Better Ottoman Performance in the Greek War of Independence

I don't know if such course could be possible;I don't think it was a matter of approach for the Turks but of backround and customs like the cutting of heads of the enemy and attach it to their belts,something they did in Korea,and recently in Anatolia against the Kurds and posed in front of cameras for their achievement,the photograph published in "Huriet" and other papers...A common punishment for captured Greeks was 'impailing' and that 400 years after...Dracula the impailer..

At any rate,to impose iron discipline would have been quite a feat for Turk or Albanian or Kurd soldiers at that time;it needs a generation of young men and constant exercise of discipline and re-education(to an uneducated lot!)to impose such discipline and to avoid committing atrocities;look the behaviour of the French army in Northern Italy and in Spain and you will understand the butchering of the French wounded in the Madua hospitals...
Would the exercise of restrain on the part of the Turks affect the course of the war? I would say not much since European populations were Christians predisposed towards the Greeks and naturally against Muslim Imperialism over European populations.
 
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I'm just thinking if the Russians can realize that Greece might not be a good investment for their own plans to gain access into the Mediterrenean Sea. On Constantinople, both Greece and Bulgaria (if the Bulgarians gain independence before 1878) will want to gain it.
 

Deleted member 14881

I don't know if such course could be possible;I don't think it was a matter of approach for the Turks but of backround and customs like the cutting of heads of the enemy and attach it to their belts,something they did in Korea,and recently in Anatolia against the Kurds and posed in front of cameras for their achievement,the photograph published in "Huriet" and other papers...A common punishment for captured Greeks was 'impailing' and that 400 years after...Dracula the impailer..

At any rate,to impose iron discipline would have been quite a feat for Turk or Albanian or Kurd soldiers at that time;it needs a generation of young men and constant exercise of discipline and re-education(to an uneducated lot!)to impose such discipline and to avoid committing atrocities;look the behaviour of the French army in Northern Italy and in Spain and you will understand the butchering of the French wounded in the Madua hospitals...
Would the exercise of restrain on the part of the Turks affect the course of the war? I would say not much since European populations were Christians predisposed towards the Greeks and naturally against Muslim Imperialism over European populations.

Wait, there was Ottomans in Korea?!
 

Deleted member 14881

I'm just thinking if the Russians can realize that Greece might not be a good investment for their own plans to gain access into the Mediterrenean Sea. On Constantinople, both Greece and Bulgaria (if the Bulgarians gain independence before 1878) will want to gain it.

Perhaps have the Greeks be more Jacobin and or Republican I guess?
 
OK, Turks not Ottomans

Spent two years in South Korea with the Army's Science Advisor's Program. There are a lot of state sponsored memorials to the fighting power of the Turkish soldier. They had the finest reputation as fighting men of anyone there. The Greeks also did quite well.
 

Deleted member 14881

maybe the Greek Revolutionaries are more anti clerical?
 
There was something called a Provisional Government of the Hellenic Republic set up by the Greek revolutionaries though.

Yes,and it had its first session in Astros(eastern Peloponnese) but the political divisions were very different than erich probably thinks...(no Jacobins or republicans) and Greeks were very...pro-clerical;the revolution was officially proclaimed by the Old Patra Bishop Germanos, the Patriarch had been a victim and many heroic figures who were killed fightig willingly(not out of lack of choice) were clerics(Archdeacon Pappaflesas-fighting in Maniaki with his 300 to the last man
against Ibrahim,Abbot Samuel who set fire to the gunpowder store at Kougi in Soulion and others so the clerics stood in high esteem among the populace as well as among the fighting men.

Turks could have averted the revolutions in general if their policies towards the people of the empire were less heavy handed and the officials were less corrupt...but once the revolution broke out I cannot see what could the Turks do more than what they had done already...
 
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It's not very difficult to make the Ottomans perform better against the Greeks: butterfly the campaign against Ali Pasha of Epirus, delay the abolition of the Janissaries, or find more competent military leaders, and defeat the Greeks before they take Tripolitsa.
If anything I would have argued the other way for an earlier introduction of the Nizam-i Cedid and suppression of the Janissaries with The Auspicious Incident. IIRC a number of the revolts in the Balkans weren't nationalist uprisings but either revolts by the Janissaries against modernising central government policies that they saw as a threat or by the locals protesting against repressive policies on the part of the local Janissaries. Getting the Janissaries out of the way also allows you to start instituting other reforms in the Empire. Either way just even if you just get the Bosnian revolt finished sooner that allows you to concentrate solely on the Greek problem.
 
I kinda see the Pashas in the Balkans as the Eurasian version of the Satsuma faction full of disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-samurai, with their grievances spilled out into open rebellion.
 
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