yes, and Greece and Italy and Spain prove that no Christian can survive prolonged proximity to Dar-al-Islam without converting to it.
Indeed, no Greeks or Italian converted to Islam during the Middle Ages as far as I know, despite close contact and even, Muslim domination of both lands. Islam had little success in Spain/Portugal among the native population. However, the opposite is true in Albania (as your own example attests, see below) and some Yugoslavians (e.g. Bosnians, possibly Fyromians). Also, there are significantly many Muslim Bulgarians. But you are missing the point. I am not saying that mere distance, contact, even occupation and conquest would convert populations. Only that divisiveness could enable a foreign religion to make inroads. The divisiveness from a Reformation could have the following consequences which could help spread Islam: (1) if Catholics tolerate the various Protestant sects and vice versa, this would lead to a pluralistic society, and a partial secularization of the state, enabling *some* people interested to adopt the faith of their Muslim neighbors, (2) the lack of a strong leadership to guide correct doctrine or guard against foreign evangelization could distract the established creeds and allow foreign religious elements to make inroads, (3) corruption in the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church and the obviously political ambition of Protestantism might lead cynical Christians toward Islam.
many religious groups from that schism actually sought the protection of Islamic rulers...and themselves never converted.
Interesting, is that so? I do not recall any Protestants seeking asylum in Muslim lands. Then again, the Monophysite Churches did find safe haven from the Constantinian Church (ancestral church to the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox), e.g. Coptic Church in Arab-dominated Egypt and Sudan. Still, some Protestants who fled might have converted to Islam anyways. While Jews converted to Christianity to avoid persecution, and Christians would not likely face the same persecution in Muslim lands, since Medieval Islam was generally tolerant of Judaism and Christianity, such migrants might convert to appeal to their hosts...
so Albania, Greece, and Cyprus are...what?none of them are racially European.
You're joking, RIGHT? Albanians, Greeks, and Cypriots are not racially European? Then what the hell are they? Blacks? Asians? Native Americans?
(Albania and Cyprus aren't even Christian...
No, Albania is not Christian. The Albanians were Christianized early on. (I am pretty sure they were mostly Eastern Orthodox for a time.) So, Albanians do have a Christian heritage of sorts, but they converted to Islam en masse at some point. Today Albanians (including Kosovars) are Muslim for the most part but there is still a significant Christian population in Albania. Mother Theresa was a Catholic Albanian. And Cypriots are Greek Orthodox, so Cyprus IS Christian, pal! The Cypriots are a Hellenic people, and Cypriot faithful maintained Orthodox Christianity. The origin of the Greek Cypriots is obscure, but Greeks on Cyprus have had a continuous presence for thousands of years. (The earliest Cypriot Hellenes are thought to have settled nearly 3000 years ago, in the Homeric (Dark) Age, or even near the end of the Mycenean era, from the Peloponesus. Many Hellenic people have settled on the island during the Classical Age, including Doric and Attic-Ionic Greeks.)
...nor is Poland or Greece, depending on how you define "Christian"
You must be joking! Otherwise, your ignorance is outstanding. Poland is Roman Catholic and Greece is Eastern Orthodox. How the hell could anyone consider then not Christian? Such a definition of "Christian" would exclude two of the oldest branches of Christianity! To anyone who would define Christianity to exclude Catholic Poland and the Greek Orthodox Church, when and where did Christianity originate, 19th century Illinois? And who was the last prophet (and founder)? The 13th Apostle, Joseph Smith? Let me guess, the home base of Christendom is Salt Lake City, Utah!
in OTL - and I don't doubt in this ATL - there are many Christian Turks. what about them?
First, by Christian Turks do you mean Turkish by ethnicity or by nationality? Despite propaganda to the contrary, Turkey is a multi-ethnic state. Of course, the Turkish government classifies Kurds as "Mountain Turks." Most likely, Anatolian Christians were assimilated into the Turks (not all janissaries converted to Islam), and even if some Turks adopted Christianity, they are very very few. Fact is Turkey is overwelmingly Muslim. After all, a significant number of British are atheists, but England is still considered an Anglican country. (In fact, if I am not mistaken, Anglicans are no longer the majority in the UK. I am not even sure if there is a Christian majority there for long.) Paradoxically, in ATL there might be fewer Christian Turks.
Because there is no real geographical basis for distinguishing Europe. Matter of fact, "Europe" is a cultural construct. Are Syria and Iran European nations? What about Kazakhstan and Bangladesh? Iranians/Perisans are native speakers of Aryan (Indo-
European) languages! Iran must be a European nation, right? Sure France and Korea are at far ends of the Eurasian continent, but where does one draw the line? What is the boundary between Europe and the Middle East or Europe and Asia? The Caucasus and Ural Mountains respectively, right? Or between the Middle East and Asia? The Hindu Kush apparently. But that is bullshit! Mountain ranges do not make boundaries. Otherwise the Alpine mountain system (Alps, Dinarics, Balkans, Carpathians) together with the Pyrhenese and the Caucasus partitions the Mediterranean basis from the rest of Europe. So why don't we restrict Europe to the area North of these mountain chains, and lump the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and the Balkan Peninsula with the Middle East as part of the lost continent of Mediterranea? (Or alternately classify the Balkans, Italy, and Iberia as Europe, since European civilization descends directly from Greek and Roman culture, native to this area, and call everything north of the Pyrhenese and Alpine chain "the Wildlands"?) The reason is because the nations of Europe are defined by more or less common ethnicity.
