This article sort of reminds me of the Manzikert one in which I think the Turks for aiding the discovery of the New World by destroying Byzantium and making Europe panic into finding other routes to China and India. This one is about how the weakness of the Turks destroyed the Concert of Europe and pushed Europe towards the path of destruction in the World Wars which pretty much lead to the Rise of the USA and USSR. It wasn't really their fault of course but how would Russia react to a decaying Empire to her south which bordered the Mediterreanean. It was a logical move to seize Ottoman territory despite Anglo-Franco protests
I'm not even sure why many Europeans don't think Turks aren't Europeans. They certainly are, they're just Muslims Europeans like 5% of the French population or the Albanians-Kosovars. I mean, they think Russia maybe slightly European though 15% of Russia is now Muslim. Europeans just have to accept the fact that the Ottomans have had a part to play in the development of Europe since they roared onto the Anatolian plan close to 1000 years ago. If the Turks hadn't entered Europe who knows what might've happened. Maybe there'd be more Greeks or the Anatolian Greeks might be Muslim or the Byzantine Empire might still exist to this very day and taken the place of the Ottomans. Who knows?Might as well start where I left off around the end of the 11th century
In the 1070s the Byzantines were in a shit-hole of a position. The Seljuk Turks were knocking at the gates of Constantinople, the Normans had seized Bari in Italy and parts of Greece, the Serbs, Bulgars, Hungarians and Pechenegs were on the way to take the Balkans. Quite the shitty situation indeed. In 1081, a new Emperor Alexius Comnenus seized power after putting out someone's eyeballs and managed to hire enough mercenaries to kill thousands of Normans, Serbs and Pechenegs but they were still tons of Turks in Anatolia. The Turks started fighting amongst each other when another Turkish tribe entered Anatolia and Alexius saw his chance.
He had an audience with some visitors from the Pope and basically told them that he was the thin purple line (since Purple was seen as an Imperial colour by these pseudo-Romans) against these Muslims invaders. Also, the Turks now controlled Jerusalem and according to Peter the Hermit they persecuted Christians. For these reasons, Pope Urban II called for a crusade. The first among many. The Crusaders pushed back the Turks and took back cities and finally reached Jerusalem after killing most of the Jews and Muslims living there. Killing Christians wasn't new in the Middle East but the killing of Muslims on a massive scale was new, the Mongols hadn't hit Baghdad yet.
By the 1100s the entire Middle East has changed. The Byzantines seemed confident under Emperor Manuel, Zengi of Mosul wanted to recapture Jerusalem and the Seljuk Turks were right between the Byzantines and the Zengi of Mosul. After Zengi had captured cities in Armeania a new Crusade was called but without Byzantine support because a peace treaty had been signed between the Seljuks and "Rome". The Turks totally destroyed them. Then the Manuel broke the peace treaty and hit the Seljuks hard. Then... the Seljuks attack the Byzantines after the Zengi of Mosul dies and Greece and the Balkans are carved up by Hungarians and Sicilians whilst in the East Saladin rises and conqueres Jerusalem. A Third Crusade is called but that fails and the Fourth one in the 1200s is a money grab to destroy all the remaining splendor of Byzantium and ruining the Empire forever. You would at least expect the Turks to do them in this way but no, it had to be some blind Venetian Doge who'd screw the Byzantines over.
Fortunately for the Crusaders, the Mongols come and kill millions of Muslims in the heartland of the Middle East but unfortunately for the Byzantines they spare the Seljuks only asking for protection money. If things couldn't get worse..they do. The Black Death kills more than half the people in Constantinople in 1347 after a Byzantine Civil War and the Turks cross into Europe. Even worse, an earthquake allowed even more Turks to move into Europe in 1354. These Ottomans Turks slowly expanded against Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians, Greeks, Bulgars, Italians and Franks especially at the Battle of Kosovo. They allowed traditional cultures to exist while taking their sons to become Janissaries. The Byzantines got a break when Tamerlane pretty much wrecked Ottoman Turkey but in 1453, the time to end the Byzantine Empire had come. An Empire that had lasted almost 1000 years was destroyed by cannon as it blasted the famous wall of the city. Not much could stop the Turks after this, not even Vlad the Impaler. Though he was a scary motherfucker, the Turks would kill anyone who stood in their way at this time. In their mind, they were the Muslim inheritors of the Caliphate, the Mongol Empire and Rome.
By 1492, The Turks were the big 300 pound Muslim gorilla in the room that was bashing Hungary (the frontline against the Turks) as it controlled the Balkans. The Ottomans conquered Egypt in 1517 and conquered Mesopotamia by the 1530s controlling most trade to China and Europe. The Portuguese found a way around this by making the Indian Ocean it's "Lake" by conquered cities and outposts around the rim of it, while the Spanish tried to go to China by the other way and bumped into two continents and the 50 or so million people that lived on both of them by the time the Spanish arrived. Luckily for the Spanish, if they arrived in Ming dynasty China and started proclaiming that the King of Spain was sovereign over them, they would've been killed. Saying such stuff to neolithic Amerindians in Cuba is so much easier.
