Originally posted by thesmilingassassin
You name it we want it. Rifles, SMG's, MG's, mortars and the like. I have little information as to what equipment the Turks had in 1935ish.
I believe the Turks used the K98 Mauser rifle from the 1910s onward - I had a friend who owned one of them. 8x57mm of course.
Turkey also purchased the
ZB-26 LMG, which is a predecessor to the Bren gun. (It appears my Bulgarian army troops have the same thing.)
I could not find any clues as to any historical Turkish submachine guns of the era, but your best bet would be an Erma/Bergmann knockoff like the
Steyr-Solothurn Mp.34. That'd be German or Swiss.
With K98 Mausers and ZB-26 LMGs both in 8mm Mauser, that reduces supply demands. I don't know what the standard Turkish sidearm is but it would be best to have your SMG chambered for the same round. The Erma/Bergmann type SMGs came in pretty much every pistol caliber you could name. I'd suggest 7.63x25 Mauser would be a safe bet, as it lets you use those dashing Mauser Broomhandle pistols (C96 Pistol). Alternately, you could buy the German Lugers (9x19 Parabellum) and then order your Ermas for that caliber.
If you're looking for self-loading rifles, there's not a goodly number of them out there - most of them are full of fail, and the few good designs just aren't being adopted because supply officers claim soldiers with semiautos will fire all their ammo wildly and make supply problems more difficult... This will be your biggest problem justifying a semiauto battle rifle in this era. AFAIK, the French during WWI tried to field large numbers of semiauto rifles, but then they went back to the bolt-actions because of reliability issues. The US and USSR eventually pursued the idea in the 1930s, but WWII was not very kind to Russian production. Still, they had the SKS by 1945, and the AK47 by, well, 1947. Of course by that time you have the war experience to show your supply officers...
...I'm rather a small-arms geek, particularly with military surplus rifles.
I note in their quarterly report that the Persians are acquiring 50,000
ZH-29 semiauto rifles and asking to purchase the license for it. Since that is one of our anhistoric changes, Turkey might be justified in developing or purchasing a self-loading rifle of its own. If you want to go the semiauto route - and hindsight shows you'll want to do so
- then I have a few suggestions:
First, the American Pedersen rifle, which was chambered for .276 Pedersen, was developed in the 20s and considered for US Army adoption in the early thirties. For some reason the design stalled out and eventually the M1 Garand was selected instead.
Second, as Red Admiral recently pointed out to me, the Italians have the semiauto
Breda Mod.31, which honestly I have not heard much about. You'd want it in a different caliber than the 6.5x52 Carcano... that's not a widely-lauded round.
Third, the Russians worked a great deal on semiauto rifles in the 20s and 30s, and they deployed what is arguably one of the first "assault rifles", the Federov.
Fourth, the Mexican and Swiss
Mondragon rifle, which was used historically by the Germans (in limited numbers) in WWI. The Mondragon is a bit finicky regarding dirt and grime, and so didn't make much of a name for itself.
Then there's always the possibility of developing your own ahistoric self-loading rifle. All the technical know-how is there, it's just that nobody bothered putting the pieces together. If you'd like I can draw up a decent mid-30s early 40s technology SLR and give you some possibilities...