More neutral name for an Ottoman successor state?

Agea?

The Kingdom of the Straits.

The Republic of the Balkans and Anatolia.

Baltia-Anatolia.
Why would the name include the Balkans but not the middle east? The Ottomans keeping the latter is far more likely than the former.

Anyway, what about something like Euphratea? The Euphrates basin covers large parts of modern day Iraq, Syria and Turkey
 
Yes, a lot depends on what territory this successor state owns and what it sees as its core territory. If its roughly OTL turkey, Anatolia is likely.

A lot also depends on the nature of the successor state. If the state is trying to hold together the Middle East on the basis of a shared Muslim identify, for example, it could call itself something like Dar-al-Islam or the Land of the Prophet or the Caliphate or whatever.
 
They could follow Bolivia's example an name the new republic after the lider of the revolution. If it is Mustafa Kemal it could be a turkish or arabic equivalent of Kemalistan (no idea how to write "country of Kemal" in arab/turkish)? As long as the first years of the new republic is under a popular strongman and he and his regime is more associated with a common muslim identity rather then any ethnic group there should be no opposition. And lets be honest, most geographic named states sound bad until you get accustomed to them.
 

xsampa

Banned
Look to the West has "The Eternal State" as the name of its Societist (antinationalist anti-egalitarian) successor, based on the belief that it is a)God's chosen state b)the sucessor to the cradle of civilization
 
(Sorry for the double post)

This is somewhat related, but how come the Ottoman Empire collapsed with nationalist revolts but Iran didn't? Ethnic Persians make up barely half of Iranians, and like the Ottomans, Islam was the main unifyer. Yet unlike the Ottomans who crashed down in flames, Iran stayed in one peice despite all the nationalist conflicts going on just west of them. Why was this? Was Iran way more accommodating to ethnic minorities or was it simply because the western powers didn't forcefully rip Iran apart like they did with the Ottomans?

1. Iran's minorities' leaders have way more investment in the success of the greater country. The Azeris, perhaps the most likely group to break off, instead went on to acquire royal status under the Safavids (who used Tabriz and Qazvin as capitals) and then again under the Qajars. If the Azeri notables remain Iranian, they can be Shahs and nobles of all Iran. If they insist on being Azeri, they will be petty men in a petty kingdom. Similarly, in the aftermath of the fall of the Safavids the Kurds and Lurs didnt try to break away-- instead they made their own play for paramountcy by backing the Zand dynasty. The one exception to this pattern has been the Pashtuns, and they were way further out on the periphery, more populous, and more skilled in war than the minority populations further west.
2. Iran's minorities are less capable of breaking away. The Lurs live in the mountains and the Persians in the valleys, with no hard border between. And other groups (Gilakis, Mazandaranis) are simply too small. Economically and geographically, Iran's peoples are fairly tightly meshed together.
3. Iranian minority identity isn't national. The Armenians had a tradition of states/cultures independent and distinct from the Turks. So did the Serbs, Bulgarians, Arabs, etc. The minorities in Iran don't have a similar tradition, and so perceive themselves as somewhat different but essentially similar to the Persians. The effect is something like the attitude of the Southern Chinese dialect groups toward the concept of Chinese nationhood--they perceive it as something that includes them, because all their moments of past greatness were accomplished within its framework. The effect is strengthened by shared cultural tendencies (like celebrating Nowruz and other holidays, even the Sunni Kurds do it), and by the fact that most of Iran's languages are in the same language family as Persian, and their literary forms borrow heavily from Persian convention (even Azeri). Way easier to cast the minorities as "weird cousins, but part of the same family" than it is for the Turks to do the same to, say, the Kurds.
 
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They could follow Bolivia's example an name the new republic after the lider of the revolution. If it is Mustafa Kemal it could be a turkish or arabic equivalent of Kemalistan (no idea how to write "country of Kemal" in arab/turkish)? As long as the first years of the new republic is under a popular strongman and he and his regime is more associated with a common muslim identity rather then any ethnic group there should be no opposition. And lets be honest, most geographic named states sound bad until you get accustomed to them.

Based on a limited look at Turkish wiktionary terms (make no claim to speaking Turkish) there is ülke (Country e.g. Anadolülke or Kemalülke?), memleket (Country - a borrowing from Arabic), il / el (seems either can mean Country, Province or Homeland yet not 100% sure) and devlet (state).
 
