Discussion: Who had the WORST claims to being the successor of the Roman Empire?

[Dagoth Ur]

Yes, they adopted a religion from the east... and simultaneously persecuted the ethnic group that faith came from. Not really an example of them being accepting of easterners.

Furthermore, what does this have to do with medieval Germans who also had all that (except eunuchs)?

Greek had been the secondary language of the Empire since before it was an empire and Romans had been partially Hellenized even longer. Constantinople was only eastern in a geographic sense. It wasn't Semitic let alone Persianate.

The Romans didn't discriminate extra against any ethnic groups though. Everyone who wasn't a Roman was fair play.
Medieval Germans didn't have proskynesis. Or if they did, that's news to me.
Romans weren't Hellenized.

Romans in th Hellenistic Era were inspired by Alexander the Great, and would have not viewed the east as so alien. Whereas the barbarian tribes to the north were basically completely unknown. When the Cimbri and Teutones appeared on the Mediterranean scene in the lat 2nd century BC, literally nothing was known about them. Which is more alien, the society about whom much is written, that was interacted with and visited by peoples nearby, that long had a footprint in the Mediterranean, or people who are completely unknown?

 

[Gloss]

That culture and language change occurred under imperial rule is not a surprise. The Latinization of most of the western Roman empire was a reality, as was the Hellenization of Anatolia etc in the eastern Roman empire.

I also question the extent to which that Turkicizarion happened, and had to happen. Even now, there are noteworthy communities of Greek-speaking Cretan and Greek Muslims living in Turkey and Syria. I would argue that the Turkicization of Anatolia, and of Greek Muslims, was sharply accelerated by the rise of a Greek nationalism that was specifically separatist and exclusionary of Muslims.

Turkicization of Anatolian Greeks seem to have been extremely rapid outside isolated communities in Trabzon and Cappadocia.
I certainly see no evidence for it and seem just a convenient narrative given that in reality Greek linguistic influence on Turkish seems to be relatively minimal compared to what you would expect if a large Muslim Greek community existed for centuries.
Also the demographic/genetic shift in Anatolia was so large that it also justifies a rapid Turkification of most of Anatolia by the 16th century, original Oghuz ancestry is the highest in Western Anatolia and while the exact value is to be determined but to me it seems to me to be around 30-50%, definitely very high and the pattern of ancestry maybe justifies why Greeks and Orthodoy survived in Trabzon and Cappadocia where even Turks have smaller Turkic ancestry(almost none in Eastern Trabzon).

If Greek national identity did not evolve in that way, why mightn't we not have had a Greek-speaking national identity that was either inclusive of Muslims or that was primarily Muslim? Look at the Albanians

Religion in many cases mattered more than language in the period even if it wasn't the sole factor, Protestant Poles were quite loyal to Prussia while the Prussians feared Polonization f Catholic Germans in the East, religion essentially maintained ethnic distinction between Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs despite all the pan-nationalists pushing for common identity and creating a single standard language.
On that note Turkish speaking Christians were considered more "Greek" than Greek speaking Muslims.

Edit: I've found this image that shows the amount of loanwords in modern Turkish, as you can see Greek is nowhere to be found, now I don't know if the language reforms explictly removed all Greek loanwords but to me it seems there simply weren't that many:

Spoiler

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

The Romans didn't discriminate extra against any ethnic groups though.

Oh? Then how were northerners more othered than easterners?

Are the equal opportunity assholes (the point I'm arguing) or do they have a special dislike of northerners (your point)? If you aren't going to argue the latter then you're just conceding the argument.

Medieval Germans didn't have proskynesis.

They didn't call it that, but they had prostration and kissing the ring of one's lord.

Romans weren't Hellenized.

Yeah... they just had the same gods and their upper class were all conversant in Greek. Coincidental I'm sure.

Romans in th Hellenistic Era were inspired by Alexander the Great

Who fought against and conquered "easterners"...

