Snake Featherston
Banned
One issue with Ottoman modernization was that the center of Ottoman power was in the Balkans. The religious differences between Christians and Muslims in the Balkans if and when a variation of nationalism starts to emerge will still be a convenient pretext for the enemies of the empire to use against it. Tanzimat was quite successful IOTL and the Ottomans *did* survive past WWI, where the Habsburgs, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns did not.
I think an interesting question is whether or not the Ottomans could have developed a system whereby Ottomanism takes precedence over Sunnism as the state identity, enabling the state to run around the Islamists *and* the Christianists who'd be against the idea. Effectively something on the line of modern-day US multi-culturalism. It wouldn't have to be perfect, but then neither is the US version by any means.
Edit-To clarify I mean if they did this before the creation of Greece or Bulgaria.
I think an interesting question is whether or not the Ottomans could have developed a system whereby Ottomanism takes precedence over Sunnism as the state identity, enabling the state to run around the Islamists *and* the Christianists who'd be against the idea. Effectively something on the line of modern-day US multi-culturalism. It wouldn't have to be perfect, but then neither is the US version by any means.
Edit-To clarify I mean if they did this before the creation of Greece or Bulgaria.
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