不久前，经济学人发表架空历史系列的新一篇文章
内容是讨论一战中鄂图曼选择站好队的结果
刚好我以前也满喜欢这个国家的，也常常思考这个问题
所以就找了时间慢慢翻一下，不过英文程度差，有些地方进行了超译ＸＤ
原文：
https://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724913-imagine-mayhem-might-have-been-avoided-had-ottoman-empire-been-saved-rather
IF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE HAD NOT COLLAPSED
如果鄂图曼帝国未曾崩解？
SULTANS OF SPRING
THE WORLD IF 2017
Jul 6th 2017, 12:07
Imagine the mayhem that might have been avoided had the Ottoman Empire been saved rather than sunk. Blame, among others, Winston Churchill
WHEN a Serb gunman shot an Austrian archduke in the summer of 1914, the nations of Europe tumbled into war with all the grace of bowling pins. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, whose ally Russia declared war on Austria, whose ally Germany declared war on Russia, whose allies France and Britain declared war on Germany and Austria. By early August the continent was in flames.
时值一九一四年之夏，一名塞尔维亚枪手射杀了奥地利大公，欧洲诸国遂陷入了滚球般的混乱。奥匈帝国对塞尔维亚发下了战檄，塞国盟友俄罗斯宣战奥地利，奥地利盟友德国宣战俄罗斯，俄国盟友英法宣战德奥。八月之初，大陆烽火。
Much as it wobbled like the rest, however, one of those bowling pins could not make up its mind. Which way would Turkey fall? Should the fading Ottoman Empire join the Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia) or go with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary)?
诸国震荡，然而，尚有一国摇摆不觉，土耳其将投向何方。衰落的帝国该加入协约，或是同盟？
Turkey’s 500-year-old empire was shrinking. It had lost its territories in Africa, nearly all its Mediterranean islands and most of its Balkan lands as well as chunks of eastern Anatolia. It was debt-ridden, industrially backward and politically shaky.
土耳其五百年国祚的帝国正在动摇。失去了非洲领土、地中海几乎所有岛屿、绝大多数的巴尔干领土，以及东安纳托利亚。负债累累，工业落后，政治动荡。
Still, the sultan’s lands straddled two continents, controlling access to the Black Sea. His Arabian territories stretched beyond the holy cities of Islam to the mountains of Yemen and the Persian Gulf, where there were rumoured to lie vast caverns of the sticky black liquid soon to replace coal as the world’s chief source of power.
苏丹的土地仍横跨两洲，控制黑海入径。他阿拉伯的领土超越了回教圣城，触及了也门群山与波斯湾……谣言漫谈著这里有巨穴黑油，此物后必大行于世。
Confident of Turkey’s weakness, Britain, France and Russia could have clobbered the Ottomans and divided the spoils. Thankfully, wiser heads prevailed. At a secret conclave aboard a British dreadnought off the coast of Norway in late July, a far-sighted politician by the name of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, worked with French, Russian and Turkish diplomats to forge a treaty. The Turks drove a hard bargain for, as they coyly revealed, Germany too was proffering arms and gold in
exchange for an alliance.
理解土耳其的弱点，英法俄可能摧毁帝国，分其金瓯。所幸，有人有更好的方法，七月下旬，挪威海滨旁的英国无畏号之上，一场秘密会议展开，一位时有名望的政治家温斯顿·丘吉尔，是为第一海军大臣，与法、俄、土三国周旋，密定条约。土耳其人狡猾透露，德国也欲以武器及金钱换取盟友，土耳其人因此得以强硬地讨价还价
The deal that was reached proved immensely beneficial to all concerned. From France, Turkey received generous debt relief. Russia scrapped all claims to Ottoman territory, and made a limited goodwill withdrawal from parts of Anatolia. Churchill waived further payment on two warships that British shipyards were building for Turkey. And Turkey received assurances that its vulnerable extremities would not be attacked; for an empire that for a century had been preyed upon like a carcass this was a new lease
of life.
所成交易共利双方。法国方面，土耳其被慷慨地免除债务。俄罗斯取消了对鄂图曼领土的宣称，并微小善意地撤出了安纳托利亚。丘吉尔免除了英国造船厂为土耳其建造的两艘军舰之后续付款。土耳其获知其脆弱的边境不会受到攻击，对于一个世纪来，像沙威玛一样被切片的帝国，这条约是给国家续命。
The rewards to the Triple Entente were equally big. Granted exclusive access to the Black Sea, Russia’s allies could resupply the tsar’s armies when they faltered at the start of the war. With no need to defend its Turkish frontier, Russia moved thousands of crack troops from the Caucasus to shore up its front lines. Turkey signed separate agreements recognising British control of the Suez Canal, Aden and the Trucial sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf, securing the sea lanes for Britain’s massive
deployment of troops from the colonies to the Western Front. Turkey’s own army joined in a broad front against Austria-Hungary. Together, these Allied advantages are thought to have shortened the war by as much as a year; the Central Powers might not have sued for a truce as soon as America entered the war, but fought on instead.
协约同样也有所报酬。由于获得了黑海通行权，俄国得以在战初获得盟友的补给，也因无须在俄土边境对峙，沙皇将高加索的上千突击队部署前线。土耳其签署了单边协议，承认英国对苏伊士运河，亚丁和波斯湾特鲁西尔酋长国的控制权，确保了英国得以自殖民地动员大规模部队到西方战线的海上通道。土耳其军队加入了对奥匈帝国的大阵线。盟军得以缩短一年多的战争时间，一旦美国进入战争，同盟国可能不会被请求停战，而是继续战斗。
Reprieved from collapse, the Ottoman Empire’s government pursued radical reforms. Challenged by growing nationalist tendencies from Arab, Armenian, Greek and Kurdish subjects, Sultan Mehmed V issued a historic firman or proclamation that recognised these as individual nations united under the Ottoman sovereign.