Which is more alien, the society about whom much is written, that was interacted with and visited by peoples nearby, that long had a footprint in the Mediterranean, or people who are completely unknown?

You seem to be under the impression that "othering" is a rational process based on unfamiliarity rather than an irrational one based on preconceived notions.

 

[John I of Brazil]

Bad examples? Are you telling me that Spain and Tunisia are seen by a sizable number of people as heir of the two aforementioned civilizations? Or that the UK was the heir of various indian kingdoms/empires? If you example of Peru is based on the fact that most of the people there are related to the original inhabitants (don't know much about Latin America, can anyone confirm this?), then all of that just means that Peru is the "Greece" (not the Ottomans) of Latin America.

Not the UK, but the British Raj was. If the British Empire collapsed and India was all that remained, them we could define the remnant British Empire as a indian empire in the same way the mughals were.

 

[AdamNeuser]

Just want to clarify, Mehmed II did not claim his empire to be a successor of the Roman Empire. The title 'Kayser i rum' didn't mean 'Roman Emperor.' A better translation would be "Emperor of Rome." With Rome in this context referring to the heartlands of the former Roman Empire (Balkans, Thrace and Western Anatolia). Not the actual idea/empire itself.

 

[Augenis]

Not on your list, and I don't think the Grand Dukes ever staked a direct claim to succession of the Empire, but the Lithuanians in the... 1300's? 1400's? Produced a chronicle for their semilegendary Palemonid dynasty which claimed descent from 500 Roman nobles led by a certain "Villius" who had fled northward... which is about as likely as the origin stories for the British Isles found in Geoffrey of Monmouth or in the Irish Book of Invasions

They were led by Palemon according to the most common version, Vilius is from Dlugosz's version of the myth which does not have the Palemonid dynasty, and no the Lithuanian monarchy did not ever stake a claim to being the successors of Rome. Being descended from Rome, yes. But lots of countries claimed legendary heritage. Poland had the whole Sarmatian thing for example.

Palemon's myth has been quite heavily analyzed by Lithuanian historians, because believe it or not but the Roman origin theory was not manufactured by Lithuanian chronicles and there's even evidence that it existed in oral tradition before Christianization, lel. Dlugosz specifically states that the legend preceded him and he just found new arguments for it (like similarities between Latin and Lithuanian), and Peter of Duisburg's Chronicon terrae Prussiae in 1326 makes overtures in the direction of that legend as well. There's a working theory by Beresnevičius (I think) that the legend came from the arrival of exiles from the Bosporan Kingdom in the fifth century, including the name Palemon, and later ended up hijacked by those who wanted to make a connection to Rome.

 

[EMT]

Most Greek Muslims were in transitory state in becoming Turkish Muslim, there is a reason why the Ottoman Turkish langauge has far more Persian and Arab influence than it has Greek despite the region where it was spoken and there is a reason why Anatolia became solidly Turkish speaking instead of becoming a Muslim Greek speaking region.

That's not universal at all and is most applicable to parts of Anatolia. Crete, for example, had a minuscule Turkish-speaking community throughout its time under the Ottoman Empire but a significant minority of the populace(47% in 1821 if Wikipedia is to be believed) was composed of Greek Muslims. Looking at the Turkification of Muslims from the former Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia that occurred post-WWI isn't a fair assessment of the situation at the time at all considering Turkification only picked up steam in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire that carried on into modern-day Turkey in pursuit of forging a coherent national identity. Refugees from the Balkans, Crimea, and the Caucasus would come as Albanians, Circassians, or Greek Muslims but eventually, they or their descendants would Turkify leading us to the modern-day demographics of Turkey.

Prior to that being a Muslim and being a Turk was far from synonymous, nor was it guaranteed to be a transitional state between one's previous culture and Turkification, or we wouldn't have the distinctive ethnic groups such as Pomaks or Cretan Turks that we have today. If anything, we'd have more distinct groups surviving without the post-Ottoman nationalist trends, population exchanges, and outright genocides that occurred in pursuit of a singular national identity/ethno-states.

