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If there is any lesson that can be learned from history,
it's that empires and countries come and go just like people do.
They both have their entrances and their exits that are sometimes graceful and sometimes not.
The Ottoman Empire almost seems like it's from ancient history,
but Nintendo was founded at the same time the empire was
still huge, and occupied parts of Europe and Africa.
The Ottoman Empire had already been in a very long decline
by this point, and
finally, officially ceased to exist on 1922.
That was nearly 100 years ago, but what would the Ottoman Empire
look like today if it were to suddenly and unexpectedly
come back into existence?
Let's imagine a hypothetical Neo-Ottoman Empire with
her borders restored to what they were at the Empire's territorial height
back in 1683, right before
the Ottomans lost the Siege of Vienna against the Polish and the Hapsburgs.
If this happened a total of 31 modern countries
across 3 continents would lose
some or all of their land their territory to the Ottoman's.
Despite looking big and scary on a map, it would all be a lot smaller than Australia.
Australia apparently needs to get their act together filling up all this land though,
because the Ottomans would have over 17 times
their population, at around 426 million people.
That makes the Neo-Ottoman Empire the third largest country in the world in terms of people.
Obviously staying behind the usual suspects; India and China.
The capital of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years was Constantinople, or Istanbul
and that still all this time later would be the largest and most important
city in the modern empire.
Most of the top ten largest cities in the empire today would
all be located in the Middle East except for two:
Algiers in North Africa and Bucharest deeper in Europe.
All of these cities and lands would mean that the Ottoman Empire today,
like it was hundreds of years ago, would
be a very diverse place with people from dozens of
different backgrounds and religions. Arabs would
make up the vast majority of the Ottoman Population at 48%
while ethnic Turks would come in at second place at
14.5%. Because of the large amount
of territory in Eastern Europe, people from Slavic
backgrounds would make up 11% of the Neo-Ottoman population.
Followed up by large numbers of Kurds, Romanians, and
Greeks. Based on those numbers, the Arabic and Turkish languages
would be the most commonly spoken in the new empire.
Probably followed next by French, owing to the old French
colonial influencing places like Lebanon, Syria
and Algeria. Moving on to the never controversial religious
section of the video, The Abrahamic Phase would dominate the empire;
Islam would be the single largest faith divided between 56% Sunnis and 8% Shias.
Christians would make up an additional 22% and Jews another 2%, Atheists and Agnostics would make up
3% while other beliefs and religions would make up the final
9%. The Ottoman economy would definitely be a powerhouse with an estimated nominal GDP of around
$3,675 trillion US Dollars. This would put the empire roughly on a par with the German economy and make it the 5th largest economy
worldwide. The economic comparison with Germany is interesting though, because while the numbers appear similar,
they don't exactly tell the whole story.
Remember the Ottoman population is about
426 million,
while Germany's population is just
a bit over 82 million,
but still manages a slightly larger sized economy.
This means that on average, a citizen from the Neo-Ottoman empire
would be significantly poorer than a citizen from modern Germany.
The poorest areas of the modern Ottoman state would be
Syria, Moldova, and Ukraine, while the wealthiest areas
would be Kuwait, Israel, and the territory taken
from Saudi Arabia. The large economy and population inside
the new Ottoman empire would make it capable of fielding the
largest military in the world, estimated to be around
8.1 million soldiers strong to begin with.
Adding up all the territory included in the
empire and their contributions to national defense, and the Ottoman military
budget would be $137 billion dollars;
the third largest highest in the world, behind the military juggernauts
of China and the United States. When compared with other
hypothetical countries that I've come up with in previous episodes of this
series, the Neo-Ottoman Empire would match up
extremely well. It would a very comperable
population to a united Spanish Empire,
but a much lower economy. The Ottomans would have
a larger military to begin with than a reunited Mongol
Empire, but the Mongol manpower base of 1.9
billion people would probably cancel out that advantage
pretty quickly. Which ever way you look at it, a reunified
Ottoman Empire to the borders of 1683 would be a
true 21st century greatpower. There are
many problems that a modern Ottoman State would face though,
with territory taken from Russia, The European Union, Saudi Arabia,
and bordering Iran, the Ottoman Sate would face many
external enemies. In addition to the vast internal
differences that were part of the reason for the Ottoman Empire collapsing nearly
100 years ago. Could the Ottoman Empire
survive in the modern world or would it come crashing down
all over again? Perhaps the best way of answering these questions
would be to create a fan-fiction website and there's no better way
of doing that than using Wix.