This is incredibly incorrect. The British 'retained' the Muhammad Ali Dynasty because when they originally invaded in 1882 it was nominally to restore order and to protect the Suez Canal. They thought it would be a relatively short intervention, not the occupation that it became. There's basically no way the Egyptians could be conditioned to re-accept Turkish rule under any circumstances short of an all-out conquest that the Turks simply don't have the resources, the time, or the allies to do so. Hell even the British had a very hard time holding down Egypt and Sudan, and they certainly were better positioned for the tasks than the Turks were. If Istanbul made any such move toward Egypt the British, the French, and the Russians would on be on them like white on rice. Regarding Egypt let us remember that the British both wanted to keep Turkey strong to resist Russia and to keep her weak so that the British could carve out her own spheres of influence and protectorates from former Turkish vassals and provinces. Basically they not only wanted to have their cake and eat it too, they wanted to prevent anyone else from even getting a crumb of the cake.
Secondly, even if ASBs came down from the stars in their spaceships and directly intervened in the matter, the Turks wouldn't move in any sort of way into Africa. Remember the conquest of Sudan and of Darfur was done under the Khedivate, not by the Ottomans, who cared more for Europe and Mesopotamia than they ever did for North Africa. And why should they? The logistics of trying to stretch a supply train across the Sahara would be immense and costly, and for little to no gain. Hell even the French had a hard time doing it, and there were far more industrialized, more populous, richer, had a better supply situation to begin with, and had some fifty years of solid scientific advancement over what you're proposing. It simply will not happen short of Allah himself coming down and declaring all of the Sahel and North Africa to belong to the Ottoman Sultan.
How do you even remotely propose for the Turks, having conquered Egypt, somehow, and put down the many rebellions they'll face, somehow, and defeated the Russians in the Caucuses and in Romania, and fought off the British and French in Egypt, the East Mediterranean, and the former in Arabia and Mesopotamia, and potentially even the Persians also in Mesopotamia, again somehow, the Turks would then push even further south along the White Nile, then suddenly break west, cross through the Sahel, defeat and conquer the Ouaddai Empire, somehow, defeat the rebellions from there, somehow, then push on even further into the Sahel conquering the Bornu Empire, the Sokoto Republic, and many other states, somehow, and then take complete control of the Lake Chad basin, all the while supplying this massive army over incredibly distances far away from their core lands for absolutely no gain at all. How do you propose for that to happen, hmm?
I'm sorry if I'm coming across as brash but really what you're describing is simply impossible short of a genuine miracle from on high.
Your very first sentence is right, the brain fart is on me. But not the rest. Again, I said what I said in context of Ottomans haven't gotten beaten up by Russians. Before the British decided to intervene themselves IOTL, they demanded the Ottomans to do the job. Ottomans didn't comply because they just got their veteran army utterly executed by the Russians and their economic base of Balkans completely wrecked and additional debts to pay. Had they come out of the war as victors, they will be in the position to reoccupy Egypt. Ottoman Empire prior to 1878 was much stronger then post-1878 Ottoman Empire which we are more familiar of. It was a genuine second-rate power with real power projection capabilities. It managed to fight mano-a-mano against Russians and gave the later a pretty bloody nose. Their weaponry was technologically superior to Russians. And they were able to mobilize up to 200-300k troops to fight invading Russians, if hampered by the lack of command unity. Even with that, they were close to victory. A victorious Ottoman empire will not suffer the devastation of their burgeoning economic center of the Balkans(then was just starting to actually industrialize) and the practical execution of their army, and thus will remain a capable second rate power. Yes, they will have enough resources and ability to subdue a chaotic Egypt, and more then enough to absorb African polities in Sudan and Chad, the later which was hardly even populated. But they will only do so by the good will of the powers, which they will easily get if Khedivate has ceased to be reliable partner.
Ottoman performance in Sudan and Chad will be much better then France will ever be. Less advanced and resourceful they maybe, Ottomans were closer to and much more familiar then any European powers with the region, and vice versa. It has been traditionally and nominally Ottoman's backyard, with historical economic ties to Ottoman dominions in North Africa. Tuaregs and other Saharan and Sahel peoples were attacking European visitors with excuse that they didn't receive the pass from Padishah to travel in the region, and Bornu had a centuries long standing formal diplomatic relations with the Empire. Ottomans were more connected to Africa then people often thinks. And approaching expansion of European empires will only serve to drive the muslim Africans closer to Ottoman orbit. In a sense, by reoccupying Egypt, the Ottomans are only centralizing and preventing so much shrinking of their empire and rather then actually expanding. We'll see no Ottoman port in Senegal, not even Ottoman Sokoto, which I never brought up here in the first place.
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