Best case scenario for the Ottoman Empire post 1900?

I don't recall any work which presented the expulsion of Muslims as a happy occurrence. You are free to point out such a work, if you can find it. Meanwhile, what I mentioned occurred in this very thread.


We don't gloss about such numbers because they're substantially exaggerated. And no, maps with unbelievable numbers based on dubious authors don't count as reliable sources. The flight and ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Balkans are in fact frequently mentioned on this forum, often with substantial exaggeration (like the claim that Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece ethnically cleansed all their Muslims).


Which didn't happen, so I'm not quite certain what the relevance here is.


This seems to be your perception. Mine is that Austria-Hungary is highly regarded on this forum. And the number of threads asking about how the Ottoman Empire could do better seem to indicate that they're quite popular as well.


There is significant difference between stating that ethnic cleansing would have been likely under certain circumstances and supporting it outright. The later is far from common and at least nowadays is generally actionable. In any case, for each post that supported ethnic based borders I would say there are multiple ones where multi-ethnic societies are extolled and the possibility of a truly tolerant, multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire is rather optimistically considered a realistic scenario. Of course, less optimistic posters think differently, hence the frequent, if oblique, assertions that reducing the proportion of non-Muslim minorities is the way forward for a more successful Ottoman Empire.


With this statement you more or less prove what I claimed: no one can envision a good alternative for the Ottoman Empire that doesn't involve a worse alternative for their minorities. Of course you're wrong in claiming that this was because the Ottomans were adopting by then the same tactic of ethnic cleansing as the Christian states. In reality, those same tactics had been practiced for nearly a century by then.
How many people here have expressed that Constantinople "belongs to the greeks" or that "the turks stole the eastern half of greece" (in reference to western anatolian coast) or that the actual borders of Greece are "unfair", that they "deserved" more territory? It appears a lot in threads discussing the otoman collapse.
"We don't gloss over them", right, they are almost never mention. I must assume that the ottomans controlled the balkans for centuries but
Can we just agree that all nations involved sucked, everyone made mistakes (Deliberate or not) and you can't dwell on them. Why not come up with alternate history where all of that doesn't happen.
I recognize that I may have came on a little too strong, but it annoys me when in this kind of complex cases people come up with this narratives trying to simplify them into one dimensional victim and villian stories where the ottoman empire is some barbaric butcher that opresses the poor christian nations of the balkans but ignores completly the reality of the big ottoman muslim minorities that used to live in the balkans or glosses over those killings committed by the newly liberated balkan nations. It shure would do a lot of difference if the Shoa had killed 3 million jews instead of 6. Clearly anybody who talks about the the death and persecution of ottoman muslims must be a shill. Even people who openly dislike Justin McCarthy agreed that the number of casualties is in the millions between the killings and ethnic cleansing. Read the cusualties section https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_during_Ottoman_contraction , it mentions other historians.
 
The Soviets industrialized by selling to foreign nations whatever they got, oil, grain, minerals etc, there's other things besides oil in the OE as well, Anatolia is very mineral rich after all, but oil is the big one and unlike the Soviets the OE would not be stuck with a command economy and isolated from Western markets, in fact due to size i'd expect the OE economy/market to do better than the former OE parts put together - unified administration and laws for a large population is good for investor confidence.

Which nations that came after? The post colonial dictatorships or the actual colonies? Post Ottoman Turkey has developed well enough despite all the war losses and not having much oil. The same circumstances that allowed Turkey to succeed will be present for the OE in addition to the oil. Russia is around has to be contained in the region after all, this will put the OE in whatever is the "Western" camp, be it Nato or a German led alliance, this means large access to Western technology.

Let’s see what we have seen suggested in this thread.

1: A economy building on oil.
2: Increased taxation of religious minorities and policies pushing them to emigrate.

Well I’m sure that mix will produce an excellent country. I’m also sure that the Ottoman Empire will keep its historic of lack of respect for private property and weak rule of law.

That seem like a great recipe for foreign investment./s

Also Turkey in 1990 had a lower GDP per capital than pretty much all of Eastern Europe. While the East European GDP fell afterward, Turkey’s also stayed low, it was only with Erdogan’s gaining power, that we saw significant improvements (as he implemented reforms necessary for EU membership), which is why Erdogan have kept such a high degree of popularity, as he brought millions of Turks out of poverty and developed much of Turkey outside the the coastal west. So even without a command economy, it’s possible to run a economy worse than USSR.
 
Well I’m sure that mix will produce an excellent country. I’m also sure that the Ottoman Empire will keep its historic of lack of respect for private property and weak rule of law.
If you argue away any possibility that administration and legal system will improve then of course, the OE will become the Middle Eastern version of the Congo where the land is ruled by petty regional warlords, foreign mega corporations that loot the land of its natural wealth and the population which keeps dying by the hundreds of thousands due to untreated deadly diseases.