 

[Aghasverov]

They were led by Palemon according to the most common version, Vilius is from Dlugosz's version of the myth which does not have the Palemonid dynasty, and no the Lithuanian monarchy did not ever stake a claim to being the successors of Rome. Being descended from Rome, yes. But lots of countries claimed legendary heritage. Poland had the whole Sarmatian thing for example.

Palemon's myth has been quite heavily analyzed by Lithuanian historians, because believe it or not but the Roman origin theory was not manufactured by Lithuanian chronicles and there's even evidence that it existed in oral tradition before Christianization, lel. Dlugosz specifically states that the legend preceded him and he just found new arguments for it (like similarities between Latin and Lithuanian), and Peter of Duisburg's Chronicon terrae Prussiae in 1326 makes overtures in the direction of that legend as well. There's a working theory by Beresnevičius (I think) that the legend came from the arrival of exiles from the Bosporan Kingdom in the fifth century, including the name Palemon, and later ended up hijacked by those who wanted to make a connection to Rome.

Interesting... Yeah, I sort of thought I was confounding 2 different versions of the story, didn't have the Wiki entry open for reference at the time (and my memory fails me occasionally )
It was certainly a common practice in the medieval era to postulate some sort of connection to antiquity. I think the Lithuanian story particularly fascinates me b/c so much of actual early Lithuanian history has to be "pieced together" from a mix of folk history and external sources to begin with...

 

[Augenis]

Interesting... Yeah, I sort of thought I was confounding 2 different versions of the story, didn't have the Wiki entry open for reference at the time (and my memory fails me occasionally )
It was certainly a common practice in the medieval era to postulate some sort of connection to antiquity. I think the Lithuanian story particularly fascinates me b/c so much of actual early Lithuanian history has to be "pieced together" from a mix of folk history and external sources to begin with...

That's true. The funniest times are when you have Sarmatists who *also* have ambitions to integrate the Palemon myth into their whole alternative storylines. I remember reading one guy who basically tried to weave an argument like "so uhh, these Lithuanians were conquering around Rome and stuff, and this Palemon guy hopped along for the ride with a bunch of Roman nobles and came back home to the Baltics" (he originated Lithuanians from the Heruli which is slightly different from the type of crowd I was talking about, but whatever).

 

[Flavius Iulius Nepos]

Not the UK, but the British Raj was. If the British Empire collapsed and India was all that remained, them we could define the remnant British Empire as a indian empire in the same way the mughals were.

Which is like saying, if the Ottomans had collapsed a balkan remnant might have emerged and formed the basis of a new and proper roman state. Might have happened but didn't. Given the actual circumstances, the Ottomans were the equivalent of the UK not the Raj. Seems like however, that mine is not an exactly popular opinion here.

 

[Wendell]

Well, to determine the worst claim, we should probably determine who has the best claim. The only polities with valid claims are those which existed contemporaneously with the Empire. Thus, Spain, Greece and modern Italy are disqualified. If there was a through line between medieval and modern Italy, then matters would be different, but in discernible respects outside of certain cultural affinities, Italy does not fit the bill. Greece is in some ways in a similar position to Italy. The French claim is more interesting, but really only works if one wants to argue that Charlemagne became the proper Roman emperor in 800, which given that he was only declared Holy Roman Emperor in part because a better contemporary claimant existed, he too is disqualified and whatever iteration of France is along with him. Disqualifying Charlemagne arguably disqualifies the later Holy Roman emperors too, but not necessarily or entirely for reasons I'll hit on later.

This leaves us with Vatican City, San Marino, Russia, and the Ottomans.

San Marino is disqualified as it was a state formed separately from the Empire and never really asserted a claim to it through institutions or otherwise. Vatican City has a valid claim in that it clearly evolved from imperial and pre-imperial Roman institutions, uses the Roman language, is in the Roman city, and follows the (later) [western] Roman state religion. However, the Vatican, and, more properly, the Papacy are disqualified as the Empire existed alongside and separate from it, with no point of absorption.

