WI: successful Sheikh Bedreddin

[GauchoBadger]

IOTL, Sheikh Bedreddin was a Turkish religious scholar and rebel leader. In the 1410's, he rebelled against the Ottoman Sultanate in the area around Dobruja, in conjunction with another friendly rebel in the western Anatolian coast. He preached an unique ideology, defending that land property should be communal, that all religions should be tolerated to some extent, and that both the rulers and ruled should come to terms and be equal; an early utopian socialist, like the Iranian Zoroastrian preacher Mazdak, if you may. His rebellion was ambitious, but it was ultimately crushed by the able Sultan Mehmed I. To this day, Bedreddin is revered among Turkish leftists and socialists.
But what if Bedreddin had been successful in estabilishing some sort of coherent state upon the frame of the Ottoman Sultanate? How would this new state mature as a political entity? Would it become a republic? Would it, despite all, degenerate into an oligarchy with time?

 

[The Professor]

The problem with utopias is that they only last as long as the rulers benefit.
If Bedridden succeeds and establishes a new state then in the beginning it will need to be very authoritarian to combat rebellion by previous elites. That leads to the danger of becoming less benevolent than intended (cf the French and Russian Revolutions).
I suspect some form of Sultanate will be maintained or restored. Hopefully most of the toleration will be kept.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Wait the French Revolution, I thought "fuck the aristocrats, king, and the 1%" was an explicit intention. It was never supposed to be truly benevolent, just help the 3rd Estate. Granted, 77% of those executed by the new regime (you know guillotine and stuff) before the Thermidorian Reaction were from the 3rd estate, so it failed that too.