I'm serious - why wouldn't they be considered European? they'd be just as white as anyone else in Europe. (you're confusing their Asian origins, with where they've been living for over 800 years)
The Russians are a caucasoid people descended primarily from a homogeneous blend of two white Indo-European groups Eastern Slavs and Swedish Vikings (Varangians) with varying amounts of non-caucasian Asiatic admixture from Uralic (Finnic and Ugaritic/Magyar) and Altaic (Turkic- Khazars, Cumans, Penechegs, Bulgars, Tatars, etc.) peoples of Karelia, Siberia, and Central Asia as well as remnants of the Huns, Sarmatians, Scythians, and Avars. Not to mention some Mongolian admixture. The Russians are primarily white Europeans (Slavic/Germanic), but still have Asiatic admixture. The Turks on the other hand, are originally a Central Asian mongoloid people. Today, Turkish Turks are caucasian because the small Oghuz army mixed with various peoples of Asia Minor including Persians, Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, Slavs, even Celts (Galatians) and Germanics (Ostrogoths), not to mention the pre-Hellenic, pre-Iranian inhabitants of Asia Minor, the Hittites, Luwians, Lydians, and Urartu. So modern Turks are an Armenoid people with significant Iranian, Slavic, Hellenic, and Semitic (Arab) admixture, and very little original Turkic ancestry. Your average Turk is really a Turkicized Greek, Armenian, Iranian, or Slav. The average Central Asian admixture in a Turkish person is just significant enough to appear, but lower than in certain adjacent groups. (According to some genetic studies, modern ethnic Greeks and Cypriots may have more Turanid (Central Asian Turkic) genes on average than Turks, meaning that modern Greeks are racially more Turkish than Turks! Bulgarians on the other hand, were found to have more Turkic ancestry than any other nation in Europe or the Middle East.) Of course, had the Turks settled on the Ukranian steppe rather than Asia Minor, they would have mostly assimilated other Turkic peoples (Bulgars, Khazars, Kalmyk) as well as Finno-Ugric peoples such as the Karelians and Magyars. Even some of the caucasoid people of the steppe such as Avars, Scythians, Sarmatians, and Ossettes have mixed with various Asiatic people (incl. Huns). Not to mention that after the Mongol contact (whether the Seljuk get conquered or withstand the conquest is not important), Genghis Khan's clan would further contribute to the gene pool, and as the Seljuk Empire expands eastward, it would likely assimilate Siberian peoples. Of course, many of the Rus (Slavs & Varangians) would also be assimilated, so the Turks would acquire some European traits, but they would still be mostly Asian. Furthermore, the overall population of Byzantine Anatolia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Afghanistsn were higher and much more dense than that of the Russian-Ukranian steppe, so in this scenario, the Seljuk Turks would maintain more of their original Oghuz-Turkoman ancestry. Granted, there are no racially pure people anywhere on Earth (with the possible exceptions of the Andaman and Nicobar Islanders, some pygmies, and San) and we are all mixed, but most likely the Seljuks would retain Asian genes more than Caucasian ones in this scenario, and would thus be phenotypically more Asian than European. They still would not quite look like Mongolians, Chinese, Thais, etc. but they would be distinct from white Europeans.
Russia was seen as part of Europe, wasn't it?
IOTL, barely. Russia is usually considered "Eastern Europe". Still Europe, but when a more restrictive definition is used, is sometimes excluded where Greece and Western Europe qualify. Even Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary (with the occasional inclusion of Finland if not counted as Scandinavia) are considered "Central Europe" as opposed to Bulgaria, Russia, Ukriane, Kalingrad, Belarus, and the Baltics. Still Russians are a mostly white people who speak a Slavic (Indo-European) language. They also have a Judeo-Christian tradition, as many Russians and Ukranians are Jews, Russian Orthodox, or Uniate ("Eastern Rite Catholics"
Christians.
While Europeans too have a history of racism (especially in the past five centuries), the Anatolian Turks have had an almost continous pattern of racism since their first foothold. This is NOT to say that every single Turk is or was racist or even that there were never brief periods of tolerance, but for the most part, Turkey was a racist nation. I understand that the ramifications of this are offensive and politically incorrect, but when a foreign ethnic group forces its way into new lands it will inevitably gain enemies. And thus, this racism emerges as a defense mechanism, especially once it conquers the natives. Throughout the Seljuk and Ottoman conquests, they have decimated considerable portions of the Greek, Armenian, and Kurdish populations, raped native women en masse, discouraged and even supressed using other languages in public, enslaved various non-Turks and kidnapped sons to be janissaries, and forcibly assimilated entire groups. Don't believe me? Ever heard of a little thing called the
Armenian Genocide? Even today, in more enlightened times, most Turks vehemently oppose a Kurdish state in Iraq (despite the political clusterfuck surrounding that country) and deny that the Armenian genocide occured.