The argument around the Russians and the Ottomans is a fraught one and in part depends on whether the Empire of Nicaea is a continuation of the empire or not. Russia and the Ottomans could also be disqualified as both were states formed separately from the Empire. Nonetheless, if the Empire of Nicaea counts and the Roman Empire remained such even after the City of Rome was lost, then a claim could be asserted by the Russian city on seven hills. Russia observed the (later) state cult, and modeled some institutions on the Empire. Sophia Palaiologina's marriage to Vasily III provides a legal continuity of sorts at least for a time. The Ottomans are disqualified as they have a vastly different base culture, had an official religion matching no iteration of the state cult, and was built on and retained distinct institutions. If holding the City of Rome is not a requirement of a Roman Empire then neither is possession of Constantinople. Thus, despite spanning three continents and overlapping the former empire in significant ways, the Ottomans don't count.

Austria, I would argue, has a basis related to but distinct from the HRE for claiming a Roman continuity and legacy. This argument though also brings Spain back into the conversation.

Based on my analysis though, France has the worst claim.


'

 

[Gloss]

That's not universal at all and is most applicable to parts of Anatolia.

Parts? Seem like most Anatolia to me which is already the larger part of the entire previously Greek speaking community. The only exception I can find are non-coincidentally near Cappadocia and Pontus where Christian pockets survived for longer and where the population seem to have been more isolated, thus it makes sense you see what amounts to exceptions in this region, which is why we also find Karamnlides there.

Looking at the Turkification of Muslims from the former Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia that occurred post-WWI isn't a fair assessment of the situation at the time at all considering Turkification only picked up steam in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire that carried on into modern-day Turkey in pursuit of forging a coherent national identity. Refugees from the Balkans, Crimea, and the Caucasus would come as Albanians, Circassians, or Greek Muslims but eventually, they or their descendants would Turkify leading us to the modern-day demographics of Turkey.

Like I said above I see no evidence for this claim, if a large(emphasis on large) Muslim Greek speaking community existed in the past for 3-4 centuries of Ottoman rule I would expect more Greek influence in Turkish language and yet it lags far behind Western Romance influence even.

Prior to that being a Muslim and being a Turk was far from synonymous,

For Christians that didn't convert it was, curiously enough.
Also I think we are missing the big picture, Muslim Greek-speakers and Christian Turkish speakers were definitely a small minority within their respective linguistic or religious community(depending on how you look it) even if they existed.

nor was it guaranteed to be a transitional state between one's previous culture and Turkification,

Considering most Greek Muslim communities seem to have been in isolated pockets near Christians, in Aegean islands(that were conquered later) and small pockets in peninsular Greece(which north of Thessaly only had small Muslim communities) it does definitely seem it was a transitory state.

or we wouldn't have the distinctive ethnic groups such as Pomaks or Cretan Turks that we have today.

At least today most Muslim Bulgarians say they are of Turkish ethnicity, I know you can come up with counter-arguments but that's still what the modern evidence says.

If anything, we'd have more distinct groups surviving without the post-Ottoman nationalist trends, population exchanges, and outright genocides that occurred in pursuit of a singular national identity/ethno-states.

A bit of wishful thinking considering what happened in most other countries in term of homogenization even without population movements.

 

[EMT]

Parts? Seem like most Anatolia to me which is already the larger part of the entire previously Greek speaking community. The only exception I can find are non-coincidentally near Cappadocia and Pontus where Christian pockets survived for longer and where the population seem to have been more isolated, thus it makes sense you see what amounts to exceptions in this region, which is why we also find Karamnlides there.

