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The resource curse refers the fact that countries despite having abundant natural resources, usually don't flourish economically, or flourish in any way whatsoever. Contra-intuitively, countries with abundant natural resources tend to have a worse economical development than countries with few.

They tend to enrich, massively so, a very small part of the country's population. Oil and and democratisation also tends to be as hard to mix as oil and water. Not enough that few oil-exporting countries are very democratic, but democratisation processes are often halted after a country has discovered oil. The discovery of oil also tends splash a big fat X on a country, and make foreign powers more prone to try to come in and grab a share of the spoils. The only two countries who've handled oil wealth well is Norway and Canada.

Things to consider for a surviving Ottoman empire, especially considering members of this board often tend to see the Ottoman empire having a very large source of oil as an inherently good thing for the country's development. Much depends on how much of the Balkans are still intact, and how left-wing and democratic the empire is.
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