Mookie
Banned
Instead they'll be raided by some other Turks, will still suffer in the Balkans and internally, and . . . why would "no Ottomans" make any difference?
That would require a massively stronger empire than the OTL Byzantine Empire, and I'm just looking at as of Andronicus II - not even by the time of Manuel II where its obviously sunk.
A lot of Byzantine power lately went into containing the Ottomans.
They could recover. Other Turks didnt have the "ghazi" mentality of early Ottomans, who didnt want to fight correligionists and thus pushed west constantly. The Karamans, and others will probably try to expand in Anatolia before trying something west. I am cheering for Saruhan