Anatolia when exactly? You keep talking about the Turkification of Anatolia but haven't provided a particular date; as we know, Anatolian Greeks did Turkify in significant numbers but this was a process that went on many centuries and has had Turks present in the region long before the Ottoman Empire crossed over into the Balkans. But it's not as if Anatolian Greeks ceased to exist even by the time of the late Ottoman Empire(which I assume is your point of reference here on Pontus). Even then that's not painting the full picture considering what western Anatolia looked like as late as 1914, from what I can find on Google:

Like I said above I see no evidence for this claim, if a large(emphasis on large) Muslim Greek speaking community existed in the past for 3-4 centuries of Ottoman rule I would expect more Greek influence in Turkish language and yet it lags far behind Western Romance influence even.

I just gave you evidence. Cretan Greeks. There's a whole long list of subgroups of Greek Muslims on Wikipedia off my first Google search to show that it isn't a uniquely Cretan phenomenon. Your choosing to ignore the long history of Greek Muslims is your choice, but please don't claim that evidence hasn't been provided. As for the Turkish language not having much in the way of Greek loan words, that seems like moving goalposts. There's plenty of factors that could explain why this may be the case:

- The OTL decimation of the Balkan Turkish communities outside of Thrace dampening Greek loan words in common usage compared to the more Turkified Anatolia
- The usage of common Turkish instead of Ottoman Turkish as the basis of the modern Turkish language that was far more removed from Greek influence
- Ottoman Turkish being a court language that glorified the use of Persian and Arabic made it more difficult for Greek loanwords to catch on
- The alphabet barrier between the languages

For Christians that didn't convert it was, curiously enough.
Also I think we are missing the big picture, Muslim Greek-speakers and Christian Turkish speakers were definitely a small minority within their respective linguistic or religious community(depending on how you look it) even if they existed.

Christians using Turk and Muslim as synonyms doesn't equate to all Muslims in the Ottoman Empire being Turks the same way Europeans calling everything Guinea doesn't equate to them all being the same location. All you've got here for the idea that Muslim Greeks were a small minority is an assumption, I've at least provided examples showing that it's not the case in one Ottoman province, and could probably hunt down more if pushed but I think I've made my point. I don't know why you brought up Christian Turks but that's detracting from the point.

Considering most Greek Muslim communities seem to have been in isolated pockets near Christians, in Aegean islands(that were conquered later) and small pockets in peninsular Greece(which north of Thessaly only had small Muslim communities) it does definitely seem it was a transitory state.

If the argument is that they're small, isolated communities amidst a bunch of Christians that's even more reason not to swap out their language and not Turkify and the article I linked to Wikipedia has sources demonstrating as much. For example, Morea:

Greek-speaking Muslims lived in cities, citadels, towns, and some villages close to fortified settlements in the Peleponnese, such as Patras, Rio, Tripolitsa, Koroni, Navarino, and Methoni. Evliya Chelebi has also mentioned in his Seyahatnâme that the language of all Muslims in Morea was Urumşa, which is demotic Greek. In particular, he mentions that the wives of Muslims in the castle of Gördüs were non-Muslims. He says that the peoples of Gastouni speak Urumşa, but that they were devout and friendly nonetheless. He explicitly states that the Muslims of Longanikos were converted Greeks, or ahıryan.[58]

At least today most Muslim Bulgarians say they are of Turkish ethnicity, I know you can come up with counter-arguments but that's still what the modern evidence says.

They identify with Turkey for fairly apparent reasons but their language is Bulgarian. There's a reason they're a distinct group and not simply Turks in Bulgaria(a separate demographic) which a quick glance at the demographics of Bulgaria shows. There are 650,000 Turks in Bulgaria and 131,000 Pomaks. The Bulgarian government identifies them as Bulgarian Muslims in their census, distinct from Turks. Clearly, they can't be synonymous. If I can come up with very blatant counter-arguments, then clearly this point holds zero water. Yet another example of Muslim converts hanging onto their mother tongue. I have no idea what you're trying to imply about what modern evidence says because modern evidence says that this isn't the case at all, and the Bulgarian government thinks the same.

