Permanently divided Anatolia until 1800

Pellaeon

Banned
Before the rise of the ottomans Anatolia was divided into various competing Beyliks, Armenians, and the remnants of Byzantium.

How can we preserve this chaotic state of affairs until 1800?

A more crushing Mongol or timurid invasion? Byzantine resurgence and then sudden decline?
 
Preserving a series of small, weak Muslim Turkish states on the doorstep of Europe from the Mongols until the Industrial Revolution? That sounds impossible.

Maybe Rum and the Latin Empire become the new status quo.
 
I'm with @President Benedict Arnold on this one. It would generally be impossible to make Anatolia another set of "All the Little Germanies" situation, more often than not they're going to either coalesce or get eaten by either the Greeks to the east, the Il'Khanate/Timurids/Insert Persian dynasty here to the west or the Mamluks/Insert Arab/Egyptian dynasty here to the South. Not even going to count Armenia here or Georgia, who might also play a role here.

Best case scenario for your situation, have Anatolia basically be divided between Byzantium, Armenia, and a Turkish rump-state, all of which could feasibly last to the 19th century.
 
It's my opinion that this is tough but possible. I'd say that you'll want to have Timur's empire get bigger and collapse even harder. Maybe even wipe out the Ottoman dynasty while you're at it. Keep Arabia and Iran shattered since otherwise they'll try to eat Anatolia. The Byzantines are probably a non-entity with a PoD after the fall of Gallipoli but you'll need a violent Central Europe like OTL to keep Hungary and Poland from going south. Maybe make the Crimean tartars a bigger threat than OTL to keep Russia busy. The Venetians can be kept out if they can circumvent having to go through Constantinople for trade, which can be done if they build the Suez Canal (the technology and desire to do this existed then IOTL).

Now with no external threats you might be able to keep Anatolia divided, but the world around it is going to be pretty different.
 

Deleted member 97083

I'm with @President Benedict Arnold on this one. It would generally be impossible to make Anatolia another set of "All the Little Germanies" situation, more often than not they're going to either coalesce or get eaten by either the Greeks to the east, the Il'Khanate/Timurids/Insert Persian dynasty here to the west or the Mamluks/Insert Arab/Egyptian dynasty here to the South. Not even going to count Armenia here or Georgia, who might also play a role here.

Best case scenario for your situation, have Anatolia basically be divided between Byzantium, Armenia, and a Turkish rump-state, all of which could feasibly last to the 19th century.
Anatolia has been united for centuries-long periods, and disunited for centuries-long periods as well. This is completely possible.
 
Anatolia has been united for centuries-long periods, and disunited for centuries-long periods as well. This is completely possible.

That's not considering the specific contexts of each period.

The period from the early 1200s to the early 1800s is 600 years if European expansionism, colonialism, and the urge for global conquest.

A Turkish state ruling much of Anatolia and engaging in wars with a regional power on the edge of Europe could survive such a period.

A bunch of weak, squabbling minor Turkish states, none of which even approaching hegemon status, is as close to impossible as I can see.

Turkey would serve as a colony for one nation or another in that state, there's no way Europe overlooks such an incredibly close region that is in such poor shape.
 
Maybe one Turkish (Muslim) state, one Armenian state, a (united) Georgian state on the fringes, and a Pontic Greek state/Trebizond? This obviously means the Turks never expand into the Balkans, which possibly might require the original Byzantium to survive and never be conquered by them. As noted, there's the problem of the Persians to consider, and even other groups like the Mamluks.

Turkey would serve as a colony for one nation or another in that state, there's no way Europe overlooks such an incredibly close region that is in such poor shape.

If they're Muslims, they'd be colonised. But Christian states? Outside of the Turkish Straits, there's not much reason to do anything more than make them client states.
 
Maybe have the Byzantines not make a movement on the Armenians? Apparently there were once a lot of heavily armed states there but when the Byzantines moved in they disarmed them and didn't put sufficient border guards. Maybe we see them surviving longer?
 
Use the Kizilimak and Buyuk Menderes rivers as a Byzantine frontier and have them focus more on Europe in the late 14th/15th centuries. Marriages as a means of annexation become a trait of both the Hapsburgs and (insert Greek dynasty of choice). Without a strong polity to unite the region it becomes an area akin to how we see the Balkans in OTL and "Anatolization" takes on the same meaning. Egypt expands northward to Kebir river a few times and even as far north as Adana for about ten years bit are forced back afterwards during the centuries-long Mamaluk-Safavid Wars that only ended when Russia threatened to conquer the entire region. Ironically the internacine warfare leads to early adaptations of gunpowder, the printing press, and interesting innovations like an earlier steam engine (though with limited use due to cost and available materials), public hygeine/germ theory being codified and studied, and wider use of soybeans both as food, feed, and fuel source. With the arrival of British, French, Russian, Italian, and Dutch commercial interests the regions division was likely inevitable despite Byzantine efforts to push east and reunite the great Anatolian plains.
 
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