Ottoman Dalmatia

Just wondering, IOTL the Ottomans never got to acquire Dalmatia despite it only being a small, if important strip of coast east of Adriatic Sea. I guess maybe Ottomans were never interested, but I'm not knowledgeable about this topic....
 
It wasn't a strip of coast, it was a bunch of fortified ports and a hinterland that was only acquired in 1699. The Venetians got lucky. Someone else was in the way (Hungary, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Zeta/Montenegro), or the Ottomans had bigger fish to fry, or they were at peace with Venice, or they were at war but fighting mostly to the south (the Siege of Candia in Crete lasted 21 years), or it was the 18th century and the Austrians were pushing the border back. AFAIK the last Venetian port on the Adriatic to be lost to Turkey was Antivari (modern Bar, Montenegro) in 1571; FWIW, because it was southeast of Ragusa it was back considered part of Albania, not Dalmatia.
 
That, and the Venetians were a bartering nation. A fair amount of their trade actually came from around or through Constantinople, or from Greece. While the Ottomans would every so often decide to seize a possession or other from Venice, the Venetians largely kept their Greek possessions for so long because they would make trade agreements in exchange for the security of this island or that piece of country. In some cases they actually acquired land off the Ottomans in these deals.
 
There's also geography involved. The Dalmatian coast is not reachable from the interior. Even in the early 20th c there was virtually no communication between the coast and the interior. It would be impossible for the Ottomans to control Dalmatia without also controlling the Adriatic, which would be prohibitively expensive for the gains this would provide. In the "Mehmed II lives longer and conquers Italy" scenario, most likely the Ottomans would control it.
 
The Dalmatian coast is not reachable from the interior.

Depends what you mean by interior. It was certainly accessible from the Dinaric Alps, and the Turks had no problem reaching Zara (Zadar) from Obrovac and Spalato (Split) from Klis. I mentioned before that the Venetians only acquired the highland border by the Treaty of Karlowitz; that's when it becomes a logistical mess for the Ottomans.
 
^ Why did it become a logistical mess ?

Because now the Ottomans had to cross the Dinaric Alps to get to the Adriatic ports that made up the really important part of Dalmatia, and that was provided the Austrians, who were across the border from Bosnia, didn't intervene against them.
 
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