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.
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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