Regarding "respect for private property" and "rule of law" you're asking them to reach standards that no other country has reached. Modernization to an "acceptable" level of rule of law and respect for private property is a process that takes some time, in Europe we havent reached it until the 70s or 80s, and the Eastern European parts are slipping backwards, and even in the most modern countries today there's still all kinds of laws and legal tricks that allow the state to expropriate you or to bend all laws to its own advantage.
 
If you argue away any possibility that administration and legal system will improve then of course, the OE will become the Middle Eastern version of the Congo where the land is ruled by petty regional warlords, foreign mega corporations that loot the land of its natural wealth and the population which keeps dying by the hundreds of thousands due to untreated deadly diseases.

Unlikely I just see little reason for any improvement, when they pretty much take the road Turkey took minus the secularism and with pan-Islamism instead until the 90ties and then we mix oil into it. Oil would be far more of a curse than a benefits for the Ottomans. A Ottoman Empire, which behave in the manner people have suggested here, won’t be Congo, but it won’t be well functioning either.

If they can create a multi-religious and multi-ethnic Ottoman identity, which a few people have suggested, we will see the Ottoman Empire do better. But I have a hard time seeing what such identity would build on, and things like the Hamidian Massacres had already poisoned the well by 1900. I get why some people want to work with pan-Islamism instead as unifying identity, as it’s at least something a majority of the population have in common. The problem are just what kind of Islam and the large number of religious minorities and the fact that mistreating these gives outside powers a casus belli.

Regarding "respect for private property" and "rule of law" you're asking them to reach standards that no other country has reached. Modernization to an "acceptable" level of rule of law and respect for private property is a process that takes some time, in Europe we havent reached it until the 70s or 80s, and the Eastern European parts are slipping backwards, and even in the most modern countries today there's still all kinds of laws and legal tricks that allow the state to expropriate you or to bend all laws to its own advantage
.

No, just no.
 
In addition to money printing (qualitative easing)

Just a technical aside... If you meant quantitative easing, that's not money printing at all. Quantitative easing is a shell game between central banks and other banks, to loan money around in such a way that until the loans are repaid, there is more money in the banking sector of an economy. Money printing is physically printing money and using it to pay government workers (civil servants, soldiers etc.) and contractors so that until the money is melted down or burned, there is more money in the consumer sector of an economy.

First, the Ottoman Empire never agreed to giving autonomy to anyone without a fight. For example, in 1876 with threatened a war with Russia and without British support, they still refused giving autonomy to Bulgaria. Second, autonomy almost inevitably lead to independence anyway and even when the minorities demanded autonomy, they usually only saw it as a stepping stone to fully independence.

Well, in real terms the Ottoman Empire centralized enormously over the 19th Century. Breaking the Janissaries allowed it to enormously cut down tax dodging and the power of the guilds which in turn undermined the tax-exempt warlord empires that were eating the Ottoman state from the inside in the 17th Century.

But if you mean in the narrower sense of formal autonomy... Before the Crimean War, the Ottomans had some success in reducing Serbian and Romanian autonomy, but all that came undone when the Russians started to really get successful in the Balkans.

That the empire steadily lost areas that first became autonomous and then independent or conquered by external powers is not evidence of some natural gradient, it is evidence that the Ottoman empire was too weak to roll back the autonomy outside powers were forcing them to accept in their regions for the last 60-70 years of its existence. Had the empire grown stronger relative to its Christian neighbours, this may have changed.

Again, I find it fascinating how even the defenders of the Ottoman Empire seem to think that they would never really prosper with a large Christian minority.

Which is funny, since at the height of the empire, 50% (possibly even more) of the population was Christian and the core territories of the empire (the Balkans) were majority Christian.

Soviet Union had a lot of other things for superpower status, such as large industrial economy, an ideology which had worlwide following etc.

The Ottomans were about a step behind the Russians in their modernization efforts and the sultan was Caliph. I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine an Ottoman Empire that draws level with Russia and manages its leadership of the Muslim international community to more advantage than Soviet leadership of the Communist International (which was very scary to the West and all, but of limited practical value to the Soviets).

in fact due to size i'd expect the OE economy/market to do better than the former OE parts put together - unified administration and laws for a large population is good for investor confidence.

Which nations that came after? The post colonial dictatorships or the actual colonies? Post Ottoman Turkey has developed well enough despite all the war losses and not having much oil. The same circumstances that allowed Turkey to succeed will be present for the OE in addition to the oil. Russia is around has to be contained in the region after all, this will put the OE in whatever is the "Western" camp, be it Nato or a German led alliance, this means large access to Western technology.