By the 1520s, Europe had changed. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth who ruled pershaps a quater of Europe and Francis I of France were fighting each other across the continent and while in capitivity the King of France urged the Ottomans to attack. Turkish forces invaded Hungary and Austria would've fallen if Francis hadn't paid to leave capitivity so Carlos V would have enough money to fight the Turks. It must be hard to pay the mortgage on so many countries. Due to the reformation, German Lutheran princes were rich due to all the Church property and gold they took but no, they couldn't fight the Catholics now because The Turks had besieged Vienna and they had to pledge to leave Catholics alone to fight Muslims. The Turks came back against in 1533 and Carlos V had to resolve not to destroy the Protestants because he needed them to fight the Turks and save Vienna. The Turks were saving Protestants everywhere! As long as the Turks were a threat, the Europeans would unite despite religion. But not in 1545 because the Turks and Persians had gone to war. Carlos the V invaded Lutheran Germany and was on the verge of winning but the Pope who was afraid of his power pulled his troops out of Germany where he was once supporting the anti-protestant war and Lutheran-French forces drove him from Germany. In the end, thanks to France, the Pope and Ottomans Protesant Churches would survive and a greater conflict between Catholics and Protestants in the 30 years war over Bohemia which led to the French rise to European dominance which would plague Europe until 1870.
The Spanish crown passed to Felipe II and he had his problems too. He no longer had the Holy Roman Empire but he did have the Netherlands, all of Iberia and Latin America. However, silver from the mines of Potosi weren't coming, the port of Antwerp had slumped, he had to maintain an expensive army in the Netherlands, worry about French protestants and of course the Turks. The Ottoman navy pretty much controlled the Eastern Mediterreanean and threatned Spanish interests. The Habspurgs all over Europe united against thsi threat and won a naval battle against the Turks. No worry, the Ottomans could rebuild at that point. They were technically a superpower as was Spain but that power was waning. More and more trade volume went across the Atlantic to places like the Philippines to trade with China and the Portuguese had trade routes to India by other routes too, they even controlled the City of Goa. This was not good for the Turks as time did tell. Other Mediterreanean powers like Venice shrank to nothing and the Hanseatic league collapsed too. Only Atlantic powers would call the global shots from now on. So, the Ottomans came back to Vienna in 1683 and failed, the farthest they'd extend to Europe. The Croissant was inveted to commemorate it. This is how low the Turks had sunken, they invented a pastry to show how deep they've gone into imperial malaise...it was bad enough that the Poles had to clear them from the battlefield but a pastry. Just awful.
Fast forward a century and the Ottoman Empire is in decay. Ripe, open decay. The Beys or lords of provinces such as Morrocco are nearly independant. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert of Europe meetings sought a way to prevent further war so that power would be balances and that they'd work cooperatively for peace. This was not meant to be. The Great Powers present were Spain, France, Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia but not the Ottoman Turks. The denial of the Ottoman Turks at the negotiation table would cause a century of turmoil and nationalism. Can't blame the Europeans though, the Ottomans were the "Sick Man of Europe" at this point. Formerly, a Sultans only became sultans when they had cruelly strangled all their brothers but by the 1700s the princes were raised in the harem far away from politics, finance and war. New sultans had no clue about how to run a government. Unsurprising, this may have caused the decline.
After the Napoleonic Wars the Russians helped the Serbs form a country in 1817, then the Brits helped Greece form a state by 1833. France seized Algeria by 1830. Soon ethnic states were being formed in the Balkans and this set off a chain reaction which threatned the nearby multi-ethnic Austria-Hungary. For instance, what if all the Germans got together? Nationalism became a force due to Ottoman collapse. Also, European cooperation ended too due to Ottoman collapse in the Crimean War when France, Britain and the Ottomans fought in the Crimean peninsula for three years. The idea of nationalism gave Germany the idea to band together under Prussian leadership, Italy too. You could even argue it spurred Japanese modernization. All from the Turks. Guess what, Austria-Hungarian empire began picking up pieces of Turkish provinces like Bosnia just so it get can some access to the sea while their German cousins became a world power through trade in East Asia and a railroad to Baghdad through Ottoman Anatolia. A coup in 1908 by the Young Turks made Turke think it could gain back the Balkans. Wrong of course but all this lead to an escalation where in 1914 the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed over Bosnia, a tiny former Ottoman province.World War erupted of course which ultimately led to World War II. The problems of the modern Middle East such as Palestine and the formation of Iraq were once Ottoman problems but at least they knew how handle Arab villagers and Kurds...and 1 million dead Armenians.
Even though Turks did bring about the modern world, they did bring about the nationalism which nearly destroyed Europe in the 20th century. Of course, you can't blame a Turk for all these things but their place in Europe is of course undeniable. The Turks are European in the sense that they changed European history for the better. It took more than 50 million dead Europeans to realize that European Cooperation is the best way to compete with the world. I think the Turks should at least be included in that. To exclude the Turks from European history is an awful mistake because so much of modern Europe stems from Turkish conquests, defeats and meddling from other European powers as well.
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