied by 2,000 artillery pieces, although many of these were small infantry mortars, as heavy guns were difficult to transport along the rugged Armenian terrain, and an unknown but small number of light tanks. Compared to the 200,000 defenders, who had about 1,200 pieces of artillery (including infantry mortars) and barely any AFVs at the start of the battle, the High Command was initially confident of victory. However, there was one aspect that OYK neglected for some time, even during the intensive rearmament era: the Air Force (Türk Hava Kuvvetleri/THK). While Turkey did have an air force and had committed to arming itself with new planes and fighters, many military historians often cited that Turkey had a weaker air force than the likes of the Luftwaffe or the Regia Aeronautica. The aircraft that Turkey mainly used were either Albatross bi-planes or the more modern fighters loaned to them by Germany.

In comparison, the WFRAAF and VVS had devoted resources to gaining aerial superiority on the Transcaucasian Front. By the time the battle began, the Soviets and their Comintern allies would have 978 aircraft deployed, compared to the 607 of the Türk Hava Kuvvetleri.

The defenders also had another advantage: the experience and tactics of Armenian partisans. The now heavily fortified city allowed the partisans to utilize the hit-and-run tactics they had become accustomed to, which had brought them early success in defeating the initial Turkish invasion.

Since INTREV troops and material had been able to reinforce Yerevan, they were also assisted by assigning an overall commander. Ivan Bagramyan had an unusual rise in command, which was very atypical for a man of his experience. In the three years since the war started for the USSR, he served under Mikhail Kirponos before the latter died in action and, after escaping a court-martial, rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General. He was involved in many Soviet operations, such as the Smolensk operation, the failed Bagration Offensive, and the defence of Moscow, rising through the ranks quickly. A multi-generational Armenian by birth, Bargramyan was given the massive duty of defending his homeland and proving his worth as a field commander.

The Armenian SSR staff welcomed Bagramyan, who was impressed by the preparation the local partisans had made to fortify the capital. Now, all that was left was to utilize the defenders’ advantages entirely. As Turkish artillery shelled the city from above, Bagramyan and his staff planned from underground, as the bunker room shook with every barrage. Bagramyan’s plan involved stalling the more significant Turkish force in exchange for time.

Bagramyan believed that the defenders would have time on their side. If they could keep control of the city long enough, reinforcements from the USSR or Iran would arrive to drive back the Turkish Army. But the Turanists were relentless. In the face of stiff resistance, they decided that leveling the city with artillery would help them capture it faster, regardless of any civilian casualties that may occur from the indiscriminate bombardment.

As February dragged into March and early April, much of Yerevan’s infrastructure was in ruins; around 60-80% of the city was shelled by Turkish artillery. But Bagramyan’s defensive gamble was slowly paying off as Iranian troops from the NLA’s Northern Army began arriving to help lift the siege by April 2nd, and WFRAAF planes arrived to provide bombing support against the besiegers. Soviet and American troops also arrived to assist the Armenian defenders.

Moreso, as stated before, the siege and battle of Yeveren still existed in the context of the Caucasus as a whole. During this time, German efforts leaned towards breaking the salient of Stalingrad. Under this direction, Hitler ordered the German High Command to halt operations in the Caucasus to purely defensive operations, which forced the OKW to abandon any possible initiative in the Battle of Grozny. That order was made on February 1st, a few days before Turkey’s planned eastern push into Iranian Azerbaijan.

Thus, Turkey’s war plan in the Transcaucasian Front was an overstretched army with a paper tiger ally in Iraq. With the conflict in the Caucasus Mountains staling out and Baku seeming further and further away by the day, getting the necessary materiel and manpower support from Berlin was difficult, and was made even more unlikely as Hitler ordered the OKW to begin concentrating their efforts on cracking the Soviet fortress city of Stalingrad. Turkey would have to carry out this ambitious strategy effectively on themselves.

It was with this tactical situation in mind that Turkey decided that Yerevan could not be taken head-on. Instead, the supply base at Tabriz must be captured for Armenia to fall.