Not to mention, the breakup of the empire did significant damage by disrupting trade links and causing violent ethnic strife. Empires collapsing are always bad in the short to medium economic terms (and sometimes in the long term).

But there is no good reason for a Greek or Armenian to identify with Ottomans/Turks. They have their own identity, that is more ancient than the Turkish identity by far, why would they want to adopt another?

The Ottoman Empire was more Greek than it was Turkish, heck, before 1922 "Turkish identity" was Anatolian peasant culture. And (modern) Greek itself was a pretty new identity - most all Greek speakers in 1800 most likely called themselves "Romans" and while their empire was ruled by a Muslim emperor, it was still the Roman empire, being run in the Roman way.

Of course, post-1900 the new identities had won and the Ottomans couldn't simply get along on "Roman-ness", "Ottoman-ness" or "Muslim-ness" alone. The bigger identities needed to make room for the new Ethno-Nationalist identities within them. But without the Balkan wars and the Young Turks being taken over by the military wing, I think that "Ottoman-ness" could still fit Christian ethnic identities inside it, if the conditions are right.

With this statement you more or less prove what I claimed: no one can envision a good alternative for the Ottoman Empire that doesn't involve a worse alternative for their minorities. Of course you're wrong in claiming that this was because the Ottomans were adopting by then the same tactic of ethnic cleansing as the Christian states. In reality, those same tactics had been practiced for nearly a century by then.

What counts as a minority? The Ottoman Empire wasn't built on nations, it was built on a religious identity (a religious identity that had only lately become the majority rather than a plurality due to the loss of the empire's heartlands). So pretty much every national group was a minority.

And considering that the collapse of the empire has been a major element contributing to the miseries of the Ottoman minority groups during and after the Ottoman collapse, I'd say it was pretty easy to imagine better alternatives for both the empire and its minority groups.

Well gust because people lived picfuly for hundreds of years means squat, once nationalism hits you are going to see ethnic minority try to create there own nations, especially when it seems all the most powerful nations success stem partly from that.

And why exactly is ethnic nationalism such an unstoppable force?

Have you considered where and when ethnic nationalism has succeeded? The Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century (but only when Russia was willing and able to use it as a wedge to break off parts of the empire), virtually everywhere in Europe after the great powers have beat each-other to smears on the pavement during WW1 and in in much of Asia and North Africa after the great powers of Europe plus Japan had beaten each-other to smears on the pavement for the second time, and the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia after 40-70 years of economic and political trouble being stored up, on top of the pasted-over wounds in both countries after WW1.

In every case, the Ethno-Nationalists only gain power when the empire they break away from is already broken - and usually the breaking is being done by another empire. Before WW1 changed the rules, the Balkans were seen as a strange anomaly that should not be replicated.

Even today, most of the surface of planet Earth are controlled by states that are not Ethno-Nationalist states (even though we view pretty much everywhere through an Ethno-Nationalist lens).

If the Ottomans have the power to stop the Christian powers meddling in its affairs, Ethno-Nationalism will wither and fade. If the Ottomans do not have the power to keep its Christian neighbours from intervening inside it, then nationalism will continue to be a problem.


__________


All that said, here's my proposal for how the Ottomans could have done better after 1900:

Edward Grey doesn't encourage Italy to invade Libya, and instead continues British opposition to Italy's designs. Italy never starts the 1911 war against the Ottomans. The Balkan allies are still preparing for war, and are considering a move against the Ottomans, but move cautiously, especially since without a war in Libya, the Albanian uprising in TTL is much shorter, and before they make a move, some terrorist goes and shoots the Austrian Arch-Duke, starting WW1. Both sides try to get the Ottomans to join them, but even though the British nick the Ottoman battleships, a combination of a small amount gratitude towards the British from 1911 combined with the absolute hiding the Balkan allies are giving the poorly led Austro-Hungarians keeps the Ottomans out of the early parts of the war.

However, with Germany getting a little bit luckier in France in 1914, combined with the Italian nationalists still fuming at the French (since their unhappiness at French gains during the Agadir Crisis hasn't been ameliorated by the gain of Libya), Italy declares war on France ITTL, evening out the strain between the two sides.

Winston Chruchil then obliges the Italians by invading "the soft underbelly of the Central Powers" by landing some Australians and New Zealanders (and other units from around the British Empire) somewhere the Italians have well fortified, giving the Italians something to do besides giving Luigi Cadorna more men to get killed by the French units guarding the Alpine passes.

The Ottomans in this time are making money hand over fist, selling foodstuffs, smallarms, fibres and crude oil to the warring parties, greatly improving their finances and also helping to speed their industrialization. This favourable financial climate (on top of the dangerous environment pushing various measures to ensure higher military preparedness if they are dragged into the war) spurs the empire to finally end the tax farming system and institute a more modern tax collection system.

