AHC: Flip Modern day Turkey and Greece

In other words a situation where you have an Orthodox Christian Greek speaking Anatolian state and a Muslim Turkish speaking Balkan state.

TTL Greece need not have all of Anatolia, but at minimum must hold the Aegean and Black Sea coastline, and preferably the Med coastline too. Bonus points for Constantinople, Thrace (East or otherwise), Crimea and Cyprus.

The Turkish state also need not be exclusively Balkan. Throw in Sicily, Southern Italy, Cyrenaica etc if you want/can. Preferably the capital is at Athens.

POD: Any time after 1025 (post Basil II).
 
This seems reasonably easy to me - instead of having them invade via the East, have them come from the North like the Bulgarians.

As the Turks converted in Central Asia all we need it to prevent the instability that led to the rise of the Seljuks in Persia - forcing them to expand westward. It doesn't seem outlandish that a Arab-Turkish alliance forms to invade the Romans, with the Arab/Persian Empire invading, and held off by the Byzantines in Anatolia, but then the battered Byzantines unable to hold off the Turks in Greece, or forcing the Turks to invade the Slavs, and settling in that region instead. Basics done, the Turks just need to survive, and the Romans (or Greek successor state) needs to not reconquer their European possessions.
 
This isn't as hard as one would imagine. Turks have been living in the Balkans since the early 14th century and this increased when Tamerlane ravaged Anatolia and forced many Turks to cross the Dardanelles and settle in OTL Bulgaria and Greece. There was so much Turkish migration that the Muslim population (indistinguishable from the Turks) constituted 43% of the population in the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania and eastern Bulgaria. Intensify this by perhaps deporting OTL unruly Muslim populations like the Alevis to the Balkans (maybe expand it to deporting the Alawites of Syria who resisted Ottoman attempts at conversion to Sunni Islam). Same thing applies to the Greeks and Slavic Christians: they revolt en masse and the Ottomans decide to deport them to Greek Anatolian areas like Cappadocia and Pontus.

In OTL, there was overcrowding in the Greek islands in the Aegean and many migrated into western Asia Minor, increasing the Greek minorities. Given that western Asia Minor would be a TTL dumping ground for the Ottomans to throw uppity Greeks, said migration might cause the Greeks to become a majority in western Thrace. Should said Ottoman Empire still survive in a stable condition, they have resources that they could exploit and jumpstart an Industrial Revolution (coal, iron, wood in Bosnia, light textiles in Bulgaria, etc.). You would have Greek and Armenian capitalists in Constantinople and Asia Minor financing the building of Ottoman factories and railways. Due to foreign governments like Russia exploiting the plight of Christian minorities compounding the existing distrust the Ottomans had for them, the government encourage Anatolian Turks and Arabs to migrate. Think of it as the Ottomans' counterpart to the Great Migration - millions of Muslim laborers come to the Balkans and there's an equivalent stream of Christians leaving the Balkans and settling in Constantinople, western Asia Minor and Pontus.

The Ottoman Empire doesn't fall due to involving itself in an unwinnable war but due to mass labor unrest. It shouldn't be too hard to have someone (maybe an Alevi or Sufi) appear that combines Islam with the ideals of Karl Marx. This Islamic socialist movement successfully pivots to both the laborers demanding better working conditions and the choice to organize and the ulema wanting more influence over the government. They take over most of the Ottoman Balkans and declare themselves the Islamic People's Republic of Rumelia, establishing their capital in Atina (Athens). The Ottoman sultan offers equal rights to the Christians but they don't bite: the sultan is deposed and the Christians declare the rebirth of the Roman Empire: crowning a Phanariote as Emperor of Rhomania. The Rhomanian government, with foreign backing, expands its control to most of Asia Minor and parts of Syria, using pogroms to wipe out anyone against the regime. The Arabs go their own way and form their own independent state led by the Hashemites who claim the Caliphate, disputed by the Rumelian ulema. Rumelia and Rhomania would have a population exchange later on, sending Muslims to the Rumelia and Christians to Rhomania.
 
This seems reasonably easy to me - instead of having them invade via the East, have them come from the North like the Bulgarians.

As the Turks converted in Central Asia all we need it to prevent the instability that led to the rise of the Seljuks in Persia - forcing them to expand westward. It doesn't seem outlandish that a Arab-Turkish alliance forms to invade the Romans, with the Arab/Persian Empire invading, and held off by the Byzantines in Anatolia, but then the battered Byzantines unable to hold off the Turks in Greece, or forcing the Turks to invade the Slavs, and settling in that region instead. Basics done, the Turks just need to survive, and the Romans (or Greek successor state) needs to not reconquer their European possessions.

Interesting idea, but why would the Turks, who are cut off from the rest of the Islamic world, not convert to either Orthodoxy (appease Empire and Slavic subjects) or Catholicism (use Papacy as a counter-weight to the Empire)? Without one of the two, it is rather likely that there will be a crusade exclusively against them, since they are literally at Christendom's door. Their chances of surviving such a Crusade will be pretty low, tbh.

Perhaps the Byzantine Empire needs to be critically wounded by the Persians/Arabs in the East, so that all they can do is survive, before they too are conquered. Then we can have the Islamic Empire collapse like the Ottomans did, leading to a Greek Anatolian coast (like a sort of Armenia, cut off from the remainder of Christendom).

