AHC: Largest Yugoslavia with as many religiously-differentiated nations in peace with each other

[Deleted member 114175]

Inspired by the Jewish Serbo-Croatian polity thread, how many religiously influenced nations could exist in former Yugoslavia, and how large could the area of Yugoslavia be?

In this scenario the expanded Yugoslav nations all speak South Slavic languages. Although getting independence from the Ottomans would almost unavoidably involve a major and destructive war, after independence from the Ottomans, the Balkan nations should be united and at peace with each other for a substantial period of time.

Some ideas for nations:

1. Sephardic Jews during the Ottoman period could resettle from Thessalonica into Croatia, Bosnia, or Serbia, forming a Jewish Yugoslav nation.
2. Bulgaria is South Slavic and could potentially be considered part of Yugoslavia with substantial divergence.
3. Ottomans ruled substantial parts of Hungary that could perhaps be Slavicized by migration or by alternate development of the Habsburg Military Frontier. They would have their own dialect of Croatian that could be a separate nation.
4. Protestant Saxons or Hungarians could Slavicize and form a Protestant Yugoslav nation. There could be multiple protestant Yugoslav nations, with different Protestant branches.
5. Bogomils existed as another religion in Bosnia. Although they contributed to the Islamization of Bosnia perhaps they could remain a separate group from Bosniaks.
6. Shi'ites in eastern Turkey could be resettled by the Ottoman Empire into the Balkans, and having differences with other Turks, could nativize and speak a Serbo-Croatian or Bulgarian dialect.
7. In Greece and Italy, Albanians were Hellenized and Italianized. What if they were Slavicized and became a second Catholic grouping, separated from Croatia?
8. Venetian/Italian-influenced Dalmatia or French Illyria.

 

[EnvarKadri]

For the protestant side it seems more straight forward to simple have a good chunk of Croatia and Slovenia be in ottoman hands for a some decades during the reformation and a good number will convert to protestantism like in hungary, than when austria takes back the region it will go like the counter reformation in hungary, only a minority of the protestants will stay so. If they keep getting discriminated consistently for centuries like in ireland the catholics than they could consider themselves a different people.

 

[EnvarKadri]

Also add the pomaks as a bulgarian equivalent to the bosniaks. If the bulgarian turks dont migrate (or get expelled) to anatolia, and instead get integrated into pomaks or even better just have the original bulgarian converts keep their lenguage instead of getting assimilated into turkish.

 

[Deleted member 114175]

What could cause Bulgaria to convert to Islam in larger numbers?

 

[Mr_Fanboy]

This is probably a stretch, but what if the Kalmyks migrate even further west and eventually settle in some portion of Southeastern Europe? Therefore, Buddhism could also be represented.