By 1918, the Germans have managed to knock out the Balkan allies and Russia, which has started a civil war as it did in OTL (no need this has to happen, but we're talking the best scenario for the Ottomans). The desperate Entente, still trying to hang on until Wilson's US mobilizes, finally makes the Ottomans an offer it can't refuse (I'm imagining something like the British recognizing Ottoman overlordship over Kuwait, perhaps returning Cyprus to full Ottoman control, confirmation of the end of the capitulations plus the award of the Italian colonies in E. Africa in the peace treaty plus a nice low interest loan two modern battleships) and the Ottomans then end up providing most of the manpower for liberating the Balkan allies and pushing into Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary, giving them a taste of modern war, a seat at the Versailles conference and a few gains without too much cost.

The Ottomans get pulled into the Caucasus and Iran (and maaaybe Central Asia, but that may be too much) to restore order to their borderlands during the chaos of the Russian civil war and the collapse of Iran, setting up satellite states and recognizing the victorious Bolsheviks as soon as is opportune. As with Spain and Italy, the decades after WW1 are marked by rapid economic growth and modernization, though punctuated by some economic crises, but like Italy and Japan, this is the time when the Ottomans transition from being mainly agrarian to being mainly industrial. Oil is a strategic resource, but not a big moneymaker at this point, and while there is some effort spent to build industries using waste products of oil production like natural gas to generate electricity and the like, mostly prices are too low and British companies too dominant in that sector for it to be very important. More important would be things like importing Polish and Soviet coal to run modern factories built in the major port cities.

Italy goes Fascist as per OTL and in TTL they are joined by Greece, who sat out WW1 fuming at not being able to join the glorious war and gain lots of land (though the king and his prime minister can't talk any more about which side they'd rather have joined, the last argument having ended in a punch-up), in an anti-Ottoman alliance. The Ottomans meanwhile have gained new importance as a bastion against Communism, and have an alliance with Poland, Japan and Romania (against the Soviets only, but it does lead to more trade with those allies and technology sharing as all 4 try to keep current with the latest technologies being tested by the British and French (which acts as a proxy for what they fear the Soviets have)). The Ottoman empire isn't a formal ally with Britain or France, but it does continue to be an important area for foreign investment for them.

The Serbs, as per OTL, form some sort of Yugoslavia with its gains from Austria-Hungary (Bosnia as well as Croatia, the Banat, Montenegro and Slovenia) are both too distracted by their internal tensions and too wary of apparent Ottoman strength to seek to inspire unity by attacking the Ottomans. Eventually they ally with the Ottomans, both being driven by a common fear of Italian expansionism. Bulgaria, after fighting hard against Austria-Hungary and Germany, is ruled by a frustrated tsar Ferdinand, who resents that his two WW1 allies (Serbia and Romania) made big territorial gains while Bulgaria got only money. The expansionist tsar, with the same wisdom that got him into the Second Balkan war and WW1 in OTL, ends up allying with Italy ITTL.

We'll definitely see a war with the Saudis in the ATL 1920s. However, let's say Britain doesn't back the Saud dynasty very strongly, and the Saudis are defeated by the Ottomans and further development of the Hejaz railway leads to the Ottomans definitively securing the holy cities.

The Great Depression hits the Ottomans hard, as the bulk of their exports are still price-sensitive commodities. As tensions rise across Europe and Germany starts to shake itself free of its Versailles restrictions, so tensions rise between the Ottoman-Yugoslav alliance and the Italo-Greeko-Bulgarian alliance. However, before war breaks out in the East, the Spanish have a civil war, and Mussolini decides to prioritize that. Germany, currently run by a military junta, also intervenes and soon the Nationalists are on the long path to victory.

In the meantime, the Ottomans, who for all this time have been effectively ruled by the constitutionalist wing of the Young Turks, who have all this time been straining to keep Enver Pasha and his militarist wing from plunging the Empire into more war than it can handle (and indeed have failed to stop him from pulling the empire into more war than is strictly good for it), finally boil over. Frustrated by the unwillingness of the other factions to back war against the Italian alliance while Italy is involved in Spain, Enver Pasha launches a coup. He's unsuccessful though, and the frightened Ottoman parliament soon has the army purged. This is too good an opportunity for Mussolini and his allies however, and since things look good in Spain, the Italian alliance declares war on the Ottomans.

Let's say the defending Ottomans (along with volunteers from their various satellites and their Yugoslav allies) acquit themselves fairly well and are able to force compel the Italians and their allies to make peace, with Greece losing some islands (definitely Crete, possibly some other Aegean islands), Bulgaria having to make some concessions on the border, and Italy having to give up Trieste to Yugoslavia.