A bit of wishful thinking considering what happened in most other countries in term of homogenization even without population movements.

You say that as if the Balkans still aren't a demographic checkerboard everywhere that didn't have expulsions to this day. A long-lived Ottoman Empire that kept hold of its Balkan possessions would have been knee-deep in Ottomanism. It's hard to not imagine continued demographic diversity in any such scenario.

 

[A Repentant Heretic]

All of them are bad, except Medieval HRE and the Papacy/Vatican.

But since San Marino cannot even marginally assert the claim, I'll pick them as the worst.

 

[Sarthak]

Just want to clarify, Mehmed II did not claim his empire to be a successor of the Roman Empire. The title 'Kayser i rum' didn't mean 'Roman Emperor.' A better translation would be "Emperor of Rome." With Rome in this context referring to the heartlands of the former Roman Empire (Balkans, Thrace and Western Anatolia). Not the actual idea/empire itself.

That's a trope from the Ottoman Sick Man Theory that I wished would die. It is categorically untrue.
Rum was the denotation of the Perso-Arabic World for both Rome and Roman Lands which the Turks later picked upon. The first Turkic State to stake claim on the title of Caesar was the Sultanate of Rum who staked their claim on the basis of the fact that they ruled more Roman Lands than the Byzantines. Sultan Mehmet II when he took the title based on his claim on three things - 1. his Right of Conquest to the title of Roman Emperor. 2. His blood lineage from former Byzantine Dynasties through Orhan and Osman I's marriages to Byzantine princess and 3. his lordship over authentic Roman lands. When he declared his title as Kaysar-i Rum, he categorically declared himself the Roman Emperor, not Rumelia. His declaration in Ottoman Turkish says Roman Emperor directly and not Rumelia.

 

[Sarthak]

Regarding linguistic continuity. Greek does have a moderate and visible influence in Ottoman Turkish. The Modern Turkish Language cancelled most of them out after the 1920s and 30s, but even still retained ~5,000 shared words and ~1200 shared proverbs. By comparison, turkish influence in Greek is extremely present, with around ~20% of all Greek loanwords being Turkish the second largest only just below Italian. Ottoman Turkish Loanwords from Arabian, Persian, Greek, French and English were mostly replaced as a direct policy of Ataturk's Turkification language policy.
Some common Greco-Turkish Words are found here.

Prior to that being a Muslim and being a Turk was far from synonymous,

Prior to the late 1800s, most Ottoman Muslims would be offended if you called them a Turk.
Rest of your post agreed though.

 

[Gloss]

Anatolia when exactly? You keep talking about the Turkification of Anatolia but haven't provided a particular date; as we know, Anatolian Greeks did Turkify in significant numbers but this was a process that went on many centuries and has had Turks present in the region long before the Ottoman Empire crossed over into the Balkans

In 1300 the Byzantines still controlled North-West Anatolia, the Turkification of Anatolia can't be separated from what happened in the Balkans, they happen very close to each other time-wise.

That map is clearly over-estimating the amount of Greeks in Western Anatolia. Either the Ottoman census was completely blind and missed the obvious Greek communities in inland West Anatolia or they didn't exist.
I'm not even saying the Ottoman censuses were completely trustworthy, just that they couldn't be inaccurate in this way given that the Ottoman census was very open to admit Greek majority on various parts of the coastm Adrianople and Aegean islands.

I just gave you evidence. Cretan Greeks. There's a whole long list of subgroups of Greek Muslims on Wikipedia off my first Google search to show that it isn't a uniquely Cretan phenomenon. Your choosing to ignore the long history of Greek Muslims is your choice, but please don't claim that evidence hasn't been provided.

You can bring up individual communities all you want but it doesn't automatically determine their overall size, you could try and come up with vague estimates for those communities and see if they are really as large as you think, I will try to do that later if I can.

As for the Turkish language not having much in the way of Greek loan words, that seems like moving goalposts.