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The Wolves Are Closing In

In order to achieve a decisive victory in their campaign in Armenia-Georgia, the military and political leadership of Turanist Turkey firmly set their sights on Tabriz as the crucial stepping stone to seize the Armenian capital of Yerevan. Following the example of his German counterpart, Nihâl Atsız heavily immersed himself in the war strategies of Turkey’s offensives, eager to position himself as the brilliant architect behind Turkey’s resurgence. Since Atsız took de facto power in late 1942, he had steadily increased his power and authority, having himself made Minister of Defense alongside his position of Prime Minister.

While it is important to note that Turkey’s failings in the offensive and war overall cannot be attributed solely to Atsız, he was the person who largely pushed and advocated the idea of invading Iran. Now, with both the office of Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, any sane person would focus on long-term strategy while delegating the minutiae of war tactics. But Atsız was never known as ‘sane’ in a contemporary sense.

Atsız deeply micromanaged almost every aspect of the war in the Caucasus, and by all accounts, he suffered for it mentally. News of delays and enemy reinforcements to key positions threw him into a panic, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to go from an enraged tirade one moment to a crying mess the next. German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop was present for one such breakdown, where the typically cold German diplomat gave the Turanist leader an awkward “there, there.”

The Battle of Tabriz began on April 16th, as the significant maneuvers of the Yerevan campaign started to slow. Atsız was banking on the idea that the Iranian Northern Army would be overstretched with its operation in Armenia to reinforce its positions at Tabriz. However, the importance of Tabriz was strikingly evident to both the Iranian and wider INTREV High Command; thus, supporting the Tabriz garrison in defending the city was paramount.

The concurrency of the three battles (Grozny, Yerevan, and Tabriz) was in the mindset of all those heavily involved in the Transcaucasian Front. The German halt in Grozny allowed for Comintern forces to confidently reinforce and hold Yerevan, which in turn further incentivized the Turkish push to Tabriz to conclude the Armenian campaign. Despite his overall infatuation with the German war industry and approach to their revanchism, Atsız never pursued a coordinated war strategy with Berlin in 1943, even in light of the fact that Fall Blau was the action that allowed the Turks to advance this deep into Soviet territory. Despite that, in light of the disadvantage the Turks faced in the aerial war, Luftwaffe units from Rostov were deployed south to assist the Turks in their offensive operations.

In contrast, the Soviets, Americans, and Iranians took note of these pivotal battles happening concurrently and resolved to coordinate a decisive counter-strategy. The garrison at Tabriz was quickly garrisoned and reinforced by NLA and INTREV units. The latter had the arrival of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, many of them guerrillas in campaigns in Iraqi-occupied Kurdistan. The use of Peshmerga ‘shock troops’ allowed INTREV to delay the Turkish offensive so that as much firepower could be concentrated in Tabriz as possible.

Tabriz has been described by both military and civilian survivors of the battle as a “bloody cage fight.” The fighting was a slog as the Turks attempted to keep advancing in the face of overwhelming firepower from the defenders. But the Turanists’ fanaticism allowed for their units to make advances past the first and second lines of defences as April gave way into May. By May 4th, around a third of the city was under Turkish hands, in large part due to the Luftwaffe support that allowed the Turks to deal with entrenched NLA positions.

The next day, Atsız would get communications from Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel. The Luftwaffe would no longer be able to provide support for offensive operations in Tabriz. Near the end of the month, Germany was planning to launch Operation Zitadelle , a massive blitzkrieg-like operation on the Volga salient. Keitel told Atsız personally that he had given him the heads-up so that the Turanist army could coordinate a new battle strategy to compensate for the Luftwaffe -shaped hole in their plans.

Unfortunately for Keitel, Atsız wasn’t thankful for this notice. He was infuriated. In private, Atsız went on a vitriolic tirade against Hitler and how his German allies had now “left [him] to the wolves and savages.” Atsız’s mental state was deteriorating, and it reflected itself in how he slowly removed himself from his duties as Minister of Defense, particularly the war effort. Instead, he began to focus on something far more personal.

