Liberal Ottoman Empire?

How do you get an Ottoman Empire that is fairly liberal, staving off the more radical/conservative aspects of Islam? After all it's ruling exactly the regions of the world that turn pretty radical IOTL but I think the Ottoman Empire gets underestimated on the board and would like to hear ideas of how it handles the issue.

(Put aside the issue of it surviving, and let's think fairly recent—19th century or so, but if this better belongs in the the After 1900 forum it can always get moved.)
 

mowque

Banned
How do you get an Ottoman Empire that is fairly liberal, staving off the more radical/conservative aspects of Islam? After all it's ruling exactly the regions of the world that turn pretty radical IOTL but I think the Ottoman Empire gets underestimated on the board and would like to hear ideas of how it handles the issue.

A 'surviving' Ottoman Empire would probably be not much more then OTL Turkey, Syria, Israel and maybe some large chunks of Saudi Arabia?
 

The Sandman

Banned
I'm sure Abdul is heading full speed in this thread's general direction, but not have valuable chunks of the Empire hacked off by enemies (Bulgaria in 1878 being the most glaring example) would be a good start.

Perhaps have the Ottomans focus more on expansion out of the Crimea and Caucasus, resulting in their northern region including Astrakhan, Kharkov, and maybe even as far as Voronezh. If Russia is thus prevented from becoming as great a threat, the Ottomans have a chance of prospering for long enough to look at serious reforms.
 
A 'surviving' Ottoman Empire would probably be not much more then OTL Turkey, Syria, Israel and maybe some large chunks of Saudi Arabia?

I imagine they could wind up with Egypt, Bulgaria (as mentioned), and maybe a little more in the Mideast.

Have the Tanzimat keep going.

Interesting (after taking a quick look at the Wiki page), that does seem to hold promise.

But how/why would it keep going?
 
How do you get an Ottoman Empire that is fairly liberal, staving off the more radical/conservative aspects of Islam? After all it's ruling exactly the regions of the world that turn pretty radical IOTL but I think the Ottoman Empire gets underestimated on the board and would like to hear ideas of how it handles the issue.

(Put aside the issue of it surviving, and let's think fairly recent—19th century or so, but if this better belongs in the the After 1900 forum it can always get moved.)

If the empire survived, it would have been. Radical Islam was not exactly a problem, nor was it particularly conservative. There were of course conservatives, like there are everywhere, but the prevalent image of some rabidly paleolithic clerical class trying to keep the empire Medieval is a relic of Victorian biases. The clergy was instrumental to the modernization process, and many of its members were the foremost reformers.

There were also religious conservatives, like there are everywhere, but in general the late Ottoman Empire was more progressive than most of the Middle East today.

Part of the reason for that is that the British and French consciously retribalized the region, undoing centuries of Ottoman work to sedentarize nomads - in some cases, the imperial powers even had to hunt down descendants of the sheikhs of defunct tribes and invest them with authority. And a lot of today's radicalism is the product of colonialism and the aftermath, where Westernized elites imposed alien autocracies on the population, not to mention having a colonizing state (Israel) dumped on top of them. Also, the initial governments of the Middle East were often rabidly secularist, and were downright hostile to Islam - and religious persecution has a tendency to radicalize believers, especially if you've undermined the institutions that "kept it real". Most Muslim "fundamentalists" and radicals have no idea what the Sharia really is, for instance. Leo Caesius was just mentioning the other night that Afghans have been demanding Sharia courts, and now that they have them, Sharia judges keep throwing out cases because Sharia law is way more liberal than people think it is (for example, you have to have four witnesses to the actual act of adultery to convict someone of it. It's not very often that people commit adultery in front of four people. Also, women have very significant property rights and civil rights protection in Islamic law.)

The late empire had a parliament, local legislatures, and was in more or less on a course of liberal-democratic development. That's not to say things couldn't have gone south, but I would expect a surviving Ottoman Empire to be more progressive than any country in the Middle East, including Turkey, which has that has that semi-fascist xenophobic paranoia thing to get over.

I'm not sure it could have developed much more liberally than it did in the 19th c - it was probably a bit less so then Imperial Germany and more so than Tsarist Russia. Economically, the late empire was very free-trade, although this was to a large extent imposed on it. The last real Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, halted liberal-democratic political development at the center, but encouraged it in all other fields, i.e. education and in local government. The Young Turk regime started out liberal-democratic in spirit, but drifted towards autocracy as things went seriously south largely due to their disastrously incompetent foreign policy.

I guess in summary, I'm saying the existing structure was a better basis for evolution and development than having it shredded and replaced by multiple alien impositions, or to put it another way, evolution over revolution. It took Europe over 1,000 years to recover from the fall of the Roman Empire - the Middle East isn't going to get over the end of the Ottoman Empire after just 90 years.
 
I imagine they could wind up with Egypt, Bulgaria (as mentioned), and maybe a little more in the Mideast.



Interesting (after taking a quick look at the Wiki page), that does seem to hold promise.

But how/why would it keep going?

I don't agree that it really stopped. Even Ataturk's programs were classic Tanzimat - except for the Republicanism, and even that idea came up during the Tanzimat.
 
If the empire survived, it would have been. Radical Islam was not exactly a problem, nor was it particularly conservative. There were of course conservatives, like there are everywhere, but the prevalent image of some rabidly paleolithic clerical class trying to keep the empire Medieval is a relic of Victorian biases. The clergy was instrumental to the modernization process, and many of its members were the foremost reformers.