As militarist Germany starts northern Europe on the path to alt-WW2, Mediterranean Europe is exhausted and stays out as the Germans annex Austria, compel Czechoslovakia to become an ally/satellite (with precious little real independence), invade Poland in alliance with the Soviets and the Czechoslovaks, then turn west to smash France with a similar run of luck as OTL's Hitler. Faced with deteriorating relations with Stalin's USSR and inability to defeat Britain, who as in OTL allied with France, the Germans invade the Soviet Union. The Soviets are more prepared, having purged less officers while the Italo-Ottoman war was raging, but the Germans are far better at making allies with freedom fighter groups and the neutrality of the Italians, Balkan states and Ottomans means Germany can import much more than during OTL's WW2, strengthening their economy.

Eventually, the USA formally joins the war and the US, UK, Soviets and *Free French (perhaps under Admiral Darlan rather than De Gaulle) defeat Germany. The Soviets, while having gained much prestige, have taken similar levels of damage from the war as they did from OTL's Barbarossa though TTL's Germans haven't gone so far out of their way to be malicious as OTL's Nazis, fighting a total war on their own territory has still left 10s of millions of Soviets citizens dead and hundreds of towns and cities in ruins. Britain, as per OTL, is financially exhausted. Some sort of Cold War and decolonization happens in TTL, and the Ottomans manage to gain some former colonies as allies and satellites. In an era where global Communism is a threat, the Ottomans being Muslim is finally something of an asset, and as the US becomes "leader of the free world" they become a key anti-Soviet ally in the "West".

By the 1970s, oil is starting to become worth more than pennies for each barrel, but 60 years of higher stability, higher foreign investment, retaining more of the vital European provinces, more moderate policies and avoiding the ruinous reductions in literacy caused by Ataturk's reforms means that oil never becomes more than one important economic sector in a well diversified and reasonably industrial economy. The Ottomans have had nuclear weapons since the 60s, though they can't afford a large arsenal. In the 80s the Ottomans start a small space program, bringing in some of their closer allies and vassal states like Iran, Egypt and Yugoslavia to develop their own satellite launch technology and also build up the technology they'd need for IRBMs as Soviet air defences make their ageing US-manufactured bomber fleet less and less useful.

By the 1990s the Ottomans are a bit poorer per capita than the Soviets and the Japanese (who never entered WW2 ITTL, and who still hold Taiwan and Korea in their empire), but they're catching up, and are on par with the still Fascist Italy and Spain. They're no superpower. Economically they're a great power, but a weak one still. Militarily they might be no. 6 after the US, Britain, France, the Soviets and China. But the sultan is still Caliph and is protector of all of Islam's most important holy sites and not trying to use it too much it gives the Ottomans a small but useful amount of soft power. The Ottoman Empire exerts huge cultural influence on the Muslim world, influencing fashion, poetry, music, religious interpretation and exporting a wide variety of movies and television programs. But that cultural influence is barely noticed by the rest of the world. The only cultural export to gain any note in the developed world, the "Falafel Westerns" which started to be made when Spain became too expensive to make dirt cheap Westerns in, hit as Western fatigue started to bite in the US and so are virtually unknown outside Germany where a love for the Western and a large Osmanli guest worker population helped secure the genre some niche appeal.

Annnnnd. Yeah. That's a very broad-strokes alternate history of 80 years. The Ottomans have some luck to be sure, especially with Russia having a similarly bad 20th Century even though the PoD is in 1911, but I don't think any of this is implausible.

fasquardon
 
Unlikely I just see little reason for any improvement, when they pretty much take the road Turkey took minus the secularism and with pan-Islamism instead until the 90ties and then we mix oil into it. Oil would be far more of a curse than a benefits for the Ottomans. A Ottoman Empire, which behave in the manner people have suggested here, won’t be Congo, but it won’t be well functioning either.

If they can create a multi-religious and multi-ethnic Ottoman identity, which a few people have suggested, we will see the Ottoman Empire do better. But I have a hard time seeing what such identity would build on, and things like the Hamidian Massacres had already poisoned the well by 1900. I get why some people want to work with pan-Islamism instead as unifying identity, as it’s at least something a majority of the population have in common. The problem are just what kind of Islam and the large number of religious minorities and the fact that mistreating these gives outside powers a casus belli.

No, just no.
I see basically two outcomes, Russia and Saudi Arabia, both acceptable to the surviving OE. A "modernizing" faction putting it more towards Russia, a "pan islam" faction more towards Saudi Arabia in how things in day to day life are handled.