奥斯曼帝国政府从崩溃中解脱出来，进行了激进的改革。受到来自阿拉伯，亚美尼亚，希腊和库德人的民族主义倾向的挑战，苏丹·梅赫德五世发表了一个历史性的公告，承认它们为个体国家，然在鄂图曼主权之下统一。
The sultan got to keep the title of caliph, commander of the Sunni Muslim faithful, which his ancestors had acquired four centuries earlier. This proved useful when the empire had to put down a rebellion of religious fanatics in central Arabia, led by a man called Ibn Saud who gained followers by claiming he would restore Islam to a purer state. But mostly the empire was seen as a tolerant place. When Nazi persecutions drove Jews from Europe in the 1930s, many took refuge there (as they had done when
expelled from Spain in 1492), particularly in the province of Jerusalem.
苏丹将维持在四个世纪前先皇所获的逊尼派哈里发的头衔。当帝国正在平定阿拉伯极端宗教主义者的叛乱时，这个头衔便发挥了统领的用处。叛乱由一个名叫伊本·沙乌地的人领导，自称将使伊斯兰恢复为更纯净的国度。但大多数帝国被视为宗教宽容的地方。当纳粹迫害在20世纪30年代从欧洲驱赶犹太人时，许多人在那里躲避（就像犹太人在1492年被从西班牙驱逐时一样），特别是在耶路撒冷省。
If only
Needless to say, none of the above happened. Quite the opposite. Turkey aligned with Germany in the first world war, and the allies did attempt to invade and divide its empire. Churchill, instead of handing over the warships that ordinary Turks had paid for by subscription, had them seized for the British navy. In 1915 he ordered a catastrophic attack on Turkey; the landing at Gallipoli cost the allies 300,000 casualties. British campaigns against Turkey in Iraq and the Levant cost another million lives.
假使
不用说，上述都没有发生。恰恰相反。土耳其在第一次世界大战中与德国同行，协约确实试图入侵和分裂帝国。丘吉尔，并未奢免军舰费用，反倒以军舰对付土耳其人。 1915年，他下令对土耳其进行灾难般的袭击。加利波利登陆的代价是盟军30万人伤亡。英国在伊拉克和黎凡特的军事行动消耗了一百万的生命。
Turkey’s casualties mounted, by war’s end, to 3m-5m people, nearly a quarter of the Ottoman population. This included some 1.5m Armenians, slaughtered because Turkish officials believed they might become a fifth column for a hostile Russia. And when Britain and France grabbed the Ottomans’ Arab lands, their suppression of uprisings cost thousands more lives.
战争结束后，土耳其的伤亡人数已经达到了300万至500万人，是奥斯曼人口的近四分之一。 这包括约一百五十万被屠杀的亚美尼亚人，因为土耳其官员认为他们可能成为敌对俄罗斯的资助者。 当英国和法国攫取了奥斯曼帝国的阿拉伯土地时，他们镇压反抗导致了数千人死亡。
How much of today’s mayhem in the Middle East, from civil wars to terror in the name of Islam (and of restoring the caliphate) to the emergence of sectarian dictators such as Bashar al-Assad, not to mention of such a grudge-bearing Ottoman revivalist as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, might have been avoided, if only Churchill had embraced Johnny Turk instead of sinking him?
多少今日在中东的混乱可被避免？以伊斯兰教的名义（并恢复哈里发）施行的内战、恐怖主义，或像巴沙尔·阿萨德这样的教派独裁者的出现，更不用说渴望复兴鄂图曼荣光的怨恨者，如雷伯普·塔伊普·埃尔多安。仅仅假使邱吉尔拥抱土鸡，而非吃了它？
大概就是个英国会拍一部《鄂图曼的劳伦斯》电影的世界
虽然我认为作者似乎有点乐观
鄂图曼之所以会选择德意志，自然是因为英、俄不是吃素的
一旦协约灭亡，英俄可不会好心地让这块好吃的火鸡放在餐盘上未动
我的想法倒是在战争中保持中立，等待帝国主义者自己互相残杀
使得战胜后的英俄也无力分食帝国
并主动引导美国势力进入，好比二十世纪版的门户开放政策
以此确保美国对自己主权的支持
两次大战后，殖民地独立风潮大起，不列颠自然不成威胁
然而北方染红，苏联的势力成为更大的威胁
不过这反倒是更好的契机，加入北约，成为共产反堵圈的一员
以此国内发展也可受到美国的扶持。
不过鄂图曼最可观的潜力，莫过于地底的黑金了
今日阿拉伯诸国据此一地便能成富，鄂图曼则是控制了整块领土
拥有当时世界上近九成的可开采能源，怎么不可怕
当然，不要像穆罕默德·摩萨台那样想把石油国有化，这怎么看都是匹夫怀玉
给予西方石油公司一定的股权，换取政治上的支持。
而这帝国最大的问题，莫过于其国家的本质，一个单一民族统治的多民族国家
南斯拉夫分了，苏联崩了，马来西亚尚处争端
不过好处在于，它的主体仍是伊斯兰宗教
鄂图曼帝国曾经推行过“鄂图曼民族”这个概念
即是同于中华民族的一种多民族共同体，虽然历史说明它失败了
但如果它拥有一个更稳定的政治环境，它是否会成功呢？
以宗教统合多民族的国家，在今日国际上，却实是稳定许多
比如印度的最大民族人数甚至不过半，印尼的爪哇族也仅占四成
两者都算是稳定的政治体。
虽然如以伊斯兰为号召，那么鄂图曼可能不会如土耳其那样西化
但也不至于成为何梅尼的伊朗或今日达许那样激进
http://i.imgur.com/U1UZfCu.jpg