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Bury The Body and Tell No One

It would be highly remiss to cover this point in the war without discussing the Armenian Genocide. While it was discussed previously how Atsız was the principal architect behind “Turanization” in its most violent and horrific sense, this was a policy orchestrated by the Turkish state as a whole.

Aram Bedrosian, an Armenian from the small town of Ardahan, recounted his experiences with the mass ethnic cleansing that took place in 1943.

“_The Turanists arrived one morning and quickly rounded up the men. My father and older brothers were among them. They told us they were being taken to perform labor for the war effort. That was the last time I saw them. Later, I learned they were marched to a gorge and shot, their bodies thrown down and left to rot.
For us—my mother, sisters, and I—they ordered us to pack only what we could carry. We were herded into a caravan with hundreds of others, the women, children, and the older people. The sun burned our skin, and the nights froze our bones. Soldiers and armed guards surrounded us, barking orders and striking anyone who fell behind. They took our food, our water, our dignity. Some women were dragged away, never to return.
My mother was sick when we departed, and she grew more ill on the journey. By the time we arrived at the camp, she was far too frail. [Turanists] separated us, my sisters and I, on one path and our mother on the other. I remember her red scarf looking so bright in the desert. As they led her away, it grew further and further and further. Until it was gone. We never saw her again.” _

- Aram Bedrosian (1921-2001)

Many other Armenians in Turanist occupations, like Aram, were deported to work camps, where they were kept malnourished and in unsanitary conditions. Camp prisoners who were too weak were often killed, while bodies would be tossed into mass graves or even into the rivers that led downstream towards enemy territory. There are memoirs of Soviet soldiers who served in Armenia recounting the sick sight of weeks-old corpses washing up by the river, half-rotting and eaten by scavenging wolves.

Atsız’s mental state left him scapegoating the slowness of the initial phase of Turanization in Armenia, which made him ramp up the scale of the genocide. And not just towards the Armenians, as Atsız’s approval of the construction of the KZ Akers concentration camp demonstrated. The existence of KZ Akers within Turkish territory was the primary piece of evidence that many have used to tie Nihâl Atsız to not just the architect of the Armenian Genocide, but also a willing collaborator in the Holocaust.

In true historical justice, it would be Atsız’s commitment to wholesale slaughter that would begin his downfall. Turkey’s collaboration with the Holocaust in Palestine had the ire of both Arabs and Jews in the Turkish-occupied north, as the various armed factions of the PFLP, Haganah, and Meyi stopped their infighting to turn their weapons against the Turks and Italians. The Turks were overstretched within their northern operations, and now a full-out insurgency in Syria-Palestine was further draining resources.

On July 2nd, 1943, Soviet partisans in Armenia, assisted with information passed by Section 1 of the American MDSS, attacked 55 military outposts, air bases, barracks, and known labor camps within the occupied territory of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. The partisans destroyed numerous weapons caches meant to supply the battle at Yerevan, killed an estimated 2,500 soldiers while injuring 4 times as many, and freed 850 prisoners in the various camps between July 2nd and 9th.

While this was an ambitious plan, with a complex strategy and challenging coordination for the undersupplied partisans, and only middling military objectives were achieved, it achieved a unique political and strategic victory for the partisans in the long term. The liberation of the labor camps allowed news of the initially undocumented genocide and ethnic cleansing to spread further, invigorating more and more Armenians to fight. And it would be through the sacrifice and valor of the partisans that Armenia would find its salvation.

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Coming Home to Roost

Operation Zitadelle, Hitler’s long-awaited offensive, commenced on May 28th, in the largest concentration of combined arms in modern warfare. The preparation for this ‘Hail Mary’ offensive came at the cost of the Grozny operation, as an evacuation 2 weeks before would leave an undersupplied and outnumbered Wehrmacht/SS contingent left at the mercy of Soviet/Chechen partisans.