Now regarding outside powers and casus belli it's important to know how the outside world looks like, war ravaged or pre-ww1 continuing? The way things go everyone who's not Russia will want to have the OE as a bulwark against Russia should pre-ww1 continue, post ww1-ww2 the countries in question are too exhausted from fighting to care much about the region, and post ww2 there's Stalin basically guaranteeing the OE membership in Nato.
 
I see basically two outcomes, Russia and Saudi Arabia, both acceptable to the surviving OE. A "modernizing" faction putting it more towards Russia, a "pan islam" faction more towards Saudi Arabia in how things in day to day life are handled.

Now regarding outside powers and casus belli it's important to know how the outside world looks like, war ravaged or pre-ww1 continuing? The way things go everyone who's not Russia will want to have the OE as a bulwark against Russia should pre-ww1 continue, post ww1-ww2 the countries in question are too exhausted from fighting to care much about the region, and post ww2 there's Stalin basically guaranteeing the OE membership in Nato.

Honestly I see neither Russia or Saudi Arabia, the former are too developed ( in infrastructure and education) and the later too dysfunctional ( the Ottoman central power will be far stronger). I see a state where money flowing in from oil goes to the mega city Istanbul, which will have a western standard of living, Anatolia will be undeveloped but peaceful, both Turks and Kurds will be the core of the empire, happy to get the scraps Istanbul gives them, the Arabic parts will be undeveloped and full of unrest and separatist revolts, which the empire will regularly beat down. The Arabic part will be split in two separate movement, the Mesopotamians, who want the oil money themselves, and the Greater Syrians, who push a pan-Syrian identity in opposition to official pan-Islamic ideology of the empire.
 
Greater Syrians, who push a pan-Syrian identity in opposition to official pan-Islamic ideology of the empire
Based on what? All of a sudden muslims appose islamic politics cause reasons?

"pan islam" faction more towards Saudi Arabia in how things in day to day life are handled.
Pan islam does not equate wahhabism. Did you know the sauds hated the ottomans so wby on earth would the ottomans choose a more fundamentalist islam when they are already caliph of islam.

The problem are just what kind of Islam and the large number of religious minorities and the fact that mistreating these gives outside powers a casus belli.
Complete straw man here there isn't a question about what type of islam as the ottomans already have established islamic practice that isn't salafist. The non-muslim monirities won't have islamic law on them unless a fundamentalist government is installed.
 
Based on what? All of a sudden muslims appose islamic politics cause reasons?


Pan islam does not equate wahhabism. Did you know the sauds hated the ottomans so wby on earth would the ottomans choose a more fundamentalist islam when they are already caliph of islam.


Complete straw man here there isn't a question about what type of islam as the ottomans already have established islamic practice that isn't salafist. The non-muslim monirities won't have islamic law on them unless a fundamentalist government is installed.

I used Islamic instead of Islamist for a reason, because I don’t think that the Ottoman Empire will run in a Salafist manner, I think the Islamic identity will be in same way Nationalist Irish identity are Catholic. As For “Syria” I don’t talk about the modern Syrian state, but the historical Syria, which includes Lebanon and Hatay, but excludes modern eastern Syria.
 
From 1914
No WW1.
Ottomans wipe out the Greek Fleet in the short 1915 'Aegean War' taking back the Aegean Islands and boosting confidence in the new CUP leadership and the state. This also forestalls an Anglo-Greek Alliance and the Balkans settle into a Greek/Serb and Bulgarian/Turk split. Italy hands back the Dodecanese Islands as per the Treaty of Ouchy. The French, British and Germans continue to shepherd Turkish finances and resist Russian pressure to interfere. As per Japanese models, Turkish industry continues to expand and German investment in the Tigris and Euphrates River basin sees wheat production expand. Oil discoveries in the late 1910's and early 1920's are brought online and begin to feed Europe's needs through existing infrastructure in Romania. Increased revenue brings social and educational reforms and stability to the Empire. Holy cities are internationalised and pilgrims bring in much tourist revenue and significant international trade from Europe to Asia and Africa passes through the rail links to Basra and Aden.
Really interesting scenerio, I quite liked it.
I think best scenario for Otttomans, Quick CP Win at least by late 1915.
In the case of Quick CP win Ottomans could have gotten rid of OPDA, Capitulations, external debts(completely via war indemnity or partially by debt restructuring like IOTL) and foreign pressure for a decade. Probably they would have take Kars and Batum oblasts maybe Kuwait and Cyprus too.
 
It's not a binary thing. The highminded young turks, especially in the first constitutional era, wanted to promote being both your ethnic identity and also an Ottoman civic identity.

Which would never work, since Turks had many more people and were the ruling ethnicity. It would just be the end of Greek and Armenian culture.
 