This isn't as hard as one would imagine. Turks have been living in the Balkans since the early 14th century and this increased when Tamerlane ravaged Anatolia and forced many Turks to cross the Dardanelles and settle in OTL Bulgaria and Greece. There was so much Turkish migration that the Muslim population (indistinguishable from the Turks) constituted 43% of the population in the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania and eastern Bulgaria. Intensify this by perhaps deporting OTL unruly Muslim populations like the Alevis to the Balkans (maybe expand it to deporting the Alawites of Syria who resisted Ottoman attempts at conversion to Sunni Islam). Same thing applies to the Greeks and Slavic Christians: they revolt en masse and the Ottomans decide to deport them to Greek Anatolian areas like Cappadocia and Pontus.

In OTL, there was overcrowding in the Greek islands in the Aegean and many migrated into western Asia Minor, increasing the Greek minorities. Given that western Asia Minor would be a TTL dumping ground for the Ottomans to throw uppity Greeks, said migration might cause the Greeks to become a majority in western Thrace. Should said Ottoman Empire still survive in a stable condition, they have resources that they could exploit and jumpstart an Industrial Revolution (coal, iron, wood in Bosnia, light textiles in Bulgaria, etc.). You would have Greek and Armenian capitalists in Constantinople and Asia Minor financing the building of Ottoman factories and railways. Due to foreign governments like Russia exploiting the plight of Christian minorities compounding the existing distrust the Ottomans had for them, the government encourage Anatolian Turks and Arabs to migrate. Think of it as the Ottomans' counterpart to the Great Migration - millions of Muslim laborers come to the Balkans and there's an equivalent stream of Christians leaving the Balkans and settling in Constantinople, western Asia Minor and Pontus.

The Ottoman Empire doesn't fall due to involving itself in an unwinnable war but due to mass labor unrest. It shouldn't be too hard to have someone (maybe an Alevi or Sufi) appear that combines Islam with the ideals of Karl Marx. This Islamic socialist movement successfully pivots to both the laborers demanding better working conditions and the choice to organize and the ulema wanting more influence over the government. They take over most of the Ottoman Balkans and declare themselves the Islamic People's Republic of Rumelia, establishing their capital in Atina (Athens). The Ottoman sultan offers equal rights to the Christians but they don't bite: the sultan is deposed and the Christians declare the rebirth of the Roman Empire: crowning a Phanariote as Emperor of Rhomania. The Rhomanian government, with foreign backing, expands its control to most of Asia Minor and parts of Syria, using pogroms to wipe out anyone against the regime. The Arabs go their own way and form their own independent state led by the Hashemites who claim the Caliphate, disputed by the Rumelian ulema. Rumelia and Rhomania would have a population exchange later on, sending Muslims to the Rumelia and Christians to Rhomania.

Wow-this one is pretty darn impressive. But, why would the Ottomans push Christians into already Christian majority areas? Sounds like a perfect recipe for rebellion. W Asia minor also has a lot of fertile land, so not sure if being dumped there is a punishment for the uppity Greeks. That can change in the industrial era (as you noted), but holding off irreversible demographic changes to Anatolia till then will be hard, IMO....

Also, if the Balkan state is pretty industrialized, why would it not steamroller the presumably largely agricultural Anatolia? Unless Big Bro Russia gets in the way I suppose.
 
Wow-this one is pretty darn impressive. But, why would the Ottomans push Christians into already Christian majority areas? Sounds like a perfect recipe for rebellion. W Asia minor also has a lot of fertile land, so not sure if being dumped there is a punishment for the uppity Greeks. That can change in the industrial era (as you noted), but holding off irreversible demographic changes to Anatolia till then will be hard, IMO....

Also, if the Balkan state is pretty industrialized, why would it not steamroller the presumably largely agricultural Anatolia? Unless Big Bro Russia gets in the way I suppose.

It would be a multi-generational process, intensifies sporadically but for the most part it goes un-noticed. Plus Anatolia was considered a backwater in OTL by the Ottoman government: I doubt it would care about dumping Christians there. The Islamists would probably figure that they're better off without the corrupting influence of Christian big money oppressing the Islamic proletariat! :p
 
Interesting idea, but why would the Turks, who are cut off from the rest of the Islamic world, not convert to either Orthodoxy (appease Empire and Slavic subjects) or Catholicism (use Papacy as a counter-weight to the Empire)? Without one of the two, it is rather likely that there will be a crusade exclusively against them, since they are literally at Christendom's door. Their chances of surviving such a Crusade will be pretty low, tbh.

Perhaps the Byzantine Empire needs to be critically wounded by the Persians/Arabs in the East, so that all they can do is survive, before they too are conquered. Then we can have the Islamic Empire collapse like the Ottomans did, leading to a Greek Anatolian coast (like a sort of Armenia, cut off from the remainder of Christendom).

I think that the most effective way to achieve this is for a massive naval defeat for the Romans - or a Pyrrhic victory that leaves them exposed, and allowing fellow Muslim states to intercede on the Turks behalf - enabling the Turks to build up a fleet or perhaps the Barbary states take even more prominence in this timeline.
 
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