How effective could the Balkans have been Islamized?

Under the Ottomans specifically I mean, with a POD no earlier than 1350ish. Including Greece and Wallachia as well.

More historically, why were Albania and Bosnia successfully Islamized, but Greece not?
 
Well, there was a Greek or Bulgarian islamisation, but they tended easily to be considered as Turks in a context where religion was a main identitarian factor. (Note that Crete had a really important islamic population)

It's just that they were either assimilated at best, or deported (if not outright slaughtered) with the rise of balkanic nationalisms.

Now having european people wholly endorsing Islam (as Anatolian people did in large numbers) is doable, but would ask for a more important destruction of pre-Turk structures : usually when the landowner was Islamized, the rest followed but there was no such incitative for many Greeks, critically with an ongoing Patriarchate of Constantinople that provided an important structure.

So, yeah, harsher wars against still victorious Ottomans could do it, indirectly.
 
Bosnia was the home of a "heretic" brand of Christianity which existed alongside, and often fought with the mainstream Catholic and Orthodox versions. The last few Kings in Bosnia especially contributed to the hazy situation by trying to enforce Catholicism on the heretics, so when the Ottomans conquered a country they found a population which was a lot less closely tied to their Christianity than, for example, the people in Greece.

IIRC Albania was Islamized much later than Bosnia; the causes are less clear, but Dervish activity was an important part of gradually spreading and fortifying Islam there.
 
More historically, why were Albania and Bosnia successfully Islamized, but Greece not?
My guess the Turks liked the way it was. I mean there was a proverbial saying that the Greeks hated tiara of the pope of Rome much worse than turban of Sultan. Which suited sultan just fine.
That may sound outrageous but the Greeks were considered loyal enough and there were even quite numerous Greek Orthodox detachments in the Ottoman army. And the Turks could always rely on the Greeks in case of any Catholic invasion.
My guess the Turks did not want to spoil this good thing in Greece by islamization.

You see some Greeks felt that the only way to keep their Orthodoxy and protect it against Catholicism is Ottoman power. Sultan played on that feeling. That was part of the deal - the Greeks are loyal to Sultan and Sultan keeps the Orthodoxy and protects it against the Pope.
something like that.
 
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Also, much of what is now Bulgaria and Greece had Muslim majorities or pluralities. Their populations fled / were ethnically cleansed (to the remainder of the OE, ie Anatolia) during the Balkan Wars.
 
You could just have a uniformly more coercive Balkan religious policy starting around the 16th Century, something closer to that pursued by the Mamluks in Egypt, but that would require fundamental changes to the nature of Ottoman rule.
 
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