I recognize that I may have came on a little too strong, but it annoys me when in this kind of complex cases people come up with this narratives trying to simplify them into one dimensional victim and villian stories where the ottoman empire is some barbaric butcher that opresses the poor christian nations of the balkans but ignores completly the reality of the big ottoman muslim minorities that used to live in the balkans or glosses over those killings committed by the newly liberated balkan nations. It shure would do a lot of difference if the Shoa had killed 3 million jews instead of 6. Clearly anybody who talks about the the death and persecution of ottoman muslims must be a shill. Even people who openly dislike Justin McCarthy agreed that the number of casualties is in the millions between the killings and ethnic cleansing. Read the cusualties section https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_during_Ottoman_contraction , it mentions other historians.

The Muslims were expelled from the Balkan’s because they were seen as a reminder of centuries of Ottoman oppression and occupation. Most Brits left India after Independence as well.

It’s not really akin to the Holocaust at all.
 
In every case, the Ethno-Nationalists only gain power when the empire they break away from is already broken - and usually the breaking is being done by another empire.

Not necessarily. Look at Ireland breaking away from the powerful British empire in the 1920s
 
Not necessarily. Look at Ireland breaking away from the powerful British empire in the 1920s

You do realize that Britain was in the middle of WW1 when Ireland was breaking away? The war that broke the British empire (and after which the British lost a bunch more territory, like Afghanistan, the corners of Kenya and Egypt they bribed Italy with, Egypt itself, India, though the latter two got their independence delayed by a few years by the outbreak of WW2).

The British Empire had been broken by the American and German empires, not completely at that point, but British power had to retreat and recover and oh, WW2! Well I guess they won't recover.

But I can't see Ireland becoming independent without WW1 or something that inflicted similar trauma.

The Muslims were expelled from the Balkan’s because they were seen as a reminder of centuries of Ottoman oppression and occupation. Most Brits left India after Independence as well.

It’s not really akin to the Holocaust at all.

Except for the part that people were up and up murdering people who had been their neighbours all their lives, had been their father's neighbours, their grandfather's neighbours, their great-grandfather's neighbours... And so on back. Most Muslims in the Balkans were the descendants of people who'd been living there before either Christianity or Islam had arrived in the region. Modern genetic studies show us that Balkan people are mostly Balkan, and new additions to the gene pool from say invading Slavs or invading Turks was pretty small.

It's not like the Holocaust in that this wasn't state-sponsored violence, and it certainly wasn't one-sided violence, but it's definitely not the expulsion of an alien oppressor that some would like to paint it as.

Rather what was happening was a civil war, with corrupt Janissaries, corrupt local power brokers, bandits, warlords, nationalists, corrupt Christian clergy, well-meaning Christian clergy, different linguistic groups, different religious groups, cynical external powers, romantic adventurers and a heavy handed central state all bouncing off each-other during a period of enormous change in a region that for most of the previous 2,000 years had either been part of the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire (meaning national groups and religious groups were extremely mixed, like the way they are in a modern empire like the USA - I mean, in the US I doubt people even really keep track of what their ethnic group is, that's something that isn't important to most people when they live in a stable empire - though I am sure like Ottoman subjects people in modern America know what religion they are).

So while you're right in the narrow sense, to imply that people weren't dying and that what was being done was OK because the authorities in Constantinople used impaling against rebels or employed armies that did the usual atrocities of the time is completely wrong. The people being killed or being thrown out of their homes to die on the road or who were thrown onto the road and made it to Anatolia to die while settling some foetid swamp that their Ottoman rulers decided to settle them in, or the few who made it to Anatolia, settled and build new lives, generally had about as much control over what the government did as their Christian neighbours did, which is to say, not much.

Also, it's worth noting that every time in history there has been a forced population movement, it's involved mass death. From the population transfers the victorious allies engaged in after WW2, to the population transfers ancient Persia and Rome engaged in every so often. People don't like losing their homes and even if no one stays in their home and has to be shot/stabbed for passive resistance (and that pretty much always happens), homeless people are very vulnerable and generally drop like flies on the road. Whenever you see "expulsion" or "population transfer" written, whoever wrote that is saying "mass murder, violence and forcing the survivors of these people to live their lives somewhere more convenient to us". Sometimes it may have been better than the alternatives (like another war), but it's never a kind or clean process.

fasquardon
 
The Muslims were expelled from the Balkan’s because they were seen as a reminder of centuries of Ottoman oppression and occupation. Most Brits left India after Independence as well.
So expel evil muslims as its actually liberation. Brits were not expelled nor did they maoe any majority in india.

