And its again going to have a very heavy weight of pure classism if the aristocrats dominate and the majority of the population just has to suck it up. There's just not a good option here other than hoping your rulers DON'T abuse your power if you're lower class in this context.
I'm not disputing that classism is going to be at least as bad as and likely worse than ethno-religious descrimination (or at least worse than the Ottomans intended it to be), but classism is going to be present whether we have the Ottomans or not. I'm willing to put the descrimination down as a single point against the Ottomans, but classism is two or three points against everyone (unless you have a society you think is better about classism, but I'm quite sure the Ottomans aren't above the average).
Basically I think the issue of classism ought not to be brought up, because it's going to exist no matter who's in charge, but I do hold that descrimination would be at least an appreciable fraction of the level of problem of aristocratic classism. To me, that fraction (based again on my fairly arbitrary scale) looks to be a rough third, which seems reasonable to me.
No, what made some ethnicities hate each other is some ethnicities being unable to fucking move on. Yes, I'm sure that while the Ottomans were in charge having the mostly Muslim Albanians dominant wasn't very pleasant, but Serbians faced the choice of either "That was the past, this is now." or "REVENGE!" and they chose the latter.
That is from their problems, not from Ottoman actions.
It's not a matter of revenge if the problems are ongoing. Continuing to use Kosovo as an example, the region became majority Albanian in ethnicity and Muslim in religion because of actions undertaken by the Ottomans to help fight the Austrians. Serbia was sympathetic to Austria, and after regaining the region in the 1690s the Ottomans began to actively foster the growth of the Islamic community in Kosovo and tear down Christian institutions there, prompting the locals to flee in significant numbers. Even so the territory was still considered a part of Serbia, and a century later when the Ottomans had to give Serbia autonomy they gave them the region. Since then the region has been considered Serbian since before 1200, still holds a significant Serbian population, and has been a part of the modern Serbian state since its inception its only natural that the serbs want to keep the region. On the other hand the majority in Kosovo are Muslim Albanians, so it's also perfectly reasonable for them to want independance from a state where they don't have the representation and autonomy that they want. It is a problem that arose entirely during Ottoman rule, and in Kosovo's case it is one that the Ottomans created on purpose to keep the Serbs down, and that has no solution that will satisfy everyone, so I feel placing blame on the Ottomans at least in some capacity is warranted.
In the greater scope of nationalism both sides are just doing what makes sense, so I definitely don't consider it an unreasonable unwillingness to move on, but even if you do consider both sides to be unreasonable towards eachother then I would argue that making them hate eachother was indeed a state policy for the Ottomans designed to keep the Balkans under their control, so they can be blamed for the hate between them too.
It has more to do with, again, people screaming for revenge rather than wiping the slate clean. There might not be the things to have "revenge!" against in different circumstances, but it doesn't speak well of the people who felt that because bad things were done by Muslim Albanians in the past that the appropriate response is to do Muslim Albanians now. It speaks a great deal of their intolerance and hatred and very little of the meaning of what was done to them.
It's the opposite of the Truth and Reconciliation committees.
Again, ongoing conflict, and a two way struggle. The Albanians don't like the Serbs either, and are infringing on territory that has been Serbian for two centuries. It's not as simple as saying "I refuse to tolerate X because of the past". More like "X can't have my sovereign territory just because they live there. X can have some special privileges, but only if they behave like everybody else". Letting an ethnicity have a region just because they are the majority isn't right (otherwise we'll see nations with excess population using them to colonize and claim other territories), but neither is opressing people or forcing them from their homes. A complex solution needs to be established, and sometimes solutions (especially ones dependant on a certain level of integrity in one or both groups) fail for one reason or another, resulting in what's happening now in Kosovo.
Balkans without being conquered raises a lot of very unpleasant issues about how they handle BYZANTINE rule and its legacy, and any attempts by Byzantium to reestablish control. Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans arguably started in their period earlier, honestly, which is not something I like to think about but I'm pretty sure is true by the definition of the term.
