WI: An Orthodox Turkish State?

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Banned
Inspired by the Ottomans rebelling from Orthodox Bulgaria and being an Orthodox kingdom in my EU3, I've thought of a question; could there exist an Orthodox Christian Turkish nation, and could it survive until the present day?

Bonus points if it's an off-shot of the Ottomans.
 
The Gagauz are Orthodox, so there's a minor example.

But this is properly a Turks-in-ASB-Byzantine-Territory question. When the Sick Man of Europe collapses in 19xx, the Turkish Republic shall be majority Orthodox.
 
Inspired by the Ottomans rebelling from Orthodox Bulgaria and being an Orthodox kingdom in my EU3, I've thought of a question; could there exist an Orthodox Christian Turkish nation, and could it survive until the present day?

Bonus points if it's an off-shot of the Ottomans.
Isn't that just you know, Bulgaria?
 
Isn't that just you know, Bulgaria?

Considering Bulgaria is rather fundamentally Slavic (outside the early Bulgars who were a Oghur Turcic people unrelated to the Seljuk descendants) and in fact is really foundational as a model to most East and South Slavic states...no. It's not a Turkish state, thus violating OP's request.

At one point they had a very large proportion of Turkish settlers, who either changed names or got kicked out in the senile dotage of Communist Bulgaria, but that doesn't make them Turkish even so.
 
What about an independent Chuvashia? The Chuvash are an Eastern Orthodox group of Turks on the Volga, and unlike the Gagauz, there are a lot of them (2 million versus 240,000) If Russia stayed weak and divided, they might be independent to this day.

Of course, while Chuvash is a Turkic language, it's debatable if it's a Turkish one. Gagauz in contrast is essentially the same thing as Turkish.
 
I read a book about the Byzantine Empire that said in the 600s or so it, was possible that a mass conversion of the Turks would take place and the Orthodox world would extend all the way to the Pacific.

Unfortunately, the Turkic leader who was going to convert get fed up with Byzantine shenanigans, denounced them as treacherous, and refused to have anything to do with them.

Whether the conversion of one tribe (or at least its leadership) could lead to every Turkish tribe in existence converting is kind of difficult, but at the very least, you could get some Orthodox Turkic tribes in there.
 
Of course, while Chuvash is a Turkic language, it's debatable if it's a Turkish one. Gagauz in contrast is essentially the same thing as Turkish.

Chuvash is an Oghur language; probably related to ancient Bulgar by descent. So it's a Christian Volga Bulgaria rather than Orthodox Turkey scenario.
 
Inspired by the Ottomans rebelling from Orthodox Bulgaria and being an Orthodox kingdom in my EU3, I've thought of a question; could there exist an Orthodox Christian Turkish nation, and could it survive until the present day?

In the 13th century, when the Ottomans rose to power, there was significant Christian/Orthodox influence on them; the same applies to the other tiny Turkish regimes mushrooming during the decline of the Seldchuks.
So it is not unlikely that the Ottomans convert to (Byzantine) Christianity on the eve of their way up; similarly, their place as the dominant power in Anatolia (and later, in the Eastern Mediterranean) could be taken by one of its brother states, and this one could have been Christianized.
 
Inspired by the Ottomans rebelling from Orthodox Bulgaria and being an Orthodox kingdom in my EU3, I've thought of a question; could there exist an Orthodox Christian Turkish nation, and could it survive until the present day?

Bonus points if it's an off-shot of the Ottomans.

Getting an Orthodox Turkish offshoot of the Ottomans is almost ASB (the world did not work the way it does in EU3), and even getting an Orthodox Turkish state in former Byzantine territory is hard, since Turks who convert to Orthodoxy are likely to assimilate into the Orthodox Greek culture predominant in the region.

Your best bet with this TL is to have the Avars (who may or may not have been Oghuz Turkic, but lets just say they were) become the dominant group on the Pannonian Plain* instead of the Hungarians. After a few centuries, "Avaria" converts to Orthodox Christianity. And there you have an Orthodox Turkish state.

*Modern day Hungary
 
Inspired by the Ottomans rebelling from Orthodox Bulgaria and being an Orthodox kingdom in my EU3, I've thought of a question; could there exist an Orthodox Christian Turkish nation, and could it survive until the present day?

Bonus points if it's an off-shot of the Ottomans.

Basically have a Turkish warlord convert to Christianity and marry a daughter of someone in the Byzantine political and military elite. Eventually a Turkish dynasty arises in the Byzantine Empire.
 

Basically have a Turkish warlord convert to Christianity and marry a daughter of someone in the Byzantine political and military elite. Eventually a Turkish dynasty arises in the Byzantine Empire.

Corollary: The world does not work like Crusader Kings.
 
In the 13th century, when the Ottomans rose to power, there was significant Christian/Orthodox influence on them; the same applies to the other tiny Turkish regimes mushrooming during the decline of the Seldchuks.

If you mean they employed a lot of Orthodox people (or people of Orthodox descent) and the sultans had Orthodox wives, then yeah-the infant Ottoman state was at the western extreme of Turkish Anatolia, and almost all its territory and population had been conquered from the Byzantines within the previous century (the Ottomans did a lot of it themselves, actually-they started with one small Turkish frontier town and pushed west). Given the majority of the population at the time was Orthodox, a large degree of influence was more or less inevitable.

However, employing upper class Christians and Jews was a long tradition in Muslim states, and almost never translated into the conversion of the state itself. In the Middle Ages, to believe in "Islam" or "Christianity" was not only to believe in the religion itself, but in a whole philosophy, culture, and worldview attached to it. Conversion of a King from one to the other was extremely rare, and almost always happened under duress-ie, a big powerful neighbor of the other religion forcing conversion (and even then, said powerful neighbor would usually prefer to conquer the area and set up a puppet regime of its own faith). I'm not saying the conversion of the early Ottomans or another small Turkish statelet is outright impossible, but its extremely implausible.
 
Of course, while Chuvash is a Turkic language, it's debatable if it's a Turkish one. Gagauz in contrast is essentially the same thing as Turkish.

It is a Turkic language, of the Oğur or Lir-Turkic family (unlike Turkish, Azeri, Gagauz, Turkmen, and a few others, which are Oğuz or Shaz-Turkic) - albeit one influenced by Uralic languages due to its position. A general rule of thumb on this is that where Turkic languages have <ş> and <z>, Oğur languages have <l> and <r>; also, as I've already stated, Chuvash has preserved archaisms not found in other Turkic languages. Examples include -sem for Common Turkic -ler/lar for the plural and the first-person absolute singular pronoun as *be (nowadays written as <епӗ/epĕ> and pronounced [ebɘ]).
 
Getting an Orthodox Turkish offshoot of the Ottomans is almost ASB (the world did not work the way it does in EU3), and even getting an Orthodox Turkish state in former Byzantine territory is hard, since Turks who convert to Orthodoxy are likely to assimilate into the Orthodox Greek culture predominant in the region.

True, but then again there is the case of Karamanlidika, which is essentially Turkish written in the Greek alphabet. So the *Turkish language could remain useful in this scenario.
 
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