No, it's actual quantifiable evidence which is miles better than "look there are various small Muslim Greek communities, this proves there was a large stable Greek Muslim community" which is just not solid.

- The OTL decimation of the Balkan Turkish communities outside of Thrace dampening Greek loan words in common usage compared to the more Turkified Anatolia

I thought it was only "parts of Anatolia" that didn't have Greek Muslims, apparently not.

- The usage of common Turkish instead of Ottoman Turkish as the basis of the modern Turkish language that was far more removed from Greek influence

And yet Iranian and Arabic influence is still there as is French and Italian.

- Ottoman Turkish being a court language that glorified the use of Persian and Arabic made it more difficult for Greek loanwords to catch on

I thought Greeks were a prominent part of Ottoman governance and that various Ottoman rulers had recent Greek heritage.
Also this kinda contradicts the argument above, was vulgar Turkish less and more Greek influenced than Ottoman Turkish? You'd think common Turks would be more removed from the Arabic and Iranian influence that was overrepresented in higher culture, common Turks should have met more Greeks than Iranians or Arabs in their life(talking about Western and Pontic Anatolia and Balkans

- The alphabet barrier between the languages

It shouldn't matter for literate Greek Muslims that should have been somewhat versed in either Arabic or Ottoman Turkish and for common illiterate people alphabets don't matter.

Christians using Turk and Muslim as synonyms doesn't equate to all Muslims in the Ottoman Empire being Turks the same way Europeans calling everything Guinea doesn't equate to them all being the same location.

They are people that actually experienced the conversion of their compatriots and if they associated religious change with an ethnic shift there must be a reason and it can't be 19th century nationalism before the 19th century(of course), it doesn't mean that those people changed language, family names and traditions overnight but if they lived in place with Turks then the trajectory of their lives would change incredibly, their descendants will probably marry any local Turks and thus become part of the cosmopolitan dominant culture of the time.

All you've got here for the idea that Muslim Greeks were a small minority is an assumption, I've at least provided examples showing that it's not the case in one Ottoman province, and could probably hunt down more if pushed but I think I've made my point. I don't know why you brought up Christian Turks but that's detracting from the point.

It's a assumption but so is an assumption the idea that there was a large Muslim Greek community compared to Muslim Turks when even when looking at the dozen communities it seem to have been prevalent only in some specific locations, which is why you and the article name specific communities in majority Christian peninsular Greece and Aegean instead of finding larger ones in Western Anatolia.

If the argument is that they're small, isolated communities amidst a bunch of Christians that's even more reason not to swap out their language and not Turkify and the article I linked to Wikipedia has sources demonstrating as much. For example, Morea:

These reasons wouldn't necessarily exist forever, those people already used Ottoman Turkish as a prestige language and if the number of Muslims increase there is less and less of a reason to use Greek over Turkish, there is nothing special going on here, simple local demographics at work.
If that part of Greece stays overwhelmingly Christian, then sure we could see the survival of Muslim Greek speakers but that doesn't meaningfully contradict the "transition state" of Greek Muslims, what I mean by transitory is not that "this lineage of Christian Greeks has to spend exactly X generations as Greek-speaking Muslim before being assimilated ethnically" but rather I'm talking about general areas and what happens there as more and more people become Muslim while having a siezable local Turkish presence, which for the Bulgaria, Macedonia and Thrace was definitely the case since the 15th century.

They identify with Turkey for fairly apparent reasons but their language is Bulgarian. There's a reason they're a distinct group and not simply Turks in Bulgaria(a separate demographic) which a quick glance at the demographics of Bulgaria shows. There are 650,000 Turks in Bulgaria and 131,000 Pomaks. The Bulgarian government identifies them as Bulgarian Muslims in their census, distinct from Turks. Clearly, they can't be synonymous. If I can come up with very blatant counter-arguments, then clearly this point holds zero water. Yet another example of Muslim converts hanging onto their mother tongue. I have no idea what you're trying to imply about what modern evidence says because modern evidence says that this isn't the case at all, and the Bulgarian government thinks the same.

