how to get ottoman empire to level of Italy as a great power by 1913?

Deleted member 67076

if ottoman keep Egypt and Balkan can they became as same level Italy by 1913

Probably, as the Balkans has enough coal to industrialize the empire and Egypt is an additional few million taxpayers and of course a huge breadbasket.
 

Anaxagoras

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if ottoman keep Egypt and Balkan can they became as same level Italy by 1913

It would be extremely difficult and expensive for the Ottomans to maintain control over the rebellious subject peoples in the Balkans and Egypt. It would weaken them rather than making them stronger.
 
if ottoman keep Egypt and Balkan can they became as same level Italy by 1913
Having more land isn't enough. They need more Turks. The Slavs are going to rebel and they're going to face rebellion in their colonies. They also need a better educated population. The overwhelming majority of it's people were illiterate. I don't think it's impossible, but it would be difficult. They also have to deal with countries that want to take it apart like Russia. One thing that I like is that they often brought in foreign military advisors to help strengthen their military. Even Moltke was brought over. I'd be very interested in reading a TL that had the Ottoman Empire go through it's own Meiji Reformation.
 
The only thing that seems to have kept the Ottomans alive past the 18th century were the French and British who saw it as a buffer against Austria and particularly Russia. By 1914, the empire had a population of 21 million, similar to that of Spain (coincidentally another former great power). Of those 21 million, perhaps 11 million were ethnically Turkish, and 15.5 million were Muslim. In the age of ethnic-nationalism, keeping multi-ethnic/multi-religious empire was a difficult task at best.

Perhaps an early POD where nationalism doesn't take off in Europe and the empire continues some sort of prosperity. By 1900, it seems that the population was overwhelmingly illiterate, especially in the Balkans. The economy remained stuck in a mediaeval state into the 20th century and this would need to change.
 
I've read that the Ottomans suffered continuously from severe plague throughout the 16th century onwards, and some light research shows that to really be the case:

How the Ottomans got chewed up and spit out by internal factors, chapter 1

They undeniably have some serious issues beyond this, but constant and repeated losses of manpower and taxes to plague can't have helped at all. Not to mention some of the more expensive military adventures that resulted in failure, such as Ottoman attempts to subdue Yemen in the 16th century(IIRC), Ottoman adventures into Austria and arguably even Hungary, hell, didn't Vlad the Impaler massacre over 20,000 Muslims before the Ottomans dealt with him? That can't have helped the Ottomans demographically in the longterm at all.
 
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