However, Operation Zitadelle removed the Germans from the equation for Yerevan and Tabriz within the context of the Transcaucasian Front. The Luftwaffe had supported the comparatively outmatched and outclassed THK in terms of aerial superiority, a factor that was now gone in light of Zitadelle. Nevertheless, the Turks still did what they could to use the Zitadelle offensive to their advantage.

On June 13, the sky of Tabriz was greeted with the sound of artillery as Nihâl Atsız and his Army Staff aimed to deliver the knockout punch they so desperately sought. The element of surprise gave them the initial edge, allowing Turanist shock troops to claw forward against the stiff defenders of the mountain city. By June 17th, Tabriz was encircled as Turkish forces entered Basmenj, a town in Tabriz’s southeast. But without the air power to dislodge the defenders, the battle turned into a siege. The Turks would have to wait for more firepower to overwhelm the defenders.

A siege on Tabriz meant that supplies to Yerevan were now unavailable by road. However, planning ahead of this, much of Yerevan’s supplies would be based on the airfields of Baku. The roads from Azerbaijan weren’t developed enough for supply trucks to traverse the mountains fully. However, members of both the Soviet and American aerial staff suggested being able to airdrop supplies to Yerevan, which would be possible given the aerial supremacy of INTREV within the Caucasus. So, as INTREV readjusted to the new reality on the frontlines, so did Turkey.

German reassurances cooled Atsız’s frustration over the stalemate, telling the Turanist triumvir that the victory of Zitadelle would allow the elimination of Soviet-American power in the front, cementing Turkish domination in the region.

The Caucasus would be at a standstill, and what would tip the balance would be an operation not in Armenia or Iran, but up north in the mud of the Volga.

[…]

If you ask me, there was no more significant commander in our victory in ‘43 than Comrade Bagramyan.”

• David Eisenhower, General of the Army (1890 - 1969)

[…]

The news of Operation Zitadelle’s suspension reverberated all over the Caucasus Front. It gave INTREV the strategic initiative and left the Turks, who seemed on the brink of landing a knockout blow, highly exposed. Five days after Zitadelle was suspended, on July 12th, Gronzy was fully retaken by INTREV forces without a fight, which meant that the Turanist plan to bottle up their forces in the Caucasus was officially dead, and Soviet and American forces would soon enter the fray in full.

Ivan Bagramyan, now the leading commander of INTREV forces in the Caucasus, aimed to utilize this change in dynamics and end the sieges of Yerevan and Tabriz in decisive INTREV victories. And now, he would have the reinforcements to do it.

Throughout July, INTREV troops massed around East Azerbaijan, preparing for the counter-offensive that would fully repel the Turanists from Tabriz. Soviet and American airpower maintained in the region, allowing aid to be airdropped to the defenders as well as preventing any possibility of the Turanists engaging in offensive actions around the city. The arrival of Soviet and American forces empowered the INTREV counter-offensive to begin in earnest, as the Turanists, for the first time in the campaign, had found themselves outnumbered and outgunned. Peshmerga units would assault the Turkish positions with unexpected ferocity from the south as Soviet and American troops, fresh off fighting the Germans, made quick work of the exhausted and demoralized positions from the north. Overwhelmed and incapable of stemming the counterattack, the Turkish forces retreated, giving up any aspirations of capturing the jewel of Tabriz.

Meanwhile, Iran, now free from the Turanist onslaught, was free to put their newly minted revolutionary army to the test against Iraq as its fascist Prime Minister Gaylani, understanding that his regime would be on borrowed time in the absence of his Turkish backers, launched a major offensive towards Ahvaz.

But even with the Iranian Army preoccupied, the withdrawal and evacuation of the Axis Powers from the Caucasus had already begun the domino effect that would lead to the ultimate demise of Turanist Turkey. With INTREV and Entente forces now focused on Ankara, the initial shock and awe that had brought initial success for the triumvirate were now reaping the seeds it had sown.