Iranian minority identity isn't national. The Armenians had a tradition of states/cultures independent and distinct from the Turks. So did the Serbs, Bulgarians, Arabs, etc. The minorities in Iran don't have a similar tradition, and so perceive themselves as somewhat different but essentially similar to the Persians. The effect is something like the attitude of the Southern Chinese dialect groups toward the concept of Chinese nationhood--they perceive it as something that includes them, because all their moments of past greatness were accomplished within its framework. The effect is strengthened by shared cultural tendencies (like celebrating Nowruz and other holidays, even the Sunni Kurds do it), and by the fact that most of Iran's languages are in the same language family as Persian, and their literary forms borrow heavily from Persian convention (even Azeri). Way easier to cast the minorities as "weird cousins, but part of the same family" than it is for the Turks to do the same to, say, the Kurds.
Hmm. Could this be the reason that of all of Iran's minorities, thw Arab regions seem to have the most unrest?

Anyhow, what could the Ottomans do to create a sense of brotherhood among its populace, or at least between the main 3 groups (Arabs, Kurds, Turks)? Maybe some very successful propoganda campaign of "sepratism means being eaten by western powers" kinda thing?
 
"Rumelia" might work- historically it was only used as a name for Ottoman Europe, but on the other hand all of the Ottoman Empire is formerly-Roman land, and the Sultanate of Rum was located in Anatolia, so I can imagine the concept of "Rumelia" expanding to cover the whole Ottoman Empire.
 
(Sorry for the double post)

This is somewhat related, but how come the Ottoman Empire collapsed with nationalist revolts but Iran didn't? Ethnic Persians make up barely half of Iranians, and like the Ottomans, Islam was the main unifyer. Yet unlike the Ottomans who crashed down in flames, Iran stayed in one peice despite all the nationalist conflicts going on just west of them. Why was this? Was Iran way more accommodating to ethnic minorities or was it simply because the western powers didn't forcefully rip Iran apart like they did with the Ottomans?

I think the role of foreign involvement is critical here. While the Ottoman empire certainly had issues with nationalism amongst the component ethnic groups, I don't think it's quite right to say that the Ottoman's crashed and burned in nationalist rebellions insofar as that implies that it was a sudden, spontaneous shattering of the empire. In point of fact, the Ottoman's loss of territory was fairly gradual and highly connected to foreign involvement. Further, nationalist separatism seems to have been much more prominent, and come to such earlier, in the Balkan territories than in the rest of the empire. I'm not aware of any significant Arab ethnic rebellions against the Ottomans until the Arab Revolt (although of course that doesn't mean they didn't happen- if anyone knows more about this please chime in, I'd be interested in hearing more) as the empire's problems controlling Egypt and Mesopotamia stemmed from conflict with the regional political elite rather than with nationalist sentiment in the region. In contrast, in the Balkans the Ottomans had been combating several centuries of ethnic uprisings in the Balkans. However, the eventual indpendence of the Balkan states ocurred with the heavy involvement of the European powers, rather than exclusively from the rebellious forces themselves. As I understand it, the Ottomans, despite early setbacks, were initially successful in suppressing the Greeks in their war of independence by enlisting Egyptian forces until Britain, France, and Russia intervened. Similarly, the April Uprising in Bulgaria was successfully suppressed until the war with Russia revived the Bulgarian rebellion. The story is a bit different for the Serbs in that they successfully won autonomy and subsequently de facto independence from the Ottomans without direct foreign intervention, but they did poorly enough in their 1876 war with the Ottomans that they needed Russian intervention to limit the scale of their defeat and conduct a successful offensive. Even in 1913, the Ottomans didn't lose their remaining Balkan territory to internal revolt, they lost it to the conquering armies of the by then established Balkan states. The point of this tangent (other than an excuse to talk about a relatively niche but interesting period) is that Ottoman territorial loses of the period owe rather a lot to foreign intervention and that the empire didn't so much collapse to internal rebellion as get eaten up by other states.

That's my take on it anyway.
 

Judging by this, would you say the Ottoman Empire would have a much easier time keeping itself together if it only included the majority muslim parts without the Balkans?

I think a successful war against a European power would do a lot in cementing unity. It might also do a lot in bolstering Ottomanism among the people.
 
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