Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus — National Focus Trees for Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria

Turkey National Focus Tree

At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was completely humiliated. Many of its former territories were partitioned by the victorious Entente.

When World War II began, Turkey was led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the country would remain neutral. It only declared war against the Axis in February 1945.

In Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus, Turkey has several National Focus Trees that lead to various outcomes. Here are the main branches:

• Learning from the Great War and Hava Okulu – The former has more emphasis on Turkish ground forces whereas the latter focuses on aircraft.
• The Montreaux Convention – This is the most important branch among Turkey’s National Focus selections since it leads to more options down the line.

The Montreaux Convention

All the paths here will eventually lead to one of three possible choices: Looking Outwards, Abuse the Office of Soil Products, or Salt the Scars of the Great War. In turn, you’re presented with three mutually exclusive options:

• Pivot to the Past
• Continue to Prioritize Balkan Integrity
• Reconfigure Turkish Foreign Policy

Pivot to the Past

This option at the left-hand side takes a more ahistorical approach. It’s all about Ottoman loyalists returning and claiming power. There are even notions such as rejoining the Central Powers (if Germany and Hungary made those decisions themselves).

Continue to Prioritize Balkan Integrity

This one is more about improving relations among the Balkan countries — the Kingdom of Greece, the Kingdom of Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia — with Turkey as the leader of the Balkan Pact. Eventually, you’ll have war goals against Italy or the Soviet Union.

Reconfigure the Turkish Foreign Policy

This is, by far, the biggest section in Turkey’s National Focus Tree in Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus due to myriad options (many of the main branches are also mutually exclusive with one another). You’ll start things off by aligning Turkey closer to the United Kingdom, the German Reich, or the Soviet Union.

Much later, you’ll have an important choice to make on which faction to join (or create). The options available to you will depend on the branching path that you decided on:

• Anglo-Turkish Agreement -> Join the Allies.
• German-Turkish Friendship -> The Mediterranean Entente (invites Italy to join the Covenant of the Mediterranean faction).
• German-Turkish Friendship -> Join the Axis.
• Renew the Soviet Non-Aggression Pact -> The Anti-Bolshevik Mediterranean Bloc (invites Spain to join the Anti-Bolshevik Accord faction).
• Renew the Soviet Non-Aggression Pact -> Readdress the Montreaux Convention (Turkey joins the Comintern).

After you’ve finished any of the branching paths in the Reconfigure the Turkish Foreign Policy National Focus, you’ll unlock the Misak-ı Millî branch.

Misak-ı Millî

These turn Turkey from a regional power to one that seeks to expand all over the continent. You’ll receive either cores or claims against multiple countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Middle East territories held by the Allies.

There’s also the Turanist Ambition National Focus which is the ideology of bringing together all peoples of Central Asian, Turkic, or Finno-Ugric backgrounds. You’ll get war goals against numerous nations such as Hungary, Sinkiang, Tibet, Tannu Tuva, Mongolia, Finland, Estonia, and the Soviet Union.

Up next, let’s take a look at Hearts of Iron IV: Battle of the Bosporus‘ new National Focus Tree for Bulgaria.