As for being receptive to the idea: There are a lot of nasty possible idealogies. Byzantine fascism (using OTL terminology because for a state calling itself Roman it could well look to the fasces, and my Greek isn't good enough to translate) in an alt-20th century is certainly not impossible as a response to "restore ancient glories" and all that sort of rubbish. Just to name one example.
Germany wasn't under imperial rule (in this sense), Russia being under that wasn't directly related to what lead to the October Revolution, and well we don't need to go there. There are a lot of ways for insert harmful ideology here of various sorts to sneak in.
I don't mean this just to be contentious, its just that we saw things happen OTL that did pretty awful things so often over many places in the OTL 20th century. I'd really feel leery of expecting any part of Europe to have effective antibodies with a POD before any of the modern institutions that may have helped (say) OTL Great Britain have truly developed.
History can be grimdark and all.
Agreed that Byzantium did have a level of ethnic cleansing (although to be fair in the period relocation within the empire is pretty tame even by modern standards), but not agreed that it was worse than anyone else at the time. By the time that the Ottomans were fighting to retain the Balkans, violent ethnic cleansing was definitely not par for the course.
As for violent ideologies, I get what you mean about it being too early to tell at the time of the PoD, but I will say that generally successful nations always tend to be less suceptible to them, and the reverse is also true. In that respect, if we start the Balkans on a good streak in the late middle ages, I think it at least helps their chances of continuing it in modern times.
Not really, no. The combination of increasingly unwelcome rule (whatever it was like earlier) bloody wars for independence, insecurity in a dangerous world, and all the fun and joy of the 20th century's pandora's box of horrors landed on the Balkans one thing after another - whereas for example the pain the US went through from ~1918 on was with the last half century having been far easier and far more prosperous (for all its problems there) for the majority.
But a lot of that is just everything that could go wrong from the OTL events (the multiple collapses pre-Ottomans you referred to, Ottoman rule, nationalism, the modern industrial world changing traditional things tremendously) being without let up - if the alt-Balkans face a perfect storm of disasters (even if different disasters) politically and socially, the 20th century will be bleak even if the 14th-19th was better.
I just want to note that because of how even the countries that did handle it well were under pretty serious stress - I would not want to be a Frenchman in the 1930s in a lot of ways, or the 1830s for that matter. And France was a Great Power, not a province.
Agreed on fractional points. It might be useful to discuss for any specific scenario how some relatively minor issues being avoided changes things, but that's just fleshing out that scenario and doesn't relate to your scale.
After all, who knows what individuals might have risen without the OTL figures? An Albanian whose family tree resembles OTL Skanderbeg but who works out as an Orthodox saint, favoring education, would have a dramatic impact on the region, no?
Just using this as food for thought.
I think you are right that (correct me if I'm misinterpreting), if we simply give the Balkans a good 20th century they could be par for the course in Europe by today. The issue here is that I feel that the area was predisposed to such problems by 1700, what with the ethnic shifts and ethnic rivalries. Similarly, I think the root of that round of problems is based in the Ottoman conquest, and obviously the events of the 1300s caused the Ottoman conquest. I don't see a PoD after the Ottoman withdrawal to be likely to produce good results, as the region is already thoroughly messed up and surrounded by enemies and or radical governments on all sides. A PoD during Ottoman rule might work by preserving the empire as the region's uncontested dominant power, but I find that to be a rather difficult goal, not to mention that it would destroy (or heavily Ottomanize at least) all the region's native cultures, so I'd prefer that the area remain independant. Peaceful Ottoman withdrawal would also work, but I see virtually no chance of that happening, so I prefer to prevent their conquest altogether.
That's why I wanted to choose a PoD when all the Balkan nations were fairly strong, around 1300, before Bulgaria fell apart, before the civil war between Andronikos II and Andronikos III devastated Byzantium, and before the rise and overexpansion of Stephen Dusan. That was probably the last time when I would say that all three main groups (Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians) were doing pretty well for a while at the same time. It just seems easier to build on a positive streak than to turn a negative one around.