Which would never work, since Turks had many more people and were the ruling ethnicity. It would just be the end of Greek and Armenian culture
Both cultures which are not majorty or as big as the arabs or turks. So in your best case scenario for the ottomans just Byzantium 2.0 electric bogaloo were the greeks and Armenians rule? Also so what if the greeks and Armenians don't identity as turkish they are not a majority. You keep pushing this narrative of without greeks or Armenians the empire collapses. They are a minority in which they don't form majorities anywhere except armenians who have small enclaves. The arabs, and turks are numerous and make a majority that can't be challenged plus the balkan muslims then the kurds. Using the 1914 census greeks and Armenians for every 3 of them (which i rounded up) there are 13 muslims (rounded down).
 
You do realize that Britain was in the middle of WW1 when Ireland was breaking away? The war that broke the British empire (and after which the British lost a bunch more territory, like Afghanistan, the corners of Kenya and Egypt they bribed Italy with, Egypt itself, India, though the latter two got their independence delayed by a few years by the outbreak of WW2).

The British Empire had been broken by the American and German empires, not completely at that point, but British power had to retreat and recover and oh, WW2! Well I guess they won't recover.

But I can't see Ireland becoming independent without WW1 or something that inflicted similar trauma.



Except for the part that people were up and up murdering people who had been their neighbours all their lives, had been their father's neighbours, their grandfather's neighbours, their great-grandfather's neighbours... And so on back. Most Muslims in the Balkans were the descendants of people who'd been living there before either Christianity or Islam had arrived in the region. Modern genetic studies show us that Balkan people are mostly Balkan, and new additions to the gene pool from say invading Slavs or invading Turks was pretty small.

It's not like the Holocaust in that this wasn't state-sponsored violence, and it certainly wasn't one-sided violence, but it's definitely not the expulsion of an alien oppressor that some would like to paint it as.

Rather what was happening was a civil war, with corrupt Janissaries, corrupt local power brokers, bandits, warlords, nationalists, corrupt Christian clergy, well-meaning Christian clergy, different linguistic groups, different religious groups, cynical external powers, romantic adventurers and a heavy handed central state all bouncing off each-other during a period of enormous change in a region that for most of the previous 2,000 years had either been part of the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire (meaning national groups and religious groups were extremely mixed, like the way they are in a modern empire like the USA - I mean, in the US I doubt people even really keep track of what their ethnic group is, that's something that isn't important to most people when they live in a stable empire - though I am sure like Ottoman subjects people in modern America know what religion they are).

So while you're right in the narrow sense, to imply that people weren't dying and that what was being done was OK because the authorities in Constantinople used impaling against rebels or employed armies that did the usual atrocities of the time is completely wrong. The people being killed or being thrown out of their homes to die on the road or who were thrown onto the road and made it to Anatolia to die while settling some foetid swamp that their Ottoman rulers decided to settle them in, or the few who made it to Anatolia, settled and build new lives, generally had about as much control over what the government did as their Christian neighbours did, which is to say, not much.

Also, it's worth noting that every time in history there has been a forced population movement, it's involved mass death. From the population transfers the victorious allies engaged in after WW2, to the population transfers ancient Persia and Rome engaged in every so often. People don't like losing their homes and even if no one stays in their home and has to be shot/stabbed for passive resistance (and that pretty much always happens), homeless people are very vulnerable and generally drop like flies on the road. Whenever you see "expulsion" or "population transfer" written, whoever wrote that is saying "mass murder, violence and forcing the survivors of these people to live their lives somewhere more convenient to us". Sometimes it may have been better than the alternatives (like another war), but it's never a kind or clean process.

fasquardon

WWII broke the British empire, not WWI.

As for Muslims in the balkans, if they had treated Christians as equals, then they wouldn’t have been expelled. I’m not saying that it was right to expel them, but I’m just saying that when you treat a group as an inferior for centuries, they will not be inclined to treat you well when they take power.

Balkan Christians were subjected to centuries of devshirme, jizya, and second-class status. It’s more akin to the expulsion of the French by Haitian revolutionaries than to lebensraum.
 
So expel evil muslims as its actually liberation. Brits were not expelled nor did they maoe any majority in india.


Both cultures which are not majorty or as big as the arabs or turks. So in your best case scenario for the ottomans just Byzantium 2.0 electric bogaloo were the greeks and Armenians rule? Also so what if the greeks and Armenians don't identity as turkish they are not a majority. You keep pushing this narrative of without greeks or Armenians the empire collapses. They are a minority in which they don't form majorities anywhere except armenians who have small enclaves. The arabs, and turks are numerous and make a majority that can't be challenged plus the balkan muslims then the kurds. Using the 1914 census greeks and Armenians for every 3 of them (which i rounded up) there are 13 muslims (rounded down).

Look at how the Muslims treated the Christians in the Balkans. As second class citizens. If some empire invaded your country and treated your people like inferiors for centuries, how would you feel about it?
 
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