Yes Pomaks exist, I'm not denying that, but the idea that they are/were more than Turkish-speaking Muslims in the past or today is not self-evident. I'd also assume more Turkish-speaking Bulgarians emigrated than Pomaks, considering Black Sea Muslims were mostly Turkish speaking.
Islam in Bulgaria is not comparable to that in Albanian and Bosnia, there was strong Turkish ethnic and linguistic demographic there, but in any case this doesn't really matter when talking about Greeks considering that for Anatolian Greeks the situation is quite different and it's important to remember Anatolia has just as many people as the entirety of the Ottoman Balkans(south of the Danube-Sava) so it's just as relevant as Bulgaria is.

You say that as if the Balkans still aren't a demographic checkerboard everywhere that didn't have expulsions to this day. A long-lived Ottoman Empire that kept hold of its Balkan possessions would have been knee-deep in Ottomanism. It's hard to not imagine continued demographic diversity in any such scenario.

It's still wishful thinking.
Many people will switch to Turkish as literacy and urbanization increase and people migrate to other places and marry each other, this doesn't require any kind of forced assimilation, it's simply what happens when you have mixed country with a dominant language and people mix. This doesn't mean ALL of the Balkans will be Turkish speaking or Muslim but the overall linguistic diversity will decrease population-wise even any given individual community survives(basically you could have a linguistic map of a modern Ottoman Balkans and still see a patchwork of communities but this masks the fact that Rumelian and southern Thracian cities would be dominantly Turkish and would have a bigger share of the population.

 

[Gloss]

Regarding linguistic continuity. Greek does have a moderate and visible influence in Ottoman Turkish. The Modern Turkish Language cancelled most of them out after the 1920s and 30s,

Was this influence bigger than Persian or Western Romance(in the 19th century), languages that weren't even spoken inside of the core Ottoman territories? Because if it's not then it still goes to show how weak Greek influence really was.

but even still retained ~5,000 shared words and ~1200 shared proverbs.

Where does this figure come from? Because the source for the Greek loanwords that you probably used above only gives 800-ish Turkish loanwords in modern Greek and other sources give less than 500 Greek words in modern Turkish.
Now if you or that source are counting modern English and Western Romance words that both Greek and Turkish have I don't think that's very meaningful.

By comparison, turkish influence in Greek is extremely present, with around ~20% of all Greek loanwords being Turkish the second largest only just below Italian.

Well yes, because Turkish was dominant, not Greek.

 

[Sarthak]

Was this influence bigger than Persian or Western Romance(in the 19th century), languages that weren't even spoken inside of the core Ottoman territories? Because if it's not then it still goes to show how weak Greek influence really was.

Where does this figure come from? Because the source for the Greek loanwords that you probably used above only gives 800-ish Turkish loanwords in modern Greek and other sources give less than 500 Greek words in modern Turkish.
Now if you or that source are counting modern English and Western Romance words I don't think that's very meaningful.

Well yes, because Turkish was dominant, not Greek.

Depending on the era from which you read Greek influence varies. In the classical era Greek Influence in Ottoman Turkish was greater than Arabic (so at around ~10%-15%) but declined to around ~5%-8% afterward when the language was reformed. The recent Greco-Turkish War also provided much-needed nationalist support to getting rid of most Greek loanwords.

 

[Gloss]

Depending on the era from which you read Greek influence varies. In the classical era Greek Influence in Ottoman Turkish was greater than Arabic (so at around ~10%-15%) but declined to around ~5%-8% afterward when the language was reformed. The recent Greco-Turkish War also provided much-needed nationalist support to getting rid of most Greek loanwords.

Source? This 5-8% figure for modern Turkish is directly contradicted by the chart I presented and your wiki link, both charts say that Greek loanwords are less than 1%.