There were also religious conservatives, like there are everywhere, but in general the late Ottoman Empire was more progressive than most of the Middle East today.

That, actually, is really interesting. I know relatively little about the Ottoman Empire but do know it tends to get mischaracterized. The question, in my mind I suppose, is whether it would get radicalized over the centuries. Say it survives into the 21st Century. Are we seeing the same trends, or is there is a push-back into a more conservative religious stance?

In other words, we saw Arab culture, technology, learning, and social values go from far ahead of Europe to far behind—a surviving Ottoman Empire will work to counteract that trend?

Part of the reason for that is that the British and French consciously retribalized the region, undoing centuries of Ottoman work to sedentarize nomads - in some cases, the imperial powers even had to hunt down descendants of the sheikhs of defunct tribes and invest them with authority. And a lot of today's radicalism is the product of colonialism and the aftermath, where Westernized elites imposed alien autocracies on the population, not to mention having a colonizing state (Israel) dumped on top of them. Also, the initial governments of the Middle East were often rabidly secularist, and were downright hostile to Islam - and religious persecution has a tendency to radicalize believers, especially if you've undermined the institutions that "kept it real". Most Muslim "fundamentalists" and radicals have no idea what the Sharia really is, for instance. Leo Caesius was just mentioning the other night that Afghans have been demanding Sharia courts, and now that they have them, Sharia judges keep throwing out cases because Sharia law is way more liberal than people think it is (for example, you have to have four witnesses to the actual act of adultery to convict someone of it. It's not very often that people commit adultery in front of four people. Also, women have very significant property rights and civil rights protection in Islamic law.)

So, as I'm working towards in my German-French Entente timeline, the Ottoman Empire gets major support from Europe (who view it as a useful counterweight to British/Russian influence in that region and are not under the illusion they could get grab major portions of it) the Ottoman Empire would be better off?

In that the only real powers working against them are the British and (sometimes) the Russians, but they're also the staunch allies of Germany and France.

The late empire had a parliament, local legislatures, and was in more or less on a course of liberal-democratic development. That's not to say things couldn't have gone south, but I would expect a surviving Ottoman Empire to be more progressive than any country in the Middle East, including Turkey, which has that has that semi-fascist xenophobic paranoia thing to get over.

I'm not sure it could have developed much more liberally than it did in the 19th c - it was probably a bit less so then Imperial Germany and more so than Tsarist Russia. Economically, the late empire was very free-trade, although this was to a large extent imposed on it. The last real Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, halted liberal-democratic political development at the center, but encouraged it in all other fields, i.e. education and in local government. The Young Turk regime started out liberal-democratic in spirit, but drifted towards autocracy as things went seriously south largely due to their disastrously incompetent foreign policy.

I guess in summary, I'm saying the existing structure was a better basis for evolution and development than having it shredded and replaced by multiple alien impositions, or to put it another way, evolution over revolution. It took Europe over 1,000 years to recover from the fall of the Roman Empire - the Middle East isn't going to get over the end of the Ottoman Empire after just 90 years.

You are the resident expert :). It's all very informative, actually.


Speaking to the size of the Ottoman Empire issue—what is a reasonable area of control if they wind up allies to Germany sometime in the late 19th century and the French as well by the 20th?

Let's say they keep Bulgaria, France doesn't care about Egypt (fixated on Algeria), Germany isn't in the mood to have Russians or Austrians rule Bulgaria, and only the British are trying to capture Middle-Eastern territory.

I don't agree that it really stopped. Even Ataturk's programs were classic Tanzimat - except for the Republicanism, and even that idea came up during the Tanzimat.

Like I said, I was just glancing over the wiki article. But let's say a renewed push or something like that—how would change things?
 
I don't think the Ottomans have any potential to grow, at least not in Europe. So the upward limit is about where it was after the Crimean War. In Africa there is potential for expansion, but you're talking mostly about a few oases in the Sahara. If there is some collapse of Russia, they could gain in the Caucasus.

The Ottomans began a rather radical and sustained reform program in the 1830s - the aim was to transform the empire into a modern state. It was largely successful, but it turned out to be too late, at least for all the empire except what ended up being Turkey - although you could maintain that it did provide the Middle East with enough basis for modern nations to be built on.

You'll often see a narrative of rise and decline - it rose until Suleyman and then just sat around declining and having things done to it. In reality, the empire was way stronger in 1914 (albeit a lot smaller) than it was in 1800. In the 1830s it was too weak to take on Ali Pasha and the Greek rebels - but in 1875 it simultaneously defeated Serbia, Montenegro, and massive foreign-sponsored rebellions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria, then subsequently nearly defeated Russia one-on-one in war. In WWI the Ottomans scored notable victories against the Entente and managed to hold their own until 1918, after having been at war continuously since 1911 - and then had to fight on for another 5 years to save Anatolia from simultaneous French, Italian, Russian, Armenian, British, and Greek invasions. That to me should be a clear indicator that they did SOMETHING right in there.

As for your scenario, Britain and Russia are in much better position to undermine the Ottomans than France and Germany are to support it, but then France in the 19th c was the leading source of capital, so they more than anyone are in a position to assist with economic development. In OTL, France devoted enormous resources to the development of Russia - here some of that could head in the Ottoman direction.

Also, in OTL, the powers began to develop spheres of influence - if France and Germany are allied, that won't happen, so that's good too.
 
Top