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By August 3rd, Turkish forces were in full retreat back to the northwest, their campaign to seize Iranian Azerbaijan and the road to the Baku oilfields was in ashes, and so was any offensive momentum in the Caucasus front. Two days prior, INTREV forces had bottled up or cleared up all remaining Wehrmacht forces in the Volga-Caucasus region, which meant that Turkey would face much more attention and force from Moscow. The remaining weeks of August would have Soviet and American forces advance towards occupied Armenia, where the bulk of the Turkish forces were still besieging Yerevan. But the arrival of INTREV reinforcements had now made the Turks the outnumbered belligerent, and the THK was non-existent in the face of dominant WFRAAF/VVS control of the skies. Soon, the besiegers of Yerevan faced the risk of being besieged themselves by the advancing red tide. Atsız ordered that no withdrawal from Yerevan would occur; that it would be up to the pure and noble Turks to repel the foreign Communist horde. And to their credit, the commander of the Turkish army besieging Yerevan, Marshal Bardakcı, followed Atsız’s orders in holding his position at Yerevan. But it was just a noose in waiting. Soviet and American troops arrived two weeks later on the 17th and dealt a crushing defeat to the Turkish Army, which would scatter into a hasty retreat.

The Battle of Yerevan would leave the Turkish Army with 150,000 casualties of the 295,000 that had begun the offensive. Atsız, now faced with the fact that his inclusion in the Stahlpakt could turn into a poison pill, would continue his further downward spiral as the energetic, brash, and bombastic propagandist would become more sullen, agitated, and resentful. It had been Atsız’s pro-German stance that had gotten him not just into WWII, but into power. It was German assurances that led him to advocate for a war against the Soviet Union.

But now those allies have left him high and dry, withdrawing and suspending their operations without even consulting him. Atsız was unlike his Stahlpakt contemporaries in that his temper wasn’t always a volcano, and he didn’t make rash orders and decisions. But he still had that anger, and in this moment of national crisis, he targeted that anger towards those he had already harmed: the Armenians.

A scorched earth campaign by the retreating Turkish forces along the road to Yerevan had no strategic purpose. Many of those populations had been depopulated anyway, already victims of the Armenian Genocide. But Atsız and the Turanists desired to make a point, to wound the land so that the scars of these atrocities would remain for generations. Such was the extent of Atsız’s cruelty.

But petty cruelty did nothing to change the reality. The Turanists were surrounded. The expulsion of Italian forces out of Egypt and Palestine by Entente forces, alongside their capture of Cyprus, combined with the steady advance by Soviet/American INTREV forces from the east, would have Turkey surrounded by the end of 1943; a stark contrast to the initial successes that 1942 brought. But they still had the home front under their control, and the confidence the HTP had in defending their homeland compared to expanding the republic was quite pronounced. The Turanists invoked the Turkish War of Independence, the conflict that had succeeded in defeating foreign imperialism and establishing the Republic of Turkey. We’ve been in this situation before, and we survived. Our nation can stand firm once again.

The sense of déjà vu combined with his deteriorating personal state had made Atsız romanticize a nationalistic ‘war to the death,’ whether they would make the imperialist British and their communist bedfellows bleed themselves dry in Turkey proper. On September 4th, Atsız would make a speech before a large crowd where he said,

“Our great nation of Turan faces its greatest crises, as the hordes that wish the destruction of our nation, the desecration of Allah, and the blood of thousands of patriotic Turks are at our doorsteps. Many years ago, the same powers wished to chain us, crush the spark of Great Turan in its crib. But we stood strong then, just as we shall now. Every proud Turk, the nation calls on you to embark on a great jihad, to defend your land, your nation, your future! The soul of Turan lies in your hands; long live our great nation of Turan!”

Similar to the modern Bushido code, which manifested itself in Concordist Japan and the Nazi’s eventual Endsieg, Turanist Turkey would embark on its path to fiery ruin, as now it would find itself alone at the mercy of the Allies, INTREV, and Operation: Nemesis. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation