AHC: Surviving Secular Ottoman Empire

Keep in mind avoiding WWI does not secure the stability of the Ottoman Empire. In 1914 all of the Great Powers began negotiating for economic concessions in the Empire because they all saw its collapse as imminent. Examples of the are the British-Ottoman Treaty from 1913 and the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, which the German built partially so that they could take a slice of the Ottomans when they collapsed.

The Ottomans have a lot of problems to overcome to survive, and I personally think the discovery of oil in their territory would make things much worse as the great powers vie for control of it.
This also depends on the state in which the rest of Europe finds itself after the war.
 
Their British alliance fell to pieces after 1878, and Germany alone wouldn't save them if Britain, France, Italy and Russia were all determined to dismember the Porte. The only way to ensure their long-term survival is something resembling WWI with the Central Powers winning - that breaks Russia and France while sending Britain into isolation.
Were the French and British really determined to dismember the Empire? The British supported the integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they didn't want Russia to gain access to the Mediterranean (at least in theory- they also wanted to keep the Germans from getting a railroad to Kuwait), and I don't notice anything about the French wanting the Ottomans split up except for their alliance with Russia. In fact, it seems the only times the French intervened with the Ottomans it was in their favor- namely against the Russians in the Crimean War, and when the Ottomans allowed them to protect Christians in Syria from persecution.
 
Were the French and British really determined to dismember the Empire? The British supported the integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they didn't want Russia to gain access to the Mediterranean (at least in theory- they also wanted to keep the Germans from getting a railroad to Kuwait), and I don't notice anything about the French wanting the Ottomans split up except for their alliance with Russia. In fact, it seems the only times the French intervened with the Ottomans it was in their favor- namely against the Russians in the Crimean War, and when the Ottomans allowed them to protect Christians in Syria from persecution.

France was complicated - they supported the Turks in the Crimean War, yes, but they also saw themselves as the ones who should protect Christians in the Holy Land. Their choice of Syria and Lebanon as protectorates after WWI wasn't random, they'd wanted those territories for nearly a century beforehand. As for Britain, they'd traditionally defended the Turks from the Russians, but that changed after 1878. There were a few reasons - Liberals like Gladstone were appalled at the atrocities the Turks committed in the Balkans during that war, Conservatives just didn't think they were strong enough to make a worthwhile ally against Russia anyways, and ultimately when they decided to reach an accommodation with France and Russia in the early 00's, they and the French decided that allowing Russia the Straits was worth their cooperation against Germany. There wasn't any interest in protecting the Turks after that, and nobody in either country thought the Empire could be saved regardless, they saw it as an Oriental dinosaur waiting to disintegrate, and they all wanted the best deals they could get out of it. Certainly, if the Italo-Turkish War or Balkan League occurred like OTL, those wouldn't help this impression.

So bottom line, for the Ottoman Empire to survive long-term, you need either a different outcome in 1878, or a different one in 1914. Otherwise, colonizers would keep on knocking at the gates like they had for the past century, only without a British counterbalance anymore.
 
France was complicated - they supported the Turks in the Crimean War, yes, but they also saw themselves as the ones who should protect Christians in the Holy Land. Their choice of Syria and Lebanon as protectorates after WWI wasn't random, they'd wanted those territories for nearly a century beforehand. As for Britain, they'd traditionally defended the Turks from the Russians, but that changed after 1878. There were a few reasons - Liberals like Gladstone were appalled at the atrocities the Turks committed in the Balkans during that war, Conservatives just didn't think they were strong enough to make a worthwhile ally against Russia anyways, and ultimately when they decided to reach an accommodation with France and Russia in the early 00's, they and the French decided that allowing Russia the Straits was worth their cooperation against Germany. There wasn't any interest in protecting the Turks after that, and nobody in either country thought the Empire could be saved regardless, they saw it as an Oriental dinosaur waiting to disintegrate, and they all wanted the best deals they could get out of it. Certainly, if the Italo-Turkish War or Balkan League occurred like OTL, those wouldn't help this impression.

So bottom line, for the Ottoman Empire to survive long-term, you need either a different outcome in 1878, or a different one in 1914. Otherwise, colonizers would keep on knocking at the gates like they had for the past century, only without a British counterbalance anymore.
In that case, time for me to post something on the other Ottoman thread on the forum. :p With a post-1900 POD, I thought that preventing the Italo-Turkish War would butterfly the Balkan League, and that would be enough to allow the Ottoman Empire to survive if 1914 went differently (in fact it probably would, considering how different the Balkans would be). There's a high likelihood that without the Balkan Wars, the crisis of 1914 would be peacefully resolved somehow, or it just wouldn't occur. This would give the Ottoman Empire even more time to reform without blowing its budget on wars.
 
In that case, time for me to post something on the other Ottoman thread on the forum. :p With a post-1900 POD, I thought that preventing the Italo-Turkish War would butterfly the Balkan League, and that would be enough to allow the Ottoman Empire to survive if 1914 went differently (in fact it probably would, considering how different the Balkans would be). There's a high likelihood that without the Balkan Wars, the crisis of 1914 would be peacefully resolved somehow, or it just wouldn't occur. This would give the Ottoman Empire even more time to reform without blowing its budget on wars.

Even better would having them WIN the Italo-Turkish War. Granted, they can't outright prevent the Italians from landing in Libya at all or gain naval dominance, but they can, under the right circumstances, inflict bigger losses on the Italian navy, keep more of their own ships afloat, and make the Italians pay a far higher price in blood for staying in Libya (at one point, the Turks nearly trapped the entire Italian force near Tripoli). Keep doing that long enough, and the war will become unpopular in Italy, bringing down the government and forcing them to retreat.
 
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