AHC/WI: Divide the Ottoman Empire!

As it says on the tin, can you find a way to break the Ottoman Empire.....in half? East to West(just like the Roman Empire of Antiquity), or North to South(like post-WWII Korea), it's up to you.

POD can be at anytime after the Empire forms, but may perhaps work best with one after 1775 or so.
 
POD can be at anytime after the Empire forms, but may perhaps work best with one after 1775 or so.

Plenty of times where Ottoman succession struggles resulted in brothers holding separate chunks of the Empire. A prolonged Ottoman interregnum after the Battle of Ankara in 1402 could well see Suleyman holding the Ottoman lands west of the Bosphorus, while Mehmed I holds the lands east of it.
 

raharris1973

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Plenty of times where Ottoman succession struggles resulted in brothers holding separate chunks of the Empire. A prolonged Ottoman interregnum after the Battle of Ankara in 1402 could well see Suleyman holding the Ottoman lands west of the Bosphorus, while Mehmed I holds the lands east of it.

Any plausible way to keep them perpetually separate after that. Could either or both halves have a reasonably glorious career as a major power in Asia or Europe without the other?
 
1683 - divide the Empire at its height.

I - Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Tunisia [Cairo]
II - Northern Balkans [Belgrade]
III - Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, and Anatolia [Istanbul]
IV - Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, and the Black Sea Coast [Yerevan]
V - Islands (including Socotra), Hejaz, and Mediterranean territories [Medina]
 
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Any plausible way to keep them perpetually separate after that. Could either or both halves have a reasonably glorious career as a major power in Asia or Europe without the other?

Keeping them perpetually separate is probably just a matter of having the right 'quirks of history' - a battle won here, a siege lost there, maybe an arrangement of some sort eventually after a prolonged stalemate. I wouldn't say that there was anything inherent in the Ottoman polity that required it to be in one piece (compared with, say, Imperial China, where there was a strong bureaucratic and cultural impetus for unification).

I don't see why the Anatolian bit couldn't be successful, considering the decent performance of the Sultanate of Rum, which occupied a roughly similar area - especially if the Anatolian Ottomans adopt gunpowder ahead of their enemies like OTL.

The Balkan Ottomans will be more tricky to maintain given religious differences, but again not entirely impossible given the contemporary existence of Muslim Empires in similar situations such as the Mughals. Proximity to powerful European nations is the more challenging obstacle to overcome, though again not insurmountable due to the fact that OTL Ottomans made extensive use of Balkan manpower in their armies anyway.
 
In the wake of Tamerlane, Rumeli and Anadolu emerge as separate states, under different scions of the House of Osman.
 
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