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Comment by onetimemanytime | Hacker News Reader

For those that don't know, Turkey (Ottoman Empire) ruled for over 600 years over a very large empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire Quite a few times they tried taking over proper Europe, like Italy (Pope was there) and Austria. They ruled the Balkans, Northern Africa, Saudi Arabia, Caucasus etc etc. They didn't invest anything in occupied areas but didn't directly force conversions to Islam. Conversions had a lot of benefits of course so quite a few people did over the centuries.

Eventually Russia and European powers did them in, empire was rotting for centuries...

(Turkey's Erdogan is now trying to be the Sunni leader, only to be opposed by Saudi Arabia, which was pwnd by the Turks for centuries.)

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As an aside (while I'm enjoying my morning cuppa), the Ottomans, via their control of the world coffee trade in the 1600s, served as the conduit through which Europe and India learned of, and began drinking coffee, both around the same time.

The full story is quite interesting, involving people risking death to subvert Ottoman attempts to protect their coffee monopoly's "Intellectual Property", which was fertile non-roasted coffee beans.

>but didn't directly force conversions to Islam

Well, not for the general population. But they did it lots of times...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries

"They began as an elite corps of slaves made up of kidnapped young Christian boys who were converted to Islam"

Also I think there was an extra tax for other abrahamic, and if you married into you had to convert.

>Eventually Russia and European powers did them in, empire was rotting for centuries...

The Russian winter is the only major European power that has never lost a war.

True, but they actually they fought mostly around the Black Sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Russo-Turkish_w... Several times both sides had allies...and eventually Russia helped the Balkan Orthodox states claim independence from the Ottomans. Death by a thousand cuts, but 600+ years is impressive.

Yeah, it was definitely a long slow decline. I prefer not to let facts get in the way of my jokes though.

IIRC they got pwned pretty good by the Russian winter (well, the post-winter mud season) at some point in the 1500s(?) though.

The Ottoman Empire did not rule North Africa since they were never capable of conquering Morocco, they only got Algeria to join the empire since algeria was looking for protection from Spain.

OK, all but one. Algeria or any other "Algeria" would have no chance against the Ottoman army. They kept coming and coming and coming...

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