Both the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottomans survive to present

... with a POD as early as 1071, how would the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire survive to present, preferably with Anatolia and the Balkans split between the two, and with both powers relatively balanced?
 
Impossible. A Turkish state coexisting with the ERE is concievable, but probably not the Ottomans, who only really came into the picture once the Empire was in its final death cycle.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
One of the problems is that Ottomans as a separate state from Byzantium in the long term would be roughly in a position similar to Trebizond or Epirus: the Ottomans were related to the byzantine emperors and afaik considered themselves the heirs of it.
 
Impossible. A Turkish state coexisting with the ERE is concievable, but probably not the Ottomans, who only really came into the picture once the Empire was in its final death cycle.

Oh, I see. So if we butterfly away the Ottomans, but we leave the Seljuks in, we can have both states coexisting?
 
I'm also thinking that it could stifle the rise of Austria; didn't Austria essentially define itself as "Europe's vanguard against the Ottomans"?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I'm also thinking that it could stifle the rise of Austria; didn't Austria essentially define itself as "Europe's vanguard against the Ottomans"?

That's mostly a 16th century affectation they took after they cheated their way on the Hungarian throne (Hungary was an elective monarchy but they made the then king pledge his kingdom to the house of Habsburg) - at that time the Habsburg were already at the zenith of their power, holding Spain, the entire Netherlands, half of Italy and the Austrian-Bohemian lands, Hungary was relatively insignificant compared to that lot, although they did try to bring some unity back to the empire using it as an excuse; it did not quite work as planned. They already held the imperial crown for a while by that point even if it was not hereditary. Lacking the ottomans, the frictions may well be with the Byzantines instead if they do grab Hungary.
 

elder.wyrm

Banned
Why is this so impossible?

A Byzantine Empire that experiences a strong revival in the Balkans while facing an Ottoman Empire that waxes in western Anatolia is a perfectly plausible situation. You'd probably have to jump through a few loops to get it to actually happen, but I don't see why it's ASB or anything. In fact, it almost happened IRL: Immediately prior to the Serb invasion of the 14th century, the Byzantine Empire encompassed much of the lower Balkans outside Greece itself and was on friendly terms with several of the other powers in the area (Epiros, a couple Turkish beyliks). Finally, prior to the late 1340's, the Ottomans had no European holdings at all, so no need to have the two clash, necessarily, at all.

What really needs to happen is that there need to be some structural reforms in the Byzantine state. The capture of Constantinople during the 4th Crusade decimated the bureaucracy and left the entire Empire less of a state in the sense we'd use the word today and more of a personal possession of the Emperor, leaving the whole country too open to civil strife. Whenever it seemed a recovery was on the way during this late period, another claimant to the throne would emerge to drag it all back down.

How this could be done is an interesting question.
 
There was a Byzantine emperor who gave the Ottomans ships to cross into Europe to defeat a rival--and the Ottomans never left.

If that didn't happen, you might have a BE that's a de facto Greece and an OE that's restricted to Asia Minor.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Except by the time the Ottomans come on the scene in a significant way, the Byzantine empire is already living on borrowed time: they've lost the entirety of Asia Minor, everyone is kicking their ass in the balkans, and two or three rival claimant princes still exist, while Constantinople is in such a state of decline that it had already barely 100.000 inhabitants by that point. They barely have an army at all and the situation of the lands is basically hardly good enough to do much of a levy.

You'd need quite a huge POD to even have Byzantium live, let alone survive in a way where both them and the ottos would be ready to coexist without the ottoman sultan pursuing the crown.
 
Except by the time the Ottomans come on the scene in a significant way, the Byzantine empire is already living on borrowed time: they've lost the entirety of Asia Minor, everyone is kicking their ass in the balkans, and two or three rival claimant princes still exist, while Constantinople is in such a state of decline that it had already barely 100.000 inhabitants by that point. They barely have an army at all and the situation of the lands is basically hardly good enough to do much of a levy.

You'd need quite a huge POD to even have Byzantium live, let alone survive in a way where both them and the ottos would be ready to coexist without the ottoman sultan pursuing the crown.

Like not losing at Manzikert? /predictable
 
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