Turkey's Erdoğan approves bill giving him sweeping new powers

[TheWPCTraveler]

Turkish said:

TheWPCTraveler said:

Any stable empire brings peace to its core lands, given a long enough period of time. Once you get to the periphery, you end up with a rather messy situation depending on your neighbors and other great powers and even the attitude of the borderlands toward the central authority.

I can say the same about the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantines) that came before it, for instance. Or the Persian Empire(s) that sprang up and even rivaled the Ottomans for some time after their Turkic/Mongol night. Or Austria(-Hungary). Or even the Russian Empire and its successor, the USSR.

The problem, of course, is that they all have one thing in common: they are large land empires with a large contingent of its primary culture (Turkish for the Ottomans, (Austrian) German for the Austria, Russian for the Russian Empire/USSR and so on) to administrate as well as tolerance for other cultures within (so no mass genocides unless necessary --- they cause civil wars and instability in regions where those populations have sizeable influence).

 

By the way, jihad is sanctioned by the Koran. So, both of you are partially correct. After all, it is a matter of enforcing the rules.

But you Turks can't act all blameless, either. It's not as if you had anything with the Greeks and Armenians, nope. Nuh-uh. Let's memory-hole that, shall we...

What happened at the end of the Ottoman Empire and rise of nationalism is unfortunate but it doesn't negate the fact that they lived peacefully for centuries. The Ottomans were the first true multicultural society. Jews, Muslims, Christians lived peacefully from Thessaloniki(read about its Jewish Ottoman culture) to co-existence of the religions in Jerusalem.

In fact Istanbul had a huge Christian and Jewish population until the end. All this wouldn't have happened if the Ottomans didn't allow for this co-existence to happen. The Ottomans had they wished, could have forcefully converted their subjects, like it happened in other empires around the world.

The dream collapsed when outside forces got greedy and destabilized the Ottoman regions. They would all be for the better if they kept on being administrated with the Millet system.

It's a really interesting story, the collapse of the Ottomans resulted in all the misery of today. Saudi Arabia is funding worldwide terrorism now, but they wouldn't be if they weren't getting rich with oil.

I agree with you until the part that you italicized. Were the janissaries really that inflitrated by foreign influences, or am I looking at something that was started years prior? Or are you referring to that said rise of nationalism?

That said, maybe the Mosul vilayet should have been given to Turkey instead of being requisitioned by the British. And pan-Arabian nationalism would have resultred in a united Arabian